Reviews and recommendation

Short Stories

By ScribbleYourThoughts

This is my second review for a short stories book. 

I kinda loved it, I have to say I'm a fan of short stories. 

I'll be shorter on "why to read it" because it is my second review to the author. Therefore, I think they would be more interested in receiving advice rather than visibility. 

Still, it's a great book. 10/10 would recommend. 

Positive notes:

1. Writing

It's endearing, fast, generally quite fluent. A pleasure to read.

2. Variety

Again, the good thing with short stoires is the variety, the stories in the book space from romance to drama, to fantasy. There's one for everyone.

Neutral notes: 

1. Too much

These short stories look like a chapter out of a book.

Traditionally, though, they are, indeed, smaller stories. A little background, describe the habitat, what happens? How does it ends? That's it. A lot of your stories seems to try to concentrate a lot of background at the heading, narrate the part you wanted to actually write, fade out.

It's a choice of style, it's not too disturbing to the reader. But if you wanted to challenge yourself with short stories, this isn't the way, that's it.

Negative notes

1. First chapter

While the others are built pretty well, with an intro or at least a background, I fear the first chapter is... too much.

Obviously a show of good writing, but the point is: the breakup hits hard when you know the story. Your talent to describe his emotions is admirable, but it's hard for the reader to immedesimate with the story and care about it.

My advice would be to keep the chapter but move it to another point of the book, maybe place a more interactive chapter as your first (like Yara's one? Maybe?)

2. Dialogues.

As a screenwriter, your dialogues are wayyy to cinematic. There is an harsh stereotype for young screenwriters in film schools that say that most of them learns to write dialogue by watching movies instead of talking to an actual person. It's a cruel approximation, but it suits well.

Cinema required conversations to be shorter, creating a new type of dialogue that inspired from reality. Inspiring yourself from cinema/books makes your dialogues be even shorter, feeling unnatural.

When writing dialogues, consider always:

1. Intention (why are they talking? Is there something one have to say to the other? Why is the other person listening?)

2. Thoughts (what are they thinking?)

3. What they say.

Start with the first, form a thought, speak. 

IN GENERAL: 

I personally preferred this one to the other book! I think you've talent but may still be a bit lacking on techniques. Don't esitate to write to me, I love reading your books ;)