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 Review #4169185 |
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| (3.5)  Welcome to WDC from "Newbie Welcome Wagon" ! Hi amyjo-Keeping it real and fun!  I just finished  "Invalid Item" and want to offer you my thoughts on it. This is only how I see your piece. Please accept what you agree with and find useful, and ignore what isn't. I'm reviewing as member of "SIMPLY POSITIVE GROUP" .I’m also British and while I've made every attempt to take the language differences into account one or two may sneak through.       My First Impressions: This has all the hall marks of something brilliant – but I don’t think it’s there yet. I know this was written for the 24 hours flash fiction challenge, so you had limited time to work on it. You’ve woven the three required prompts in very well and they didn’t feel jarring at all. The piece itself is very dark and macabre – something the prompts definitely lend themselves to. I’m surprised it’s so short – only 144 words when you had a 300 limit. I’m not saying you should use every word available, but I think you could’ve expanded this considerably. This would make it even more enjoyable. Suggestions for Improvement:  Internal thoughts – you had a couple of these in the story and they were buried in amongst the rest of the narrative. Personally I like to see a definite difference between normal narrative and a character’s internal thoughts; much like you would with dialogue. This can be easily achieved by changing the font style i.e. putting the thoughts in italics, or dropping them down a paragraph so they completely stand separate.I would be tempted to drop the dialogue to its own paragraph also to break the piece out a bit from an aesthetic point of view e.g. it will be easier for the reader to read. Short sentences – short sentences can really help to build the tension in a story as they act as its pulse; forcing the reader to read quicker. However, they shouldn’t be used too heavily as it can have a negative effect and can make the flow feel clipped. You’ve only used short sentence in this. Your saving grace is that even though the sentences are short you’ve managed to vary their length to give some variation. Show v tell – most of this story is told to the reader and it would benefit from showing us. Often the easiest way to do this is to add sensory information; “your eyes stung from the pungent smoke,” “the flames singed the hairs on your arms” "skin bubbled under the heat" “your breath caught in your lungs as the heat continued to smother you and sap your energy.” The final clause in sentence 7 doesn’t read that well. It doesn’t fit with the first half of the sentence as it’s incomplete i.e. each clause needs to be able to stand as a sentence on its own. Instead of “smothering in the heat” you could change it to “the heat was smothering.” This would read better as a separate sentence as it’s a different subject to the first clause. Final thoughts: Overall I enjoyed reading this piece of flash fiction. Although I wish there’d been more substance to it. Hopefully you'll find this of some use; its only meant to be just that - useful. Happy writing  ,Stevie   My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You responded to this review 10/24/2015 @ 4:01pm EDT