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Review #4252371
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Review by Tiggy
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Rated: | (4.0)
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Hello ladeecaid,

my name is Tiggy and I am reviewing your story as a judge for "Short Shots: 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.


That was an intriguing take on the prompt! I liked how you used the image as a pivotal part of the story, and it was quite easy to visualise. The descriptions in the first paragraph set the scene very well and it was clear how the image inspired the setting. The main character was engaging and her story very quickly took a turn I hadn’t anticipated, especially since something positive had just happened to her. When the leader came up to her, I thought it was because he didn’t approve of his son’s choice, not to claim her for himself. Her reaction to it started a chain of events that ultimately worked out well for her, and throughout, her emotions came across quite well.

I wasn’t sure about the significance of the epilogue. The story seemed complete after the main part, and the only reason I could think for you to add the additional paragraphs was to bring the pool from the image prompt into it again. For that reason, it worked, but it didn’t really add to the plot.

One thing that jumped out at me was that there was no dialogue apart from one sentence that was spoken, right at the end. At first, I thought perhaps they had no speech, and the way they hooted and grunted at the beginning seemed to confirm that because no one seemed to say anything. This would work well with the fact that the story seemed to be set a long time ago and it seemed plausible that they couldn’t speak. It confused me a little when later on, the narrator said she asked her mother who told her everything that had happened. As they clearly could speak, I think you might want to include some dialogue, especially in the part where the narrator finds out what had happened. As it is, you’re telling the readers what the narrator learned, rather than letting the story develop in the dialogue which could include facial expressions, gestures, and convey the characters’ emotions much better than a simple retelling can.

The descriptions were good and I had no trouble imagining the scene. Especially the references to the prompt were nicely done. I only noticed one error, in this line,

The sound echoed echoed throughout the cave

where you wrote “echoed” twice. I did stumble a little about the way most of the sentences seemed to be quite short and followed the same structure. If you read the opening paragraph again, you might see what I mean. I would suggest varying the sentence length a little to make the details sound more interesting.

What I particularly enjoyed was that the story was so unique. I had never read a story in this kind of setting before and found it very interesting to imagine it. Now that the contest is over, I hope you will take the time to polish this tale a little because I think you have a good start here.



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