Whats Beyond the Sea?

Hallå!

This was cute! I feel like it'd make a really good children's book, especially if it had some illustrations to accompany it. It reminded me of stories I'd read during my childhood. The nostalgia factor was a nice bonus.

I thought the simplistic writing style worked nicely... for a children's book. However, if you were intending this for an older audience (say, teens/young adults), then a rewrite would be needed to make it more sophisticated. That said, there's nothing wrong with children's stories and this is a good one. It's like a futuristic take on a classic fairy tale, and I dug it. Plus, that last line was pretty perfect. It packed a surprising emotional wallop, and it was a great "full circle" way to end the story.

That said, there were some problems. My biggest issue with the piece was that the relationship between the robot and the child—the emotional core of the story—wasn't fleshed out more fully. I understand it's a short story and there are limitations, but even still, we only ever see the robot and child meet and then say goodbye. You mention they "had spent many nights on the shoreline" together rather suddenly—in fact, I was a bit surprised, since there'd been no indication their meetings would become a regular thing and we'd never even witnessed a second encounter between them at that point. I would've liked it if you'd shown at least one additional exchange between the kid and the robot. Not a summary, either, but an actual, detailed encounter. That would've made the ending hit home even harder. Basically, I wanted to be more invested in these characters than I was. I liked them, I found them interesting, but I wished they were explored more, and specifically, I wished their relationship had been explored more.

There was also—as mentioned by the previous reviewers—a good amount of punctuation mistakes. "What's" has an apostrophe. So, too, does the word "that's," as in "that is," and the word "it's," as in "it is." Apostrophes are your friend. Don't fear them.

Now onto some specific critiques:

There was once a robot that worked in a house atop a flowery hill overlooking a shoreline.

Taking every moment to look up at the water, sometimes, spending entire nights sitting along the quiet shoreline, the water almost glowing from the moon's light, pondering the question

quietly running down the flowery hillside.

“You know, we're not supposed to be up this late”.

you can cross the sea with one of these,” Said the child.

Like the ones, we have in the shed.

Hello! Before I begin this review, I would like to say that I really loved this concept! It was so pure and creative and I just really liked it.

Now onto the review:

First of all, incorrect grammar and punctuation is something I saw a lot. For example, the second time the robot asks his question, you wrote, "Whats beyond the sea?" You should have written it as, "What('s) beyond the sea?" This was confusing, because you wrote it correctly the first time, but then you stopped doing it? You probably just got into THE ZONE (happens to me all the time) and forgot.

Another thing that I noticed was your writing style in this piece. It was very fairytale-esque, which is fine, but at certain points it weakens the plot of the story. For example, the relationship with the child and robot was one of my favorite parts; however, because the writing was so simplistic, the relationship was also simplified where I felt it could have been stronger with more detail. I would have loved for you to show us how the child slowly came to befriend the robot, rather than mentioning it at the end. It's the same thing with the homeowners part. This part was really cool to me-I thought you had a very good idea, but I felt like the more simple style weakened that part of the story. It's not that I don't believe that simple styles can't work, I just felt that more detail was needed in order to really strengthen the best parts of your story. This could also be done by showing rather than telling.

Here's what I liked about this story:

-the dialogue between the child and robot
-the concept
-the ending line was ridiculously sad and sweet
-the repetition of the robot's question

Overall, I did really enjoy this story. It's such a sweet concept and it really brightened my day with it's creativity. I hope to see more of your work in the future! Keep writing!

Radrook here a once again to offer some suggestions.
Apologies if i offend. It isn’t my intention.
Please feel full free to cast aside all things you deem not helpful.
But if you do be sure its true by being extra careful.

That having been said:


Thanks for sharing this poem about a machine and a child who are curious of what lies beyond a sea horizon. I like the way that the story emphasizes the total isolation of the family. It makes the story seem mysteriously enigmatic and inspires a host of conjectures on how they got there and the reason why. Are they stranded on an extraterrestrial planet. Surely if they were on Earth they would know what lies beyond in the direction of that horizon. So their lack of knowledge in itself demands that the reader connect the dots and fill the gaps in a rather fantastical or sci-fi sort of way. That’s what gives the story its charm.

Good Read! Looking forward to reading more of your work!

Suggestions

There is one child mention but the pronoun “they” is used. Actually, both children and child are used and this causes confusion.

When the child reached the shoreline, they sat down next to the machine.

[When the child reached the shoreline, [he or she] sat[]next to the machine.]

Phrase Repetition
the child = 14 times

Reducing the number of times the phrase is used can be done by using pronouns instead.


. . . . a robot that worked . . . .
[A brief description of what exactly the robot is working at would be nice.]

Day and night, the robot would contemplate the question. Taking every moment to look up at the water, sometimes, spending entire nights sitting along the quiet shoreline, the water almost glowing from the moon's light, pondering the question

[Day and night, the robot would contemplate the question as it gazed at the moonlit sea[:]]

. . . . atop a flowery hill . . . .
[. . . . atop a grassy, white-rosed hill?]

Being specific helps visualization.
--------------------------------------------------------

Here are some facts about me so hopefully you can see where the opinions of this review come from. I'm a millennial living in the PHL. I don't read YA fiction anymore, but I mainly read some literature meant for adults, light novels from Japan, comics and modern Philippine literature. I'm hard into anime culture. I've reviewed a good deal in the two years I've been in the site, and I've read a good deal of books about how art works, so I know a little more about how the medium works than the newbie writer. My favorite genres are horror and comedy.

Also, I read this story twice so far, stalked your page and checked the few forum posts you had. It's only to see what kind of writer you are, not for anything malicious, okay?

Let's get it on. I observed that the plot of this thing is really simple, like a fable easy enough to memorize to be passed on to the next generation. The story's written in a relatively simple style. Nothing flashy or gimmicky like the modern literature we have, but it's more flowery than the classic fables. It's direct and objective, but with a little more details to flavor the reading experience.

While it's a cool artistic decision, the simpler writing style is actually one of the main weaknesses of this story.

It's not bad if the writing style isn't flashy as long as the contents of the story are compelling and resonant enough to maintain the reader's interest until the end. The problem is it's not compelling or resonant to me. It's cool because shows an important part of the human spirit through themes of curiosity and desire to explore. I thought the ending line was really badass too. But I don't really relate to the robot or the boy. I haven't gone through or witnessed a situation like in the story, so the story got nothing to pull my heartstrings with.

So yeah, people like me won't resonate with this story. That's a weakness of this story. If you want to appeal to more people, you can rewrite this story with a whole lot of drama and tension injected into the narration, but hey, that's your call.

Also, you got problems with punctuation. Misplaced commas, unclosed quotation marks, missing apostrophes and periods, wrong punctuation within and without quotation marks, those were the ones I could find. You should clean them up always, because it really takes the reader out of the immersion. You had me sold hard at first, until I saw the missing period in the fourth paragraph.

You can research it yourself, or you can get some help from someone else if you don't have the resources. I'm open for that if you want. I got lots of free time these days. If you want, I can also point out the specific errors in grammar or spelling. I just didn't say to keep the review shorter.

For some strange reason you're completely clean in the other aspects of grammar, I think. Good job on that.

That's all I could find on it. It's a really small story, so there isn't as much for me to find anyway. I hope I helped in this review. I also hope that this review keeps you motivated to keep on writing, 'cause that would be cool as helllll. Sorry in case I sound like a boring pedant or smth like that. Unlike the rest of this site, I just don't like adding exclamation marks on every other sentence I form, because that doesn't usually reflect my current mood, you know!

Okay, I hope to see more of your works around in the future. This was a cool concept. Good luckkkk

-ov