Hello IntricateMind!

I'm offering this review because you're a new member. Please remember that everybody has different tastes. This critique is the opinion of only one person and offered in the spirit of constructive criticism with a hope that it will prove useful if you decide to further develop or edit your poem.

What I liked.

This is a truly inspirational story and you use very clear and evocative language. It is vivid and heart-warming. Your narration is fast paced and very enjoyable. You clearly have a talent for writing inspirational anecdotes.

What I feel may need improvement.

These are a few suggestions. Though this is a truly well written short story, there are several things that could easily be changed to increase both to increase clarity and impact without actually changing word count or deviating from the truth.

First, your title and introduction. Both acurately describe the story to come. However, both sound exactly like a standard Christian, evangelical tale designed to show how our Saviour redeemed us and brought us to the light. While I would personally have been happy to read such an anecdote, I suspect many wouldn't read this for that reason. Try to use a title and brief description that makes it more obvious that this is a story about your school experience of bullying.

NAMES. It's in our nature to care more about people if we know them by name. If you want to engage your readers better and get them to care about you and what happens to you then you need to get the name of the protagonist and your saviour in rather than leaving those anonymous. Many writing this kind of story "change the names of people to protect the innocent and not so innocent" but still use names because of their emotional impact.

Names are typically injected into first person narrative through dialogue. In this story, the protagonist can be named simply by having the bullies taunt her, eg.

The other girls would crowd around me, push me into a corner of the playground and chant, "Smelly Nelly, dirty belly, you're so smelly."

Such dialogue also clarifies a few things, such as the direction and degree of psychological bullying. From a narrative viewpoint, more dialogue would help transform your story from telling to showing prose. Showing is generally, though not always, preferred to telling.

Gender is also important. It's never expressed what the gender of the protagonist, though one mention about midway through of the bullies being girls leads me to suspect she's female. However, this could be clarified in the very beginning where you've written: "My glasses, my clothes, they even..." If instead you wrote "my glasses, my patched dress" you'd immediately show both a gender and hint at a reason for bullying, ie. if the dress is patched, it implies she's poorer than the other kids. Also, such language is more concrete, less abstract than a word like "clothes". When writing, always attempt to use the most concrete word possible as this gives you more active and engaging narrative, eg. use "whisper" instead of "speak quietly", "sprint" rather than "run quickly", "Labrador" rather than "dog", "gelding" rather than "horse". Such word choices are simply less abstract and so give the reader a clearer idea what's happening so that the picture that enters their mind during the process of suspension of disbelief is what you intend and also much more vivid and real.

Finally, watch out for simple grammar and punctuation issues. On multiple occasions, you have i where you should have I.

Conclusion.

This is a really awesome anecdote that could be much more powerful with only a little tweaking.

Thank you for sharing your poem with me. Since you're a new member of this community, please check out "Invalid Item" We want to award the best new authors on this site, so please enter either a poem or a short story. Read the rules before posting an entry.

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Best wishes,

Bob



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