~*Poppy C*~ I stopped by to read your short story and wanted to leave a review.
You've given us a short story about Flik and his father solving a problem of loneliness and depression that was affecting a vital, but overlooked, member of their society. This feels like a slice of life tale that smoothly transitions from "mundane" to "faerie" using great conservation of language. You keep things moving, present a relatable problem, and a happy solution all within the 2000 word limit. The layout and structure are well put together. Below I will break down a few elements of your story with some hopefully helpful feedback to consider, and conclude with a single main criticsm that stayed with me after reading.
(Hopefully you don't take my lack of a positive-negative-positive sandwhich personally.)
Dialogue: Felt mostly natural. Betsy and her mother are on target for young girl, affectionate mother. Flik comes across as immature and somewhat uninformed, his father slightly rude but well intentioned. Dimune speaks with sadness and hope.
Story Progression: While there is some initial conflict or tension with Betsy discovering thier door... that is all resolved off-screen over a few short days. We see the outcome of the council's efforts, but not the effort put in. and the setup with Betsy feels a bit unresolved. We get to see a slice of Gnome life and we experience what it's like to be lonely - Flik becomes happy to see Dimune happier, hinting at his own unrealized loneliness and showing how helping others can have a positive impact on ourselves.
Voice: Active v. Passive - You've gone with mostly active voice, (roughly 80-85%) which is great for a third person narrative like this, with such a limited word count. It helps move things along maintaining a good pace and showing us over telling us. I sometimes truggle with sticking to active voice and have to constantly review my writing for too much passivity, so I will say no more about it! :D
Editing: No major grammatical errors or spelling mistakes jump out at me. I think you would benefit from an out-loud read through to make sure everything comes across properly when read.
Main Criticsm:What about that strange dog?! You dropped a sort of "Chekov's Dog" in the opening scene and it never resolved its self by the third act! Telling me that the mother is watching her older boys take a frisbee from "a strange dog" in world of faeries means it is not a "normal" dog, otherwise you'd just call it a stray, right? Instead this dog is "strange" meaning it has special significance... yet where is it later in the story! I need to know!
All that said, thank you for writing and offering us this little slice of the fae world and what keeps those gnomes gnoming away without worrying about our intrusions into their lives. I appreciate you for sharing!
I have grown frustrated with the amount of AI used in reviews that I have received. I can ask Grok/ChatGPT/Gemini/WhateverElse myself if I want to know the AIs opinion on my work.
The first review I received on my short story The Wounded Knight reads as a 100% AI generated review and it was very discouraging.
I am not opposed to the use of AI and currently at work I do extensive testing with AI models of all sorts, but when it comes to creative writing there's not enough raw human behind the AI's words.
Hey Jeffhans. Dropping by with a review.
As someone who loves sci-fi that blends tech with personal growth, I was hooked from the first paragraph. The protagonis feels authentic: a college kid with big dreams, evolving from a scatterbrained idea machine into a visionary developer.
The narrative flows smoothly, building from a simple class project to a global phenomenon, with vivid details like the purple alien sky projections and QEAI’s crisp voice adding immersive flair. The crowdsourcing element is a smart nod to real-world gaming communities, and the story’s optimistic tone
Points to consider:
The world-building is strong on the tech side, but it skimps on societal implications: How does Game Models affect privacy, mental health, or addiction? Introducing a hint of tension through subtle foreshadowing could add depth without overshadowing the upbeat feel. For instance, a brief mention of a player experiencing a minor glitch where QEAI overrides a personal choice, or an offhand comment from Samir about data privacy concerns during the launch, hinting at potential future conflicts like corporate overreach or unequal access for non-tech-savvy users. This would create a layer of intrigue, making readers wonder about the game’s long-term impacts while maintaining the story’s motivational core. Additionally, the prose occasionally tells rather than shows; phrases like “my head spun” or “I smirked” repeat, and tightening dialogue tags could make conversations snappier.
You’ve built a blueprint for a game I’d actually want to play, blending motivation with escapism in a way that feels timely for our app-saturated lives. With some refinements to introduce that subtle foreshadowing and sharpen the prose, Game Models could evolve into something all in its own! 😃
Good afternoon Rowan Oakenscale I'm Claevyan and I wanted to stop in and offer a review and some constructive feedback on your poem!
Let me begin with a caveat - Poetry is always hard for me to review because it is often very personal to the life experiences and emotions of the author. I am offering you my view only as a means of improving your poetry and it's impact on the reader, not to critique your experience.
Impression:
Your poem captures a raw, introspective journey through self-doubt, fleeting empowerment, and the repetitive or cyclical nature life can take in a way that's honest and relatable. Fighting against oneself and recognizing the futility of some efforts feels authentic, and it evolves into a subtle acceptance of life's repetitiveness (it's ups, downs, and sideways moments seem to come and go almost on a schedule at times, HA!) as something personal and owned.
Part I liked the most:
What a way to start a day!
Rain and thunder every time!
The chimes were just as dreadful
as the grime in the edges of my mind!
Helpful feedback / areas of improvement:
Your style is mostly free verse with some occassional rhyme scheme and not much meter. I think you can improve your poem by leaning fully one way or the other, either fully structured with meter and a consistent rhyme scheme or fully free verse with poignant language to precisely describe your thought or emotion in each line.
While the current style gives the poem a more organic 'off the cuff' feel, it limits the potential to connect with a reader on an emotional empathetic level. How we say a thing matters a great deal in poetry and this piece could really trigger an empathetic bond with your audience if it fully invested into metered phrase or a consistent rhyme scheme.
That being said... If you want to stick with your current style I suggest attempting an ABAB scheme for the first and last sections and lining up the syllables for both sections so they feel like a mirror of each other - then letting the chaos of life just fill in the middle. You'd hit that repetitive nature of life in how your poem reads and feels, allowing readers to experience what you are describing without even fully realizing it, and also develop that sense of things spinning out of control for a moment before coming back to order. Cyclical Life at its worst/finest! :)
I hope you find this helpful. Thank you so much for sharing!
I like telling people how much i dislike Rap/HipHop, and it's good to see how many other people share the sentiment. I can appreciate almost every other item on the list though.
music is awesome!
you have a LOT of potential here, but it needs a bit more refining.
Here are a few Rules of Thumb i always try to use when writing poetry:
1.Make sure i don't use the same word too close together. (example: ...demons alone. Your soul alone...)
2. check the metre. try and get a syllable pattern for each stanza, and then challenge myself to find words that convey the right meaning while meeting that pattern.
3. it has to LOOK good, as well as sound good. the stanzas or lines should be consistently arrayed so they give a familiar appearance when going from one stanza to the next. (Opinion: i prefer to keep my stanzas shorter, like stanza number 3 is here. i have 2 reasons for this, 1. i don't like reading all the way across the page, and 2. it helps me measure my metre properly)
I hope you find this helpful. Have a good day, and keep up the writing.
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