This genre was one of my favourites as a young reader. You've made a good start with this opening sentence.
Here as a few things to consider:
- Keep in mind the vocabulary you are using is appropriate for your audience. If this piece is aimed at the 7-8 year old audience, the words "constituted" and "accustomed" may be a bit of a stretch. Keep this in mind as you continue with the story.
- Personalise the characters- "...without the investigator's kit..." could be turned into my investigator's kit. Also, the phrase "Mother cleaned my room again" seems distant.
- I'd love to hear about the latest article Julia had her eye on in the detective magazine... perhaps it could be relevant to her new case?
-I'm not sure if the paragraph that introduces her mother is necessary at this point. You could turn it into dialogue between the two characters? Perhaps, Julia could be a bit aloof about were she was going?
- "she saw a large gray dog" might be changed to "She had seen" (easy mistake to make:)
- The conflict was resolved quite quickly in the ending of this story. It would make the story more interesting if the solution was not as easy as calling the Humane Society. Perhaps there could be a bit more mystery to the dog. Who are the owners? Why was he tied to the tree? These are the type of questions any young detective would want to ask. I'd love to read about Julia struggling with the right way to resolve some of these and maybe in the end, she could have a new friend to sniff out her mysteries with.
Keep up the writing...this is a really fun genre and I think you have a great character to work with.
Thanks for sharing your children's story. Friendship is a really great subject that a lot of small children have challenges with. I really liked the idea of Charley wandering around the house trying to make friends with the things he meets. I would love to hear about what else he might have come across while wondering in his house and what reaction they had towards him.
When I read stories to my own children, I sometimes choose stories that have illustrations that help explain the story and give a little more detail as to what is going on. The really good stories often don't need really detailed illustrations because the words are so descriptive and fun. Try painting your words a little to bring out some of the fun in children's writing. Add some descriptive words. Tell us where the play date is happening. Show us what Charley and Stanley do together. Let the dialogue shine by using quotation marks (") and lots of spacing :)
There are some technical writing issues in this piece. (grammar,homophones,sentence structure) Please email me if you would like to try and work through some of this together - I'm sure I'll learn something too.
This really is a cute story that would be great for a really young audience. I hope there are more Charley and Stanley dragon/dinosaur? stories to come.
Cheers
Tursk
Printed from https://writing.com/main/profile/reviews/tursk
All Writing.Com images are copyrighted and may not be copied / modified in any way. All other brand names & trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
Generated in 0.07 seconds at 5:11am on Feb 24, 2025 via server WEBX1.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
