A real annotated feedback example

"Open Home"

Your link to Dawe is leaning on the plot and the literal images rather than the themes. The brief wants you inspired by an aspect of "Drifters", so the values underneath it: transience, the kid who was happy and doesn't want to leave, what actually makes a house a home. Right now you're borrowing the green tomatoes and the leaving-a-house storyline almost directly, which reads as on the nose. Pull back to the idea, not the picture, and this lifts a whole band.

"the real estate flag that snapped and shivered in the wind"

The flag is a bit vague and I'd ask what it's actually doing here. Think Chekhov's gun: if you put something on the page early it has to pay off or carry meaning, every sentence earns its place. I get that it hints the house is being sold, but that's a little obvious. Better move is to turn the weather into pathetic fallacy. It's autumn, so a tree shedding its leaves, that in-between season of not knowing what's next, mirrors Tilly far more than a flag does.

"The lawn had been shaved down to its yellow roots."

Telling, not showing. Personify the lawn. Something like: the lawn looked like a man sent off to the army, shaved red, eviscerated of hair, exposing yellow-grey roots. If you push it toward a body being stripped and shipped out it quietly rhymes with the family being moved out of the home.

"which usually held the warm fingerprints of Max's hands"

Build Max out here, he's very surface level so far. Remember you have two hours, so spend them deepening characters rather than adding more plot. Allude to how little he is, his warm pureed fingerprints dragging down the glass and joining the race of water droplets on a humid day like this one. That also sets your season: humid, autumn, summer tipping into winter, uncomfortable and transitional.

"the afternoon sun bounced off them, hard and white"

I really like the sun catching the stained fingerprints. One thing, "bounced off them" is a touch awkward. Reword.

"Good tenants left no trace."

"Good tenants left no trace" reads a bit off grammatically. If you mean it as a saying, write "good tenants leave no trace" and give it its own line so it sits like a maxim. Also go read "there will come soft rains" by Ray Bradbury, the way the abandoned house keeps performing its routines after everyone has gone is exactly the isolation you're reaching for here.

"Tilly could still see where Max's hands had been"

This Max's-hand detail is lovely, push it further. Something like his print embossed into the pane, pressed in rather than just visible.

"First time through?"

"First time through?" doesn't quite read as a real line. Give the agent something an agent would actually say at the gate.

"Tilly folded one hand around the green tomato in her pocket..."

This is the bit that's too close to Dawe, the green tomato is basically lifted straight from the poem. Keep a ripeness / unreadiness idea by all means, but swap the object to something that isn't from his vegetable patch, maybe unleaven dough, something underdeveloped and not-yet. You want the meaning of unripeness, the not-ready-for-change feeling, not his actual image.

"Possessions removed. Rooms cleared. A family lifted out so carefully..."

You're sliding back into telling, and "pretend" is doing a lot of repeating. Allude instead. Let an empty room speak: dust settled so still in the corners you can see it hanging in the light, faint clean patches on the floor pointing to where the furniture used to stand. You could even personify the house like a little kid hiding its toys to look innocent, but the evidence is everywhere anyway.

"Beautiful bones."

This is your best image and I want you to commit to it. Lean all the way into anatomy: a gutted torso, the roots a ribcage that once held the family's heart, hollow and wheezing now. This maturation / body idea is stronger than the ripe-vine motif, so make it your spine and let it replace the fruit. That also pulls you off copying Dawe.

"Then the notice arrived. It had come addressed to her mother..."

Telling again. Don't just say the notice arrived. Show it: the grind of wheels on the gravel like a harbinger, and then let the house answer with its first creak, the beginning of it ageing. That creak can become your motif of change.

"gently, thoroughly, dishonestly"

Watch the tricolons, "gently, thoroughly, dishonestly". You do this a fair bit and three-word lists have become a bit of a tell, plus they read as listing adjectives rather than thinking. Pick the one word doing the work and unpack that instead.

"Every room had been taught to deny them."

You keep telling me the house is pretending and remembering, but you're not personifying it enough for me to feel it. Think about the movie monster house. Give it a heart, maybe one room, the living room, with a warm reddish hue that seemed to pulse in the evening light when they all sat together. Right now I don't care about these people quite yet, so a couple of real flashbacks anchored in rooms would fix that.

"The air tasted false, sweetened by the vanilla candle near the sink."

"Tasted false" is vague, nothing is really lying. You want synthetic or artificial. "The air tasted synthetic, sweetened by the vanilla candle" is great. Push it to something half-natural and half-wrong, like a plant overtaken by fungus or moss, so you get the contrast between natural ripening and the decay that follows death. The house is dying, basically.

