u/Express-Target-9241 — reddlx

Everyone - in Studio 2!

I had just arrived, having stayed late at the office since I was in trial. In under a minute, I had changed from a blazer and pants into a leotard—a routine by then—and went back around to the side entrance to Studio 2. Another dancer had let me in.

Other dancers, leotard-clad, hair tied tightly in buns, poured into our studio. There were about fifty of us in total, all Chinese save for one blond-haired high schooler. She couldn’t speak Mandarin, but her movements were crisp and strong. We ranged from age 6-60, and we were all prepared to stay until 10 p.m. It was two nights before our sole dress rehearsal at the Baldwin Park Performing Arts Center, and we weren’t prepared. Every night after work, I drove here.

Wang Lao Shi, sleek, in a fitted black sweatshirt and sweatpants rolled up to the knees revealing her sculpted calves, strode in and stood in front of the mirror facing us. Her black hair, with just a hint of silver, was also secured in a bun.

She switched between Mandarin and English as she directed:

Nobody can leave tonight until we have one seamless run through.

Her eyes pierced through us as she paced from left to right, her hands clasped behind her back, spine straight, posture exact.

We have one dress rehearsal before the performance. This is a requirement if you want to dance here.

Then: If you are late, do not walk directly to Studio 2.

She switched to Mandarin: 不管你是醫生還是律師. I don’t care if you are a doctor or lawyer.

Walk through the front and tell me you are late.

There was no doctor in our group – just a pharmacist – and no lawyer, except me. Through the mirror, I looked at the other dancers. We stood in first position whenever she spoke with us. Necks elongated, shoulders pulled down. Nobody met my eyes.

***

All dancers were required to attend practice at least three times a week; I was there for four. Wang Lao Shi had eagle eyes although she did not always critique you on the spot. Sometimes the feedback was discreet; sometimes she’d work it into one whole class.

Once, we spent three hours on feng huo lun, or wind and fire wheels. By the end of practice, I could not feel either of my arms.

She spent as much time lecturing as she did teaching the actual movements. If a Chinese teacher stops talking to you, she told us, you should be worried. I treated everything my laoshi in China said like 一管牙膏 – a tube of toothpaste. I squeezed out every last bit. And so, I did the same with her.

She often told us that if we could dance ballet, we could do anything. There is no other discipline that requires this level of control: neck elongated, shoulders down, gaze fixed in the correct direction, arms extended and strengthened, weight on the balls of the feet, knees drawn in, every muscle contracted and, above all, no expression shown. I don’t want to see your effort on your face. Relax it. Show me it’s easy.

I danced under the instruction of Wang Lao Shi for four years – as long as I was in felony practice in Los Angeles.

I asked Grok to critique an excerpt from Bananafish, to be "brutally honest" and to pretend it didn't know it was a Salinger piece. This is what it wrote:

Here's the brutally honest feedback I'd give if someone posted exactly this passage here asking for critique, and I had no idea it was Salinger:

Overall:
This is a decent attempt at naturalistic dialogue, but it drags and feels amateurish in several spots. The scene is trying to show a tense mother-daughter phone call where the mom is worried about the daughter's unstable husband, while the daughter is checked out and defensive. The core idea has potential (family denial + looming mental health crisis), but the execution is uneven and needs serious tightening.

What works okay:

The voices are somewhat distinct. The mother sounds anxious and repetitive in a way that feels believable for a worried parent. The daughter’s detachment comes through in her deflections and short answers.
Dropping in details about the husband (the German poems, calling her “Miss Spiritual Tramp,” the weird behavior with trees/window/Granny/pictures) without a big info-dump is smart. It hints at something darker underneath.
The sunburn bit adds a nice touch of petty selfishness from the daughter.

What doesn't work well (be ready, this is the harsh part):

Repetition is killing the pace. The mother says variations of “It’s horrible / It’s sad, actually” multiple times. “My word of honor” is repeated. The daughter’s “All right, all right” and interruptions feel copied and pasted. In real life people repeat themselves when anxious, but on the page it just reads as redundant and annoying. It makes the mother sound like a caricature rather than a real person. Cut at least half of these.
Too much on-the-nose exposition through dialogue. Lines like “He told him everything... The trees. That business with the window. Those horrible things he said to Granny...” feel like the author listing plot points instead of letting a natural conversation unfold. Real people don’t recap events that cleanly when they’re upset. It comes off as “As you know, Bob” syndrome.
The daughter feels inconsistently cold. Giggling at being called a “Spiritual Tramp” is a good cruel touch, but then she rambles about the German book and casually mentions a psychiatrist at the hotel like it’s no big deal. Her final “I’ll live” after hearing her husband might lose control is icy, but the transition isn’t earned strongly enough. Right now she swings between flippant and almost bored, which makes her feel more annoying than compellingly monstrous.
Stage directions and tags are clunky in places. “the girl said, and giggled.” “said the girl, crossing her legs.” “said the girl, exhaling smoke.” These are fine occasionally, but they pile up and start feeling like a screenplay rather than prose. Trust the dialogue more. Some of the physical beats (going to the window seat for cigarettes) are decent, but others interrupt the flow.
It’s too long for what it accomplishes. The conversation meanders. A tighter version could hit the same emotional notes (denial, class anxiety, emotional disconnect, dread) in half the length. As written, it starts to feel like filler after the second or third loop of “Mom is worried / Daughter doesn’t care.”

Big picture advice:
This reads like the kind of “realistic” dialogue a lot of newer writers produce — it mimics how people talk, but it doesn’t yet transcend ordinary conversation into something sharp, revealing, or stylistically interesting. Right now the subtext (the daughter’s selfishness + the husband’s instability) is there, but it’s buried under chatter. Make the contrast between the mother’s panic and the daughter’s indifference hit harder and cleaner.

Specific suggestions:

Cut repetitive lines aggressively.
Make the mother’s worry more specific and less generic (“sad, actually” is weak).
Lean harder into the daughter’s casual cruelty or show a tiny crack in her armor.
Consider whether this scene needs to be this long. Could you start later in the conversation for more impact?

It has bones — the premise is uncomfortable in a good way. But as is, I’d probably stop reading midway because the back-and-forth starts feeling circular and the characters aren’t quite compelling enough yet. Tighten the dialogue, sharpen the subtext, and reduce the filler. Then it could be pretty effective.