Reviewed by Claire
Surprises
Reviewed by Claire Surprises
When two young boys decide to play a practical joke on a friend of theirs, they find out sometimes jokes can back-fire.
The author of 'Surprises' shows a great sense of humour in this story. At first I thought it was going to be a story of warmth and friendship, but with the original and comical twist at the end, there was definitely more mischief and fun going on than 'warmth'.
The author, Clare Manson demonstrates a direct, pacey style in her language and has a good use of dialogue which gets us involved with the characters. I also liked the way she moved in time from the first paragraph to the second paragraph. It was an interesting way to move us ahead in time without explaining every boring detail in between.
She has also done something which some short story writers fail to do, and that is to jump staight into the story, without too much waffling description. It is a lesson to everyone that a good short story should begin either just before, just after, or in the middle of some point of excitement or action. So good on you Clare, for getting my attention in the story straight away. The one little thing I had a problem with was where, after the boys rang the girl on the phone, you wrote 'the next minute...' where really you should have written something like 'later', because unless the girl lived right next door, she couldn't possibly have been there in a minute. Just a technical thing, I know.
Good advice to all writers before sending your work anywhere, is to check your spelling and if you're not sure about a word, to look it up in the dictionary, or if you're lazy like me...use the spell-checker. Also, it's a good idea for EVERY (me too sometimes) writer out there to find out a bit more about punctuation. Especially when you need apostrophes to show something belongs to someone else. Example: the boys' friend. That's because you are talking about the friend that 'belongs' to the boys, so the apostrophe goes after the s. If it was just one boy who had a friend, it would be: the boy's friend.
I'm looking forward to seeing a longer piece from this writer next time.
Reviewed by © Claire
Read Surprises
Return to.... SSC
