So what creates the emotional impact of this short story?  I appealed to your sense of humanity.  It is the shared human connection - the bond between a father and a daughter, or a young woman and the man she loves - that creates a bond between the writer and the reader.

As an aside, you may be wondering why I included such a sad tale in this course.  Didn’t I caution you against such things?  In this very lesson I said to always have a “happily ever after”?  Yes, I did.  And, this course, Pen & Paper, is about teaching you how to write stories that will have a broad appeal, i.e., commercial fiction.  You should know that in addition to writing commercial fiction, I also write fiction (and nonfiction) that is meant for use in the classroom.  The River is an example of such writing.