The Wedding of the Drama Queen to the Absent Minded Professor

http://www.abctales.com/story/markashley/the-wedding-of-the-drama-queen-...

I liked the idea of writing about the wedding from two different perspectives. It's a good chance for readers to find out how the other gender approaches the idea of marriage.

The contrast between the bride's pre-wedding jitters and the groom's pre-wedding nap was kind of amusing. This contrast could be improved though. There's too much from the bride's view and too little from the groom's view. Another way to create more contrast would be to use totally different writing styles for the two different characters. Complex sentences for the bride, shorter and choppier sentences for the groom. (You may have been doing this, but it wasn't really clear.)

I had trouble getting through the story halfway through, but I can't really pin the problem down. Could be because the bride's parts just have too much action. Events happen one after the other. This is good for creating a sense of chaos and disorder, but I think more time could have been spent on her thoughts and feelings. That would make it more appealing for me- we all know what the bride has to DO before a wedding, but we not all of us know what the bride is THINKING and FEELING.

Another reason for the difficulty I had reading the bride's parts could be due to the use of too many complex sentences. Two or three things often happen within one sentence, and each paragraph has three or four sentences, so by the end of one paragraph, I've had to breeze through four to nine different events. I found myself skipping lines and having to reread later on. Perhaps more time could be spent discussing each detail.

For example:

Even though Kelly was around and her fried eggs are the best and she offered to make me breakfast, I had another chocolate chip muffin instead. By the time I arrived at the hairdresser (who, by the way, was trained by the woman who did all the wigs for the BBC miniseries "Pride and Prejudice so I should have just chilled) the day was sunny and bright. Kel managed to get hold of two sausage rolls that were cold inside and did an entire press-on nail job (that looked better than my manicure) in half the time it took me to get my not-too-fluffy 'do. Kel went off to take Dad and Crit to the limo and I went to the Zen Zone (not its real name) for my manicure.

In that one paragraph, we are taken through her choice of breakfast, her hair getting styled, the hairdresser's background, the weather, some more breakfast, a nail job, Dad and Crit are taken to the limo, and the protagonist is now on her way to the Zen Zone. That's eight different things in four sentences! Entirely too much information to digest in too few sentences. Spreading things out a little would help.

Also some problems with tense. The piece appears to be in past tense, but you switch tenses sometimes. There were quite a few, so these are just some of them:

--that was the weather we were getting for the past few weeks but it's England so that's what you'd expect
-'but it was England so that's what you would have expected.'

--Furthermore, we only have black umbrellas.
-'we only had black umbrellas'

--Even though Kelly was around and her fried eggs are the best and she offered to make me breakfast
-'her fried eggs were the best'

I like the idea behind this piece, but the execution could be improved. More from the groom's perspective, some editing of the bride's parts, and some tweaking of the tense would help the story immensely.