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- What did you think of your partner's work?
I enjoyed my partner's (@annathepanda23) work. I'm a sucker for action and talking animals, and her story had that right at the beginning.
- What sets it apart from what you usually read?
Her story was definitely different. In the beginning, the MC (Jamie) is running and I assume that he's a human. But a few sentences later, I learned that he was a rabbit. Then, in another twist, the rabbit MC starts to climb a tree and refers to his pursuer (who's a wolf) as a man.
I didn't know if the characters were humanoid animals or something else since there wasn't really a description of their appearance. Maybe Anna could slip in a word about it like in the scene where Jamie is throwing branches at the wolf. I would have loved to know whether Jamie had hands or paws, or something in between. A clue that would have led me to know more about his appearance.
Anna did a wonderful job of using the action scene to delve into the MC's personality. He had grit and determination to outrun and escape the wolf, but when he heard someone calling for help, he stopped and went to aid the person, showing compassion even at the expense of his own safety. The injured person, in the end, turned out to be a female wolf. In spite of that fact, Jamie took the girl back to his burrow.
This all happened in roughly one thousand words and shows Anna's good sense of word choice.
The descriptions were short and to the point, as it should be in an action scene. Her writing is efficient and didn't meander into wordiness.
On things that could be improved, since it was a draft, I saw some grammatical mistakes. A simple edit would take care of it, and it wasn't a major issue when I read her work. Also, in the beginning, the wolf's dialogue is in the same paragraph as the MC's thoughts. This should be separated.
- As an author, what did reading a fellow writer's work teach you about the art of writing?
Her work was a wonderful reminder that simple, short sentences can still have the same impact as long ones. Reading her work, my take away for my own writing is to revise my sentences and try to be as direct as possible in as few words as possible.
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Inner Reflections: June Edition
Non-FictionIn celebration of our one month anniversary, authors engaged in a stimulating Readathon and reviewed the works their partners had worked on in the month of June. The aim of the Readathon was not to exchange critiques or votes. Its purpose was to exp...
