One Star Review

Explain it to me one more time, the review said. The story concept is all over the place.

Cindy sat staring at that appalling sentence on her computer screen. Each time she reread it, her anger grew a little stronger, heating her blood to boiling.

“Ugh,” she bellowed. How many hours had she spent on that damn short story? How many times had she read, tweaked sentences, reread, swapped words, and modified a paragraph?

There was only one thing left to do, she decided. Opening the Word document, she prepared to give it one last read, and then she would send it to the trash bin where it evidently belonged.

The first few sentences were descriptive, pulling the reader into the fantasy world Cindy hoped to convey. She created a colorful landscape, introduced the main character, and firmly stated the character’s mission. She smiled. “That’s not bad.”

Reading the next two paragraphs, her heart sank, heat rising on her skin. There it was. Cindy discovered that her main plot had been omitted due to said tweaking. No wonder the reviewer needed clarification and only gave her one star. Cindy moaned, reading over the next few paragraphs where the story picked right up and marched on, with the same storytelling the opening paragraphs had.

How did she miss it? She bawled her small hands and pounded on her desk, threw her head back, and let out a guttural cry in her bedroom.

If she didn’t love the character she created, not to mention the mystic land, she wouldn’t think twice about tossing the story out and starting over, but she loved her Elfin Princess, so she would do what any aspiring author did. Cindy would meticulously perfect each line until she was satisfied that the reviewer could shove that one-star review.

WC: 300