The Life and Times of a Household Pet - The Joys of Fall

This is through the eyes of a dog, as you can tell when you read it. It's the first of a series of unconnected little journals entries made by household pets. I'll be posting more soon.

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Today the sky is bright blue and the clouds are as fluffy and white as bunny tails. The trees are fiery orange and yellow. The brisk air pricks through my coat like shards of ice floating on the breeze, and the shouts of children ring through the small neighborhood where everyone knows everyone. But the best part of the day was the morning run. They’re happening more and more frequently now. I can tell my humans love this time just as much as I do. Sometimes, they don’t even mind if I bark at the mailman in the morning. They just laugh and bark back, and I don’t even mind that they’re saying my tongue is purple in my language.
Little Lizzie played fetch with me in the backyard. She can’t throw past her feet, but I pretended to become engrossed in capturing the stick and bringing it back the whole two inches. I think she enjoyed it. I made sure she took her nap by lying at the foot of her bed. She sleeps better when she knows I’m asleep, too.
I had to be punished, too. But it wasn’t my fault. Lola was slinking underneath the table just waiting for me to walk by, then she jumped out and hissed and swatted with her horribly sharp claws. I only told her to leave me alone very sternly so she’d understand she was not to do it again. But the humans didn’t understand. All they saw was a WOOF! and a scrambling cat.
During my time outside, though, I got a chance to talk to Louie. Louie’s the only nice cat I know. He’d never try to scare me, because he’s so old and fat. All he does is lounge on his fence all day long looking like a gray pincushion. But I’ve learned a thing or two from him. With a sigh he’ll greet me in a lazy, purring voice and say, “Ollie, there’s never been a finer day than this.”
“That’s right, Louie,” I’d reply, wagging my tail. I wish I could be as easy-going as Louie. His motto is “No worries and no strife”. Today he talked to me about the cool fall season.
“Everything just slows down, this time in the year,” he said. “The people take a look around at those bright trees and baby blue skies, and it pulls them back to earth. You know what I mean?”
I nodded my head politely, but sometimes I didn’t have a clue what Louie said.
Eventually, my owners let me back in, all anger forgotten. Luckily, I didn’t run into Lola again. And at dinner, they even gave me some chicken scraps that were left over. To top it all off, little Lizzie stroked behind my ears and pretended to read me her very own made-up bedtime story. I fell asleep right away, and that wasn’t pretending.

Hey Jojo

To be perfectly honest, I didn't get much out of reading this piece. You write a fair prose, and make few mistakes as far as perspective goes. That said, this didn't capture my attention at all. I'm going to try make a couple of points here about successfully pulling off a stunt like this, without losing the attention of the audience.

The first thing that I notice is that there is nothing special about this. There was no event that set this day apart from all the rest of the days in the year. Ultimately there was no reason to read on. You need to create one.

If you want to tell a story from the perspective of an animal, that is perfectly okay. Like all other stories, ultimately you need to remember that you are trying to communicate with a reader, though. Let's go through your options and take a look how you can begin to build that communication bridge between this dog and the reader.
Story: If you could successfully tell a story to us rather than mere ramblings, we might be drawn into your piece a lot more. You could, for example, add in a couple of thieves into the equation and have the dog either chase them, or run away. However you choose to do it, you need to make us ask the question: what happens next? If you don't we have no reason to read on and find out.
Humor: In my opinion, possibly the most effective way to make this story grip us readers is to throw in some humour. You can do this in several ways, but I think a pretty effective one would be to highlight some of the stereotypes about dogs and flaunt them as a narrator. If we see this as ridiculous enough, we do become interested and want to read more.
Quirks: A final way to make this work is to throw in a couple of quirks that make the reader want to work out what it is you are doing. For example give the dog some really human emotions that the reader might compare to someone who he knows. Or perhaps make him do something really typical like bite open some pillows and not know what the humans found problematic. Whatever you do must be interesting, though.

The above points are all to make the piece more interesting, but you'll still need the usual hook to pull us readers in. It's difficult enough to write from a dog's perspective as it is because we relate far more easily to humans.

Let's look at two other disconnected points now:
Point of View: As a first person narrator, it's your job to become the dog. (And if you think this is beneath your dignity, don't write from a dog's perspective. ) This means that an interaction like the one that follows is out of the question:

“Everything just slows down, this time in the year,” he said. “The people take a look around at those bright trees and baby blue skies, and it pulls them back to earth. You know what I mean?”

I nodded my head politely, but sometimes I didn’t have a clue what Louie said.

If you didn't know what Louie said, don't quote his words, because you could not interpret them. If you can magically understand humans' language, make this clear throughout the piece.

Tense: You start this in the present tense and switch to the past, and end when you're sleeping. Stick to one tense unless you have a tremendously good reason for switching. And if you do, make sure that the tense change makes sense.

I think those are the main points. When working on your next piece, keep the audience in mind a lot more. If you do that you'll probably have a solid story.

I hope the review helped

Have a great one!

Hiya! Here for a review.

This works as a normal, every day journal entry from maybe a writer who knows how to use language very well. But, for a dog and for fiction, I didn't find this worked. Fiction needs a conflict; it's not just a list of events that went on in the day. There needs to hint at some underlying theme, like other fiction diaries. I've seen a listing of daily events, but these events tied into something more: a war going on, a change in location and adapting to it, or a people being oppressed. This makes the diary entry turn into a story, not just a very realistic description of events.

As for the language, I found it cute how much the dog could use language but at the same time, it didn't feel right for the work. The tone was more simplistic so such perfect sentences didn't really mesh.

Overall, this is very realistic but as a diary that's not really the best thing. Throw in some conflict so this is a story.

PM me with questions.

~Rosey

I enjoyed this, though I agree with the others. It wouldn't hurt to add some conflict into it, so it's more exciting. It's extremely cute though, reminds me of something out of a children's book. That's all I've got, so much for a 'review'. o.O