Matthew was excited, very excited. It was his birthday, and guests were due any moment. He sat on a chair in front of the door, twiddling his thumbs in anticipation. His mom and dad were out, probably bringing food for his party.
Ding-Dong! went the bell. Matthew immediately rushed to the door and opened it.
"Jake! Come in!" he said, and Jake entered the room with a gift in his hand. Jake disliked cliches, so he awkwardly thrust the gift towards his best friend and said,"you know..."
Matthew happily received the gift, and started shaking it.
"What did ya give me, huh?" he asked Jake. Then, he remembered his parents' warning to not open a gift the moment he received it, as it was rude. He quickly kept it on the table, and started chatting with Jake instead.
Their teenage voices squeaked sometimes, and they became conscious of their newly found maturity. But instead of blushing, they laughed at themselves, voices deviating continuously between bass and treble.
Within half an hour, the room was filled with people, everyone present to witness the grand teenage birthday. Matthew's mom and dad had returned with delicious snacks.
The party was in full swing. The magician was performing tricks for the kids at the party, while Matthew and his friends were busy drinking from the chocolate fountain outside, at the the back door of his house. The adults chatted desultorily amongst themselves. There were numerous gifts stacked on one side of the room. Some of the guests were sampling the food prepared, and were praising it, while some of them were dancing in the center of the room. It was a good party.
Suddenly, everyone present in the room started coughing.
"Gas!" someone squeaked weakly.
"Poison!" shouted another.
Some quick-witted guests managed to get out of the house, using the back door.
But the others slowly died, inhaling the toxic fumes, remembering the tragic incident of Mauschwitz, their last thoughts comprising of how this incident too would be remembered one day, by the future generations...
"It seemed like the mice were having a party in that hole! Good thing you used the ratkill, James....That's what they deserve for stealing our food," said May, in an irritated voice.
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139,347 Literary Works • 672,539 Reviews
First, I feel like you used way too many complex sentences so there was no variety which made it feel a bit dull. And this paragraph especially needs some work.
The party was in full swing. The magician was performing tricks for the kids at the party; the teenagers(Matthew and his other friends) were busy drinking from the chocolate fountain outside, at the the back door of Matthew's house; the adults(mostly parents of the others) chatted desultorily amongst themselves; there were numerous gifts stacked on one side of the room; some of the guests were sampling the food prepared, and were praising it; some of them were dancing in the center of the room. It was a good party.
You should split it up into several sentences as it's not very grammatically correct to just keep dividing it up with semi colons and commas.
But I really liked that twist at the end, I wasn't suspecting it so it was pretty surprising. The idea was good, you just need to work on punctuation and varying the types of sentences you use.
Hello~ Dropping in for a review! ^^
Positives first! Your concept made for a rather good twist at the end, and it made me chuckle a bit for some reason. It was something I did not expect in the slightest. In fact, when they started to get gassed, I thought the twist was going to be that someone at the party had planned all of this in order to murder everyone. Nice direction to deviate the readers mind!
However, there were a few things I noticed...
"Matthew was excited,very excited."
" said,you know..." "
Always make sure to put a space after your commas! D: I didn't notice it anywhere else in the story, so I assume this was just an oversight, but to me it really stands out and is slightly jarring. Just something to look out for next time!
However, this next paragraph is where most of my problems lie...
"The party was in full swing. The magician was performing tricks for the kids at the party; the teenagers(Matthew and his other friends) were busy drinking from the chocolate fountain outside, at the the back door of Matthew's house; the adults(mostly parents of the others) chatted desultorily amongst themselves; there were numerous gifts stacked on one side of the room; some of the guests were sampling the food prepared, and were praising it; some of them were dancing in the center of the room. It was a good party."
Starting off with the thing I dislike most about this... Most of it is a single sentence! A semicolon is typically only used once in a sentence to join two subjects with actions, but in this one, you use a total five in a sentence! There are so many places where you could have ended the sentence to start another one, basically after every semicolon is where a new sentence could be started. If you felt like the sentences weren't strong enough to stand by themselves, maybe add a little more detail in to take out the over-usage of the semicolon.
And not to mention your parenthesis are a bit confusing, you don't really need them. Just take out the teenagers and adults part and do it like this:
"Matthew and his other friends were busy drinking from the chocolate fountain outside his house while the parents of them chatted various topics among themselves."
It flows a lot better without putting the exposition in parenthesis, and did you notice I fit that all into one sentence without using a comma or semicolon? You just need to work on it!
The last thing about this, you don't need to tell us it's a good party at the end. You already explained why it was a good party, so that last bit isn't needed! You can leave some stuff up to the reader to interpret, and some stuff you don't even need to tell them! If I wrote that a scene where one character was being mean to the other, I don't have to add that the character is a bully. I'm already writing why they are a bully, so the reader should know that after the scene is over.
That was pretty much all my problems with this short story. Another thing you could work on is your word choice. Use a little bit of variety and work on describing characters and events that are happening in more detail so the scenes don't seem to jump from one to the next. You have to make your work flow smoothly to be appealing, so it can transition well from one event to the next. It didn't seem like there was much tension or suspense when the mice started dying from the poison, and it seemed to happen without any pacing or prompting. I know it's a short story, but you can still make it a little longer and still keep the charm and feel you were going for!
All in all, you have a good idea, but most of what you need to work on lies in the actual writing and composing of your story. I really hope this review helped you in some way, because I know you can improve on this! Don't give up writing, you're on the right path!
~Despondence
Moalex here to review your work. I know that Review day is over but it's better than leaving works unread.
I have to admit, after reading the short story I just took a blow to the head. I read the story and thought this was a merry-go-happy tale but then that ending. I was reading your work similar to a poem and at one point it changed to a narrative of a really great party. I was laughing and going crazy at your ending. A complete plot twist. I love your short story and I hope that you'll keep writing.
That's all from me. I see that you just joined Young Writer's Society so this must be your first publish. Congrats and keep up the great work!