The Monk

"Okay, so although the story is only one chapter long it took me a while to finally do this review. I wasn't sure what to say in the review, but I think I got it now. The story is interesting and the concept certainly unique. The fact that it is a short story is intriguing, something you can just read in one sitting when you don't feel like starting a whole new book but still want to take your mind of things. Short stories have become underrated recently, so I'm glad to see there are still some out there. In all honesty, I didn't enjoy reading this story. It wasn't because the story was bad or boring or I didn't like the plot, cause I do believe this story has all the elements it needs to be great. The real reason why I didn't enjoy the reading experience was because it was hard to get through. Most of the sentences and just whole paragraphs were hard to follow and right from the start it didn't feel like I was reading the story I was promised. Short stories are meant to hook the person from the beginning till the end, they have to tell a complete story in a single chapter, which is hard. You have to introduce the world, characters, give the reader reasons why they should care about these people without really knowing who they are, and I just wasn't able to get into it with how it was told here. The dialogue was pretty forced and seemed unrealistic to me, it was just done so over the top that it felt awkward to read, for me personally. When you write dialogue, try saying it out loud for yourself and you'll see for yourself if it feels natural or not. As for the writing style, I too fond of that. Like I said before, it was hard to follow with many long sentences that at the end lost their point. Try using a mixture of short and long sentences to get the point across better. All in all, I do believe this story has potential, but I suggest it to be rewritten or heavily edited. There are a lot of mistakes that break the flow and therefor need to be looked at. Something I learned recently was that stories or chapters that start in a moment of action often have a better way of hooking the reader. So what I would suggest is that the author skips the intro for the most part and just dives straight into the important parts of the story. Having a info dump in the beginning of a short story is for the most part unnecessary since it is information that can easily be given within the story in certain events, making it less of an info dump and more part of the actual story. Characters should be introduced through their actions, showing who they are by describing what they do and value in certain scenes. Telling us head on who who is and what they do and why takes away most of the mystery until there isn't much reason left for the reader to keep on reading. They know everything already, making it easy to predict what is going to happen, while in reality you want them to be in constant wonder of what and how and why. The base is there and so is the plot and characters, all that it's need is a different approach. Spelling mistakes can be overlooked, the occasional misused word as well, but having the story be written as an info dump will scare away readers. Of course, this is just my opinion on it and what you do with it is completely up to you. I am in no way trying to discourage you from writing, instead I'm trying to encourage you to keep on trying and experimenting with the options you have and become better. I wish you the best on this path and I hope keep on writing :) (PS. just a personal pet peeve, I hate it when people overuse exclamation points. I felt like mentioning it, but didn't want to include it within the review itself since it is a personal pet peeve and most people probably wouldn't be bothered by it.) Good luck!"