Hello Earthenware_Haven,

my name is Tiggy and I am reviewing your story as a judge for "What a Character! : Official WDC Contest" . Thanks for entering! Please bear in mind that my comments and suggestions are only my opinion. Other reviewers might see it differently.


This was quite an intriguing tale. The main character came across well and you showed her views on faith and how they changed over time. I wasn’t sure if she was religious at all before the accident, but it seemed that the event kick-started her faith. At first, it seemed that she did the right thing in trying to find out more about different religions, but then she got dragged into one that turned out not to be good for her.

Up to this point, I thought the story flowed quite smoothly, but when you explained about Randy’s parents and their religious practices, I got a little lost. The part about the evil things they did,

Randy's parents prayed for televisions to blow up, they did. Cars to break down, they did. Lose jobs, it happened.

- did you mean that they did these things to their own son and daughter-in-law? I assume that this was why Randy had to leave town, but it seemed a bit far-fetched that he would abandon his wife and son and leave them with his parents. He doesn’t get a mention again after this and I think it would help the story to tie up this loose end and explain what happened to him.

The plot was interesting and the structure worked well to show the different stages the main character went through until she reached a point where she felt content with her chosen religion. I was missing some dialogue at times; I think it would work quite nicely to include some of the arguments that would have gone on between the couple and his parents, or the lady at the employment agency, but I understand that with a tight word count, that might not be possible. The descriptions were a little sparse and you told a lot of the story rather than showing it to the readers. You mentioned briefly what the main character looked like, but if you were to expand on this tale at all, it might be a good idea to include more general descriptions as well. Technically, the story was solid and I only noticed a couple of minor errors.

Overall, I think you have a great idea here. It didn’t totally work for me but that is most likely due to the limitation of the word count – if you had more room to play, I think the story would have been more rounded and the characters’ struggles would have come across better. But there is nothing stopping you from turning this into a longer work now that the contest is over, and I think you have a good foundation here.





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