Story: Saturday Morning

What follows is an analysis of a Woman's World story with suggestions/observations for people who want to sell stories to WW, peppered with some personal opinion, too. :)

Story: "Saturday Morning" by J. Marie Loverich from the August 14, 2007 issue.

Tagline: Some things are just meant to be...

In a nutshell: Kelly is tired of the dating scene and not in the mood to spend Friday night with her married girlfriends. She ends up meeting a man whose dog "steals" her dog's ball.

For those of you familiar with Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey, this story showed a lot of Kelly's "ordinary world." (By the way, I highly recommend Vogler's book, if you couldn't tell from my displaying the cover.) This sets the scene and gives you all her history, but is less than exciting. I think it's really only there to establish that Kelly is content with herself and not desperate.

Trick of the trade: Loverich lays the foundation for the ending with the conversation about meeting the guy in the grocery store when they run out of milk and creamer. Then, voila! Funny how that's exactly what happens. You'll see this a lot in WW stories as well as in full length novels. It's just easier to see in a thousand word story.

Best Part: "And if I don't run out of milk, I'll be fine, too, she thought." Kelly starts out a tiny bit down, not wanting to hang out with friends and be the object of pity, and this line (toward the middle of the story) shows her tiny character arc. WW readers like to live vicariously through the stories and no one wants to think of herself as an object of pity, even if it's self-inflicted.

In My Humble Opinion: There's no real climax to this story, where you are in suspense about something, which leaves me somewhat dissatisfied as a reader.

Grade: C+