Response to Christina Kettering's "Dress Rehearsal"

Christina-

This piece is about two sisters, Diana and Kate, who are a year apart.  We mostly see from Kate's perspective.  As the plot moves, she is at first in anticipation of prom as well as a play she is in.  She is putting off a relationship with Sean and she is bitter over her relationship with her younger sister.

I think you have a great handle on dialogue.  It kept me interested--the dialogue progressed very naturally and characterized Kate and Diana and Sean nicely, which I really liked.  My favorite dialogue was between Kate and Sean on page 4:

"My math teacher called me Diana again."
"Don't try to change the subject."
"I'm a year older, a foot taller, and I have red hair."
"You're avoiding the issue."
"I don't look a think like her."
"Actually, you have the same chin."

I won't write all of it, but I felt that this was a nice speed for a short story and really mimics something I could hear or say myself.  It also was a point of tension, a conflict we knew had been building and now we are actually getting a display of the character's true sentiments toward her sister.

I did feel like this may have been one of the only points of big tension though.  I would have liked to see higher stakes because the subject you chose, especially for teenaged girls has high stakes in their minds.  What I suggest is maybe choosing whether to go with a conflict within Kate's relationship with her sister or her relationship with Sean.  For a max of 15 pages, maybe you can only pursue one.  Or maybe you find that both do work for 15 pages but you may need to cut out some of the scenes and add stakes to the ones you keep.  I think this story has great potential.  You already have some stakes and great instances like the scene when she is on stage for dress rehearsal and says different lines.  Make that scene more telling and dramatic, or maybe more of a catharsis for Kate than it seems now.

The only other thing I had a hard time with was distinguishing between Kate and Diana.  They seem very similar from the beginning and I couldn't keep straight which was going to prom and which was older.