Hello Blue_Memphis,
I saw this Short Story in the Pets genre. And since the February 2017 Power Reviewers Raid is a Love your Pet/Animal Awareness Raid I chose this Short Story to review.
Are you a Power Reviewer too? If not, and you do reviews, then you should join us. For each review, you do you get 250 to 1,000 or more GPs. And everyone loves to get GPs.
These are just my opinions. If you don’t agree with them, that’s your opinion. And it wrong.
Now for the good stuff: The Review.
Overall Impression: I just finished reading your Pets Short Story, The Tale of Red Worm, and I liked it a lot. It kept me interested in wanting to read it from beginning to end. Once I started reading it I couldn’t stop until I finished it. What I liked the best about this story is the way it was written on a day by day basis. But it reads more like a blog or an outline than a Short Story.
The Story Itself: This is a story about a stuffed toy that a man bought for his new puppy Penny from Petco. And what happened to it over the next week and a half. It started with a missing ear. Then the other ear went missing a few days later. That’s when this toy got renamed from Red Dog to Red Worm. After finding Red Dog, aka Red Worm, in a puddle a couple of times the man realized that wasn’t the toy for Penny. So, he went back to Petco to get a rawhide chew toy.
Where Your Location Is: The location for this story is the place where Penny, the man and his wife live. I’m not sure if it’s a house, an apartment, a duplex, or a townhouse. But it’s probably a how. There wasn’t any description for the location in this story. Personally, I try to have at least one solid location in all my stories. It all depends on what my Word Count limitations are as to how much detail I put into them. Sometimes it’s just the location itself. But usually, it’s a little bit, if not a lot, more than that.
Your Main Character: Whoever it updating these daily entries is the main character in this story. But Penny and his wife are also a big part of it. Some, if not a lot or most people would say that Penny can’t be a character because she is an animal. I disagree with that. To me, it’s whoever is in the story the most. And Penny is a big part of it too. In fact, the story surrounds her. The only thing I would have done differently is give the man and wife a name too. I know it’s not easy in a story like this. But it can be done. For example, ‘I bought’ could be ‘I, David, bought.’ And for the wife it could be, ‘my wife knows’ could be ‘my wife, Sarah, knows.’ Personally, I try to give all my characters a name. Especially, the main ones. I think that it makes them feel more real if they have a name. But that’s just the way that I like to write my stories.
How They Spoke to Me: There wasn’t any dialogue in this story. So, I’m not going to comment on that. But there are some Reviewers who still might. And there is at least one Reviewer who would consider this telling instead of showing. Personally, I disagree with that. I think that you can show with or without dialogue. It’s just how you write your paragraphs.
Any Last Thoughts: I’m going to be very honest with you. The only reason I am reviewing you today is because this is part of the February 2017 Power Reviewer Raid. Normally, I would be reviewing your blog. But that isn’t part of this raid. There are two reasons why I wanted to review your blog. One of them is I have decided to review blogs this year whenever I can. If you have a blog them, I'm going to review it.
The other reason why I’m doing your blog is because I have started a couple of blogs myself. 'The Truth About the Universe'
"The Truth About the Universe"
is here in my PureSciFi account. And 'What I Like to Write, What I Don't Like'
"What I Like to Write, What I Don't Like"
can be found in my PureSciFiPlus account. You can check them out if you want to.
I liked your Short Story a lot. Keep on writing.
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