Writers

How do you give gentle constructive feedback to someone who doesn’t seem to have a basic grasp of fiction writing?

Someone joined our local writers’ group and submitted a piece that I paraphrase below, but the gist is very similar.

A man sits in his living room. He is watching TV and drinking beer. There is a knock on the door and he goes to answer it. It is his ex-girlfriend. “Hello, can I come in”

“Yes, you can come in,” says the man.

The woman sits down. “Can I offer you a drink” says the man.

“Yes that would be nice” says the woman.

… and so on for the next 1k words. No concept of scene structure, interiority, dialogue… where would you even start providing feedback? I normally try to make a “shit sandwich” by giving nice feedback first, and I’m really racking my brain here.

Quit my soul-sucking corporate job to write novels, and now I am poor.

Startup artist seeking inspiration.  Champion of /bcard

Ooh, that’s a good idea, I’ll give it a try! Thanks!

Haha I think that’s the easy rebuttal. If the story isn’t even about anything, why does it need to be written? But maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at it. I don’t know.

When I was taking creative writing, I’d always ask, “what is this story about?” Or “what are you trying to say?”

One day the teacher said, “links is on an unending search for meaning” so maybe it’s not a good instinct.