"the week before the hospital bed arrived"

The hospital bed needs far more foreshadowing, and earlier. Right now I only half-guess what happened to Max. Seed it from the start and let it evolve through the house itself: wheel marks worn into the floor, a railing bolted to the stairs once he couldn't manage them, and finally the bedroom that became a sickroom. The house's wheeze should read as Max's last breaths.

"The house peeled back. Its ribs exposed."

Yes, the rib image is working now, keep building the anatomy. And bring the groaning / wheezing in earlier so it doesn't arrive out of nowhere, it should feel like the house has been ailing the whole way through.

"Just old height marks. Nothing. Fix. The marks were not damage. They were years."

Good motif, but here you're drifting into poetic prose, lots of tiny one-line fragments. This is the spot to slow down with a longer paragraph and a real flashback: measuring the kids against the doorframe, dad's hand flattening their hair. Let her sit in the memory. Also Tilly reads a little angsty and frustrated, I'd make her more melancholy and still, more grief than anger.

"Bedroom two."

These echoes ("bedroom two", "just old height marks") are basically internal monologue, which fights your third-person narration. I'd try the whole thing in first person, drop her name, just "I", and call him Maxie. It becomes more intimate and the echoes finally sit naturally as her own thoughts.

"as if naming a room by number could make it forget her"

This "naming a room by number" line is lovely, but notice it's internal monologue sitting inside third person again. It's exactly the kind of thought that would feel more natural in first person.

"four dents in the carpet where her desk had stood"

This is the showing-not-telling I want more of. The dents are the absence, they imply the desk without you naming it. Do exactly this back where you currently write "possessions removed, rooms cleared".

"Small. Stubborn. Almost gone."

Watch the staccato. "Small. Stubborn. Almost gone." is a nice beat but it's another one-line fragment list, and you do a lot of these. Let one of them breathe inside a fuller sentence.

"Tilly looked at the woman's hand resting over her stomach..."

This is the seed of your epiphany. The beginning-versus-ending contrast ("she was only trying to imagine a beginning... Standing inside Tilly's ending") is the emotional heart of the resolution. Build the turn from here, toward acceptance rather than resentment.

"The word had come out too sharply."

This is where Tilly reads a little bratty and angsty. Soften it so the sharpness is grief breaking through, not defiance. She's mourning, not picking a fight.

"Tilly pulled the tomato from her pocket. It was bruised..."

This is the dramatic tomato gesture, and I'd pull back here. It tips toward "look how sad I am". The quieter line just after ("my dad planted the tomatoes") carries far more, so let that do the work instead.

"and waited beside a hospital bed in the room that used to be for living"

This is great, but it's the payoff of Max's illness and it lands a touch late because it's barely foreshadowed earlier. Seed the sickroom and the hospital bed from the start and this line will absolutely devastate.

"My dad planted the tomatoes," Tilly said.

Trust this register. Understatement like "my dad planted the tomatoes" is more powerful than anything dramatic with the tomato above. This is your real voice.

"The house held its breath around them."

Yes, more of this. "The house held its breath" is exactly the personification to lean into throughout. Side note: the flag "flapped brightly" is about the only work it does all story, so either give it real weight or cut it (Chekhov).

"The pregnant woman left first, one hand resting again over the life she carried..."

This is the spot to build the hands motif. Let the woman rest her tired hand on the windowpane exactly where Max once pressed his, so the circle closes. The gesture can carry far more than "I'm sorry".

"Tilly nodded because it was easier than forgiving her."

This keeps Tilly static and a little cold. The criteria reward a character who changes. She doesn't have to forgive, but let her soften toward the idea that the house could hold life again.

"It was warm now."

The warming tomato is a nice shift. But per what we said, think about retiring the literal fruit altogether and letting the house do the ripening instead, it's the stronger metaphor.

"checked its bones and called its bruises potential"

Lovely callback to "beautiful bones".

"Tilly looked back once. Behind one shining window, the hallway kept its marks..."

Strong final image of persistence, but this is where the ending should turn gently hopeful. Add the silent-door beat (the door that always creaked closes without a sound this time) and let the house ripen, surviving the illness Max couldn't. Keep it melancholic, but let Tilly have grown.

"Tilly closed her fist around the tomato and wondered how long something could keep ripening..."

Let's rework the ending toward an epiphany. Tilly is a bit bratty resenting the pregnant woman, who is only imagining a life for her family, so ease off that. I'd not do anything dramatic with the tomato. Instead watch the woman rest her hand on the windowpane, tired, exactly where Max once pressed his, and let that close the circle. Tilly softens: maybe this house gets to hold life again, not just loss. Then the door she always eased shut because it creaked closes silently this time. Swap the ripening fruit for the house itself ripening, it has come through the illness Max couldn't, alive again under new owners. Keep it melancholy but let her grow, she's too static right now.