As far as first impressions go, I do have to be honest and admit that, just based upon the grammatical errors in the title and summary, I was a little hesitant to read this story, if only because I feel that if there are grammatical errors in such a small space as the summary page, the story itself is definitely going to be cluttered with them as well. I did notice that you corrected the grammatical error in the title, but there are still two noticeable ones in the single-sentence summary. I do like the colors in the layout and how the layout is attractive without being distracting for me as a reader. I also liked how you kept it simple with the summary, though I have to admit that your summary did pretty much give away the major plotline of the piece.
Moving on to the actual content of the story, I did really enjoy the concept of the story and the little aspects of having a child with a terminal illness that you wove into the piece. I also admired how you chose to tell the story from the father’s perspective, just because that’s a perspective that’s rarely explored in online fiction. Since the majority of the members on this site are female, it would probably be much easier to relate to and tell it from the mother’s perspective, so I’m glad that you didn’t…fall into that trap, I guess? I also liked how, even though the majority of this piece was very much gloomy, that you did try to weave in some positive moments that the family had together.
As far as constructive criticism goes, I’ll reiterate that there were numerous grammatical errors throughout the content of the piece. As much as I hate to harp on that, it does make the actual story difficult to read. I would suggest getting a beta reader or an editor to help you out with that. I also found that the flow of this story was a little dry. The majority of the story is told through the father’s eyes as if he’s narrating the story to the reader, but there’s never a chance for the reader to experience the story, the situation, and the emotions involved on their own. To be a little cliché, there’s too much telling and not enough showing in this piece. As I was reading this, I also got the impression that you hadn’t done a ton of research on childhood leukemia because this story reads as if the little girl was diagnosed with leukemia (of which there are many different types of leukemia, the most prominent in children would be acute lymphocytic leukemia) and then just slowly withered away, when realistically, childhood leukemia has a very high cure rate.
Overall, I thought this was a great read, and I could definitely tell that you put a lot of effort into writing something that was outside of your comfort zone. Thanks for entering
April 3rd, 2013 at 04:36pm
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Moving on to the actual content of the story, I did really enjoy the concept of the story and the little aspects of having a child with a terminal illness that you wove into the piece. I also admired how you chose to tell the story from the father’s perspective, just because that’s a perspective that’s rarely explored in online fiction. Since the majority of the members on this site are female, it would probably be much easier to relate to and tell it from the mother’s perspective, so I’m glad that you didn’t…fall into that trap, I guess? I also liked how, even though the majority of this piece was very much gloomy, that you did try to weave in some positive moments that the family had together.
As far as constructive criticism goes, I’ll reiterate that there were numerous grammatical errors throughout the content of the piece. As much as I hate to harp on that, it does make the actual story difficult to read. I would suggest getting a beta reader or an editor to help you out with that. I also found that the flow of this story was a little dry. The majority of the story is told through the father’s eyes as if he’s narrating the story to the reader, but there’s never a chance for the reader to experience the story, the situation, and the emotions involved on their own. To be a little cliché, there’s too much telling and not enough showing in this piece. As I was reading this, I also got the impression that you hadn’t done a ton of research on childhood leukemia because this story reads as if the little girl was diagnosed with leukemia (of which there are many different types of leukemia, the most prominent in children would be acute lymphocytic leukemia) and then just slowly withered away, when realistically, childhood leukemia has a very high cure rate.
Overall, I thought this was a great read, and I could definitely tell that you put a lot of effort into writing something that was outside of your comfort zone. Thanks for entering