A Black Cat by liawalkdherr

Reviewer: dojacant

Thank you for choosing me to review your story!

Title/Cover: 8/10

The cover is minimalistic, which I appreciate, but I think you could do a little more with it to really make it stand out. I think the title works fine for the story.

Grammar/Syntax: 7/10

The writing, overall, is done well. Some of the sentences are worded a little awkwardly, however. For example, the last sentence of the first part would flow a little smoother if it was reworded to something like, "Kimba, Ash, and Millie, the three black kittens, were frightened as they watched their own mother being forcefully dragged away from them and back into the house."

There are a few times where your sentences don't have a subject-verb agreement and thus are dependent clauses (meaning they don't express a complete thought that is necessary for a full sentence/independent clause). For example, in the third part, the sentence, "Her body shaking stronger with every second that went by." You could instead put a comma before the word "her" to add it to the sentence before, or you could change "shaking" to "shook" or "trembled."

One last thing I wanted to point out is in the last sentence, when the girl is speaking, the comma should be inside the quotation marks.

These would all be quick fixes and are just something to keep in mind to bring your writing to the next level!

Plot: 8/10

I've done quite a bit of short story writing, and one of the most important things of writing a story that's so short like this is ensuring that you use the space wisely. Short stories can have just as big of an impact as longer stories. I appreciated the message you wanted to convey through this story. It's a powerful ending. The imagery, comparing the white cats to the black cats, reinforced the message in a very vivid way.

I think that, overall, you used the space wisely. Each brief chapter