Hello FuryStrife!

I'm here to review your short story "Gurlock Study Mishaps-C and B series #4"  as an official judge for "Newbies ONLY Short Story & Poem Contest" . Thank you for entering!

Approaching this story, I'm searching for specific elements that I shall address under separate headers.



Hook — does your opening have something that grabs my attention and makes me want to read on?


Fantastic opening. You've introduced your protagonist, set the scene, and given us the best hook ever!

The only issue I had was that with the "she must look really dumb with the clumps of fur stuck together and sticking" I was left wondering what kind of creature the protagonist is. Not knowing what species the protagonist is or what she looks like kinda distracts from the story.

Characters — do they feel like real people?


I really like the protagonist's personality, and her friend's, but there's a big issue of them not being human and yet also not being adequately described somehow to the reader. We've no idea if they look like monkeys, cats or kangaroos.

Ideally, to engage your reader, they should be able to visualise the scene, what's happening. There's a notion in creative writing of a learning curve. Whenever a reader begins reading a story, there's a learning curve they must climb. What they must learn are the characters (name, age, gender, species, culture, religion, interests, wants) the setting (future, past, foreign, home, fantasy, sci-fi, mountains, oceans etc etc) and the initial plot set up. The more different from their home experiences the setting and characters are, the steeper the learning curve. In a short story, you don't have much time to introduce your readers to things. So, here, I'd strongly recommend you make the protagonists human. This is because when the readers begin your story, they'll automatically assume that the protagonist is human unless told otherwise. When you mentioned fur, I began to suspect that the protagonist wasn't human, but it wasn't clear. This distracted me from the story, prevented me getting immersed. CAn you follow my logic?

That's why a lot of YA fantasy is set in high schools - readers can easily visualise that setting so there's a very low learning curve at the beginning of the story.

Plot — does your story contain a clear plot with a strong resolution?


Although your plot gets a bit fuzzy in the centre when the bombs are being thrown around, overall it's good. I especially liked your humerous resolution. Nice!

Pace — does your story feel like it's going somewhere?


Most of the story is nicely paced. However, it gets a bit too fast toward the end when they're running out of the 'caves', imho.

Language and voice — can a reader feel your story?


You have a strong and clear voice, which is great. Here are a few notes for your consideration:

she was about to be sacrificed to some lizard god in some god forsaken cave in the middle of nowhere. - fantastic line, but godforsaken is a compound word, believe it or not

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/godforsaken

“Let’s go study the Gurlocks, she said. It’ll be fun, she said.” - when you have speech within speech, you must put the inner speech into alternative speech marks, ie. if you follow the British convention of 'speech' for speech, then inner speech is punctuated, "speech", but if you follow US style, then "speech" will have inner speech punctuated 'speech'. Using your sentence: “'Let’s go study the Gurlocks,' she said. 'It’ll be fun,' she said.”

I’m never going on another of Cynthia’s stupid experiments.” - expeditions might be a better word.

Many of the Gurlocks made a ring around the fire and began flailing around - try to avoid using general terms like 'many' because it's quite abstract and doesn't create a concrete image in the reader's mind. Be more precise, like "A dozen Gurlocks". Also, watch out for use of 'began' or 'started to'. These are stall words that don't add much to narrative other than increased word count.

It was Cynthia…riding one of the Gurlocks? -> Was that Cynthia…riding one of the Gurlocks?

and roared before bolting over to where Bec was in the center of the cave. - up until this point, in the centre of the story, I had NO IDEA they were inside a cave, lol.

…and Bec shielded her eyes against the blinding sun as they burst into the open. - there's a notion that it's better to present narrative in strict chronological order as that creates better temporal flow adding to the suspension of disbelief you're attempting to create, ie. better engaging the reader. Avoid stating anything that forces the reader mentally backward in time, even just within a sentence. So, here, for example: …and as they burst into the open, Bec shielded her eyes against the blinding sun. - see how that's better chronological flow?

I hear the Creones like to bite all their victim’s fingers off first. - victims' - when a plural noun is possessive, the apostrophe comes after the s. However, it's also considered okay to write - victims's. Personally, I don't like the second option, but don't tell anybody they're wrong when they opt to use it.

Settings — have you grounded this reader in 'real' scenes?


You have a really interesting setting, but you leave things a bit late to ground the reader. If there's an element of your setting that's important to your story plot development then it needs to be foreshadowed before it becomes important. 90% of this story is set within a "cave", but I didn't even know they were inside a cave until halfway through. Then suddenly there's tunnels, but we knew nothing about them until the protagonist needed them. Then there's horses waiting, and we didn't know until they were needed by the protagonist. Ground the reader as early as possible.

Themes — is this reader blown away by mind-blowing philosophy or originality?


I loved the joke that is your core premise, and also the cross cultural ideas.

Conclusion — a summary of how this reader personally felt about your story.


I really like your story, but you really need to bring in setting details before they become important and also to reassess how you present your protagonist and her friend to the reader. At the moment, I simply cannot visualise what she is.

Thank you for entering this round of the contest. If you're still within your first six months of membership, I hope you'll enter this month's round, too!

If you haven't already joined a reviewing group, please consider becoming a member of Simply Positive.

FORUM

Simply Positive Review Forum   (E) A group dedicated to spreading honesty and positivity. #1384147 by Simply Positive

Good luck with the contest.

Best wishes,

Bob





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