Another day, another review! I'm usually the poetry judge for the "Newbies ONLY Short Story & Poem Contest" , but I decided to read all of the short story entries as well. I might just help with the story judging this month, as the other judge is a bit busy.

Things I Like:

You didn't waste any time setting up the story, that's for sure! You jumped right in with some action. I was surprised at the swiftness really.

The narrator had a relatively strong character for such a short piece too.

Observations & Suggestions:

The story pacing seemed a bit streamlines and fast. It was great that you just jumped right in with some action, but that pace never let up! It almost felt like an "information dump". Have you heard of that? When you tell a reader details but don't integrate them into a story? The ending, in particular, felt like a rush of information that was sort of disjointed from the story.

One of the bigger issues for me was that I didn't care about Karen. It was the narrator's best friend. She had a boyfriend, but he had next to no role in the story. We found out later that she married a bad guy and divorced him. That's all we know about her... so it's hard to care at all what happens to her. The end didn't have much impact because of it. We never saw Karen happy or interacting with anyone. We never heard any real anguish over her fate from either her boyfriend or best friend. We never heard anything good about her. Was she kind and caring? Did she work in a children's hospital? Was she from a big family? Would anyone miss her really? If so... why? These are just random details off the top of my head. Any of them could help a reader connect with Karen... just examples.

The reader doesn't know what kind of party this is, so the guy with tattoos did not seem out of place. The narrator trying to speak calmly seemed strange to me. Like, why was she nervous about some guy at her party? Tattoos don't freak me out. Having an unknown guy at a party didn't seem unusual. Some mention of the kind of party would have made this click.

For instance... mentioning wine glasses, caviar, intelligent conversation... any of those would have been cues that a burly tattooed guy would be out of place. Know what I mean?

This leads neatly to my next observation: there is no imagery in this piece. The setting is incredibly minimal-- somewhere in Quebec at some woman's house. That's what we get. There are opportunities for description here, and descriptions of the party atmosphere and setting could really be effective if played against the horror afterward.

As I mentioned before, the pacing was sort of odd. The beginning is rapid action. The end is also a rapid flow of information. The middle is sort of... dull police procedures? Maybe it's in my mind, but I thought that it took forever to get through the motions of calling the police, them arriving, them saying no one could leave, the area is a crime scene, etc. You worked how people felt into this section a little, but you could have done it more. It would have made it more engaging to really let the reader feel the narrator's panic, shock, horror, anxiety... whatever it is she felt.

On a side note, you use passive voice a whole lot. It isn't wrong, but it isn't as strong as it could be. Examples (but far from all of them):

"A man was leaning against the fridge" -- Easy fix: "A man leaned against"
"(He)... was wearing a black T-shirt" -- He "wore a black T-shirt"
"I was trying to decide" -- "I tried to decide"

These mean exactly the same thing, but the active voice is stronger. It is more, well, action-oriented. Both are past tense... one is just shorter and has more punch.

Overall, I think that this is a great start to a story, but I don't feel like it's finished. The plot is here, and it is a pretty cool and interesting plot! Giving readers more details of the party and characters would make the piece feel more complete. Probably most important: Try to make the character feel something for Karen, even if it is just in relation to the poor narrator losing her friend. It is very rare for me to tell someone to pad out a story. I love short and to-the-point stories, but this one is a bit bare bones even for me. If you revise, I'd be happy to give it another read (and change my rating if appropriate).




My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .