Analysis

Style of writing

The language in the short story “Winona Forever” by Leesa Cross-Smith is casual and conversational. The sentence structure and the word choice mirror spoken language. For instance:

Burning and burning before we fell asleep. We didn't tell the boys about this either. Not even when they were being pervs and wanted to get off on asking us if we ever made out. We were coy when we said no, stop it, no.

The style of writing gives the impression that the narrator speaks the words as part of a confession or a conversation with someone close to her age. There is a lot of teenage jargon in the text. One example is the word “like” used as a filler word in the following sentence: “Like, her mom thought the word crystal was pretty so she named her that.” Other examples are words such as “extra-long” and “zappy”. 

The vocabulary is generally made of simple words. The occasional uncommon word such as “absconded” is accompanied by the mention that Heather learned it to get extra credit on the vocabulary quiz in English class.

The story uses the stream of consciousness method. This method gives us insight into Heather’s personality and helps the readers understand her better. For instance, we know that she decides to sleep with Tristan because she thinks Crystal will also have sex with Jamie. We follow Heather’s feelings and thoughts throughout the story, even when they have little to do with the flow of the narrative.