Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Gnome: A Sleepover and Death

Title: A Sleepover and Death

Author: Addison-AJ

Reviewer: GnomeMercy

Since this is a short story, I won't be scoring it, but simply giving you the respective feedback!

Summary: 

I chose not to judge your summary, mostly because it's just an excerpt. I think it did a really good job of showing what the idea of this story was and let the reader get a snippet of what's to come. Since it's an excerpt, perhaps put the entire thing in quotation marks? It's just so people know it's from the story and not actually a summary. Also, love the quote you used!

Grammar: 

There weren't any typos and such in your story, so congratulations! It was quite clean. However, I did notice that about halfway through chapter 2 you switched tenses. It started to shift into the present tense. Since the main character dies at the end, it makes more sense for it to be in the present tense than past, since she dies. Good job otherwise though!

Characters: 

Why does Amber kill her friends? Why are Ivy and Bianca acting strange? These and a lot of other questions weren't answered in your story, and it's imperative that you do so. I do think it can be interesting to have some loose ends, but that's usually things like 'who was the killer' instead of 'why did she do it'. Try to show why Amber killed her friends, and by the others were acting strange. Did they know what was going to happen? If so, why were they surprised when it did?

Also, since this is a short story, try to limit the number of characters you have. It can get very confusing to remember all of their names in such a short time. 

Writing: 

Showing and telling is especially hard for short stories, and it kind of has different rules. Since you have a limited amount of words, it's hard to show a lot of things. However, I do think that some things need to be shown. For example, her emotions would've been more realistic shown instead of told. I also recommend adding some more description so we can get a feel for how her house looks.

Plot: 

While I do think you have an interesting plot, and that the ending was really interesting, it did feel really rushed. It would've been much more interesting if the sleepover was described in more detail as if it was completely normal. She could talk about what they did and stuff instead of skipping over it. Then, when the murders begin, you can also go into more detail. Why didn't they begin at the start of the sleepover? Why haven't her parents come home from their errand yet? Try and answer some of these questions so that we get more answers, as right now we as an audience don't know much. Overall, it felt very quick to me and we didn't get to feel anything for the characters before they died. I know it's a short story, so perhaps the latter isn't too mandatory, but you definitely need to answer those questions.

OVERALL: 

While you definitely had an interesting premise (though not exactly the most original), I did think it was rushed and could've been more longer. Also make sure to keep your tenses consistent, and make sure to tie up everything well before ending the story.