numb

Our main character, Sophie, enters into the story crying for an unidentified reason, which definitely created some conflict from the get-go. Sophie is forced to deal with the accident of a former boyfriend and eventually she rectifies her feelings and seems to get over his eventual death.

Our characters include: Sophie, Will, Zoe, Sophie's mom, Will's parents, and a doctor. Zoe is introduced so shortly and so succinctly that I wonder if their interaction could be changed. Zoe's wearing the same clothes as yesterday - why include that in the story if it won't be expanded on in the slightest? I think if Sophie is possibly sobbing over lunch with Zoe about her lost job (which is what I assume happened before the story opened and why Sophie is constantly looking for an email from her boss) and then gets a phone call from her mother where Zoe pressures her to answer it would be a good opening scene rather than her sitting in some random park.

Sophie's decision to fly home was very sudden and kind of jarring. The author says that she's motivated by guilt but I don't really feel like that's being shown. It would also add a little bit of conflict into the story if she couldn't get the right flight or there was some sort of storm or something. Logistically speaking, is it possible to book a flight for the same day and fly home without any problems encountered? We get some characterization of Sophie's mom from the phone call but it's really solidified when Sophie arrives home and her mother commands her to visit the hospital. It seems kind of unrealistic, but if Sophie's mother really does care about Will even after the breakup, then it would kind of make sense for what she said to her daughter. I wish there was more dialogue between them so we could see their interaction and get a full feel of how SOphie thinks about her mother.

I wish there was more dialogue in general, actually. There are a lot of opportunities to show how numb Sophie is that are instead summarized into quick dialogue and quick action. The author could really capitalize on the awkwardness of Sophie and Will's parents as well as her one-sided conversations with Will if only by having her sit and stare at him to say something and then reflect on what he looks like, you know?

I like Sophie and Will's history. It's a real testament to the length of relationships and makes the reader consider the depth of said relationships. I like that Sophie thinks she feels nothing. Where I am confused is that Sophie keeps saying how much she doesn't care about him and, after a while, it seems more "this is fact" rather than "this is denial" if that makes sense. Sophie says definitively that she doesn't care about Will but then the author keeps implying that she's just numb and hasn't realized her pain yet. And then, when Will dies, she doesn't experience any pain - just release. So does this mean that our character hasn't changed at all? Doesn't numb mean that you're staving off some kind of pain? If Sophie is unaffected by Will before the story and unaffected at the end, has she changed at all?

I guess you can say that she changed by losing her job and moving back home but that doesn't happen in the span of our story. We don't see Sophie move back home with her mom and return to her vulnerable self. Instead, we see Sophie eating a bag of candy to symbolize Will's death in her life.

As for the ending, I really really really like the line "Will was gone, but his body was still there". It really encapsulates the feeling of loss without describing the exact physical reaction. Not only does our author create Sophie's "out" but the author also shows how death is not just one thing: there is death of body and mind. It would have been a bit more realistic to have the sheets stripped clean (cliche) or them carting his body out (cliche) or parents sobbing loudly and refusing to release his body (kind of cliche). As it stands now, Sophie walks in to his parents sitting by their dead son for who-knows-how-long when the doctors/hospital probably would have removed his body.

I think this a really good story with a unique twist on losing an old friend but just needs some sprucing up and some more editing.