Hi Fredrik !
Welcome to Writing.com and "Let's help each other grow- Closed" ! Here I am with a review for your story "Ava" .
These comments and suggestions are just my opinion. They are meant to help you write better and not to discourage you. You are the author and it's your choice whether you use my ideas or not.
Title: Your title works for the story. It could be better, but it could be worse. And while the summary is fine too, I think you might want to try something that will catch people's attention and describe the story better. Maybe something about being stuck up in the tower, and something that lets the reader know what time period this is. (I was a bit confused because at first I thought this was set in recent times, but later I realized that wasn't the case.) Here's my suggestion, just an example of the many creative things you could come up with for the summary: "Trapped on top of a water tower, can Ava and her dog escape their pursuer at the bottom?" If you don't like that idea, it's okay, but if you want to you can use it. Sorry, I don't usually get so long-winded on the title!
Plot: Your style of writing made this fun and easy to read through. Although most times I don't like when stories shift from one tense to another, I liked that you wrote the last part in present tense. It made the story seem more intense, and increased the suspense level. When I reached the end, I wanted to scream! I want more! Seriously, you better finish this or I'll come flying through my laptop to force you into writing more! Okay, so the last sentence wasn't true. But still, I feel like I need to keep reading. What happens next? You make me want to know.
Characters: Ava really came to life for me in this story. The language you use, even the figures of speech and descriptions make sense from a child's point of view. You never actually said her age, but I am picturing her as being about ten. I love the way you show that not everything is going okay, with the stuff about overhearing her parents, and the little hints about how they moved from their other village, how she's missing her friends, not having enough food, and stuff like that. You never actually say what's going on though, which makes me really curious. So like I said in the section above, what it all comes down to is I loved it and you need to write more! Curiosity killed the cat, you wouldn't want me to die because of you, would you??
Punctuation I didn't pick through the story to be sure everything was correct, but there were no glaring errors that I noticed.
Suggestions: Nope, nothing I haven't already said.
Things I Liked: Where do I start? I'll just copy a few of my favorite things. There weren’t any new cities, but some places weren’t there anymore, and other cities were abandoned. About the time I got to this sentence, I began to realize that this story is set in the future, and I like that this story shows how something (a war, etc.) happened. Dusk moves its graphite pencil over the landscape I loved this vivid personification of dusk. Kadie growls. My favorite part of my story is everything after the last *. You paint a picture with your words, I could feel the wind blowing and see the moon shining through the moving clouds. With all of that, you set up an eerie scene, making me ready for something to happen. When Kadie growls, it's the beginning of something bad, and I could feel it.
You may be a newbie to this site, but I can tell you're not new to writing! This story - this is the type of story I love. If this were the beginning of a book, I would sit down and read it right now even though I have other stuff I need to do. I can't praise it enough, so I'll stop now. Keep up the awesome stories!
Write on!
~Jali
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