Short Story Reviews

The character that stood out in the stories we read, for me, would have to be, Tess, who got stoned in “The Lottery.” This is because her personality shifted so greatly in a split second and she truly showed what humankind can act like. She never protested to the lottery itself, but that the way they performed it that particular time was unfair. She was at first, joking around and seemed all for the lottery. She gave no indication of not wanting the lottery, even when her name was chosen and she was being stoned, she merely protested to the fact her name specifically was pulled. She represents humankind’s sheep-like nature and the way she’s portrayed casts a creepy depiction of what humans are.The aspect I found most difficult of story writing was both time constraints and thinking of a middle section. It’s easy to think of a scenario, a conflict, and even a resolution. It’s easy to think up characters and character traits. But finding out how the characters get to the resolution in a short time frame, both for me as the writer, and for the characters, as there was a page restriction of three pages maximum, is difficult. I found, also, that the fact I had less time to think about the story, and my characters, the less time I had to set up a solid back story for each of them. I had a vague story for them both and this made dialogue harder, because without their background it’s hard to understand how they would talk. Also, it was hard, because of time and the relevancy to the actual plot of the story, to describe the backstories of the characters in my actual story without going too off-topic. I think this made the story’s dialogue seem a bit out of place for the reader as well.

I enjoy short stories with some sort of action or suspense to them. I enjoy any sort of drama in a short story, so long as it’s not relationship drama. I don’t like stories that focus on romance or family drama, I would much prefer a story about coping with death or something much more serious than relationship issues. I enjoy plot twists in my stories the most, though. A sudden jarring plot twist that has me re-reading the same line over and over to try and comprehend what exactly just side-swiped me is the best feeling. I think this is perhaps why I loved “The Fall of the house of Usher” so much. It had a very sudden realisation that left me gawking at the book for many minutes, literally.

What I like about my short story is the plot and the mood the setting creates. I like my characters as well, but they’re portrayal could use work, as well as dialogue, definitely. My setting, though, in my mind, works well with the situation and helps to show how depressed Faith is and perhaps her hatred to the world. It shows that she gave up on everything and secluded herself from everything and everyone and sort of gave up. I liked my characters, but they could use a bit of work. I found it hard writing for Finn because he doesn’t fit the stereotype of young boy. He’s been living on the street and has picked up things from the gang he is in. He had to take care of his mother when she was alive, and so he has a sense of responsibility that other kids his age really don’t.  This made him a sort of hard character to wrap my mind around at times. How he would react to certain things was not how a normal eight-year-old would, and so I possibly made it difficult for myself.