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Review by Sunshine: Simple Wish

Review by Sunshine: Simple Wish

Author: Summersprit

Summary: 3.5/5

Your summary is quite intriguing! There are some great things happening. I like the snappiness, and the almost cinematic way all the characters are introduced. I like that it streamlines towards the protagonist, and ends quite ambiguously. There are definitely some things, grammatically, that need work because they disrupted the fluency of this otherwise good summary.

Firstly, it should be 'losing' instead of 'loosing'. And without is one word, so it shouldn't be written as 'with out'. And your tense shifts a bit, which broke the flow of the story. For example:

"She wanted to leave the house..." [wanted = past tense]

"... when all she wants is to hide..." [wants = present tense]

I suggest going back and revising those little errors, as well as picking a single tense to stick with. 

Grammar: 2/5

Okay, punctuation definitely needs work. Sometimes, full-stops were used instead of commas, other times commas were used where full-stops were necessary, and sometimes you were just missing punctuation altogether. I recommend reading the story aloud and seeing where you pause for the story to make sense. If it's a short pause, use a comma. If it's a longer pause, consider using a stronger type of punctuation.

Apart from punctuation, there were lots of little errors scattered throughout the work. There were missing quotation marks, incorrect uses of semicolon, and sometimes there were words unnecessarily repeated twice.

I found most errors revolved around the dialogue. Firstly, whenever you do have dialogue, you need to ensure that whenever a new character speaks, it starts on a new paragraph. No two characters should share a paragraph for their dialogue. For example:

"Morning," the male voice said from behind the paper. "A good day to you," I said as I tried to gain my breath.

That above example is incorrect, because two characters speak but they don't have separate paragraphs. It should be:

"Morning," the male voice said from behind the paper.

"A good day to you," I said as I tried to gain my breath.

Another thing is the punctuation before the closing inverted commas in dialogue. If dialogue is followed by a verbal tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"Breakfast is in the kitchen." She said.

That is incorrect. Since the 'she said' is a verbal tag and directly refers to the dialogue, it should be:

"Breakfast is in the kitchen," she said. 

Character Building: 2.5/5

So, this is a short story with only one chapter that centres a girl on her first day of school. It's also told from first person, so I wish you have us more of Trisha! Her thoughts, her feelings – and since it is in first person, you have the opportunity to really engage with readers and make your narrative voice conversational. You can even relate things to physiology – is her gut churning because she's nervous?

Also, I feel like I wasn't connecting with Trisha. I think it's because you didn't really give us much of her thoughts or feelings. As the reader, I want to know why she does what she does – why does she run away from Huey? What is the thought process behind it? What is she thinking as she hears his voice?

You've also introduced a lot of characters for a story that's quite short. There was a lot of name-dropping, and because it the clumped dialogue, all their voices felt muddled and I struggled to distinguish each character. You need to flesh out each character a bit more, and if you're going to have a character, make sure they provide purpose in the story. Do they have an impact on the overall plot? If not, don't include them.

For example, these are your characters: Trisha, Brenda, their mother, their father, Harper, Mrs Jensen, Huey, the girl in the bathroom, Ms Berken and Lilac (I apologise if I missed any). That's a total of ten characters in one chapter. If you're going to introduce so many, you need to slow down the pace, flesh them out, and make sure they serve purpose to the story. 

Writing Style: 2.5/5

Some good things happening here! I love your descriptions of settings, and the dialogue is realistic and often interesting to read. But I think you could really flesh out some elements of the writing.

For example, don't just say beeeeeeeeeeep or ringggggggg to describe the sounds of alarms or bells. Show it to us by describing what it sounds like. Is it a sharp, thin squeal? Perhaps it's like a blaring siren sharp enough to pierce the ears? Use figurative language – metaphor, simile and personification – to help you here.

And slow down the pace. The story feels like a recounting of events, but you need to add depth to it. Introduce those characters fluently, add some flowery language to the writing, and keep everything purposeful. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 2.5/5

This story is quite sweet. First days of school are always daunting, and I'm glad Trisha could have a laugh by the end. I wish we saw more of a progression and development of character, since it almost felt like a rite of passage/coming of age story.

But I am a little confused. There was a disconnect between the summary and the story itself. I just don't feel like the summary translated well into the story. We don't learn any backstory from Trisha, and the drama that I felt in the summary just wasn't quite there in the story.

Also, a lot of the times, the writing wasn't purposeful and unnecessarily drawn out. For example:

"I walked to the door. I opened it and walked out barefoot. I walked down a door a few feet away. I opened the door to be met with a bold black wall."

Can you see how repetitive it is? And how easily it can be cut down into a simple sentence? It can simply be:

"I walked out of the room, passing through door after door, until I was met with a black wall."

Not my best example, but see how it uses a different sentence structure and also gets across the same message in fewer words?

Another example:

"I quickly ran to the bathroom faster than the speed of light."

The word 'quickly' is rather redundant, because you're already saying that she's moving faster than the speed of light. So, I encourage you to go back and polish your writing to keep it purposeful and keep the story clear. 

OVERALL SCORE: 13/25

Overall, some adorable little moments in your story! Just work on grammar and keeping the story purposeful, and you'll be good to go. I hope this review helps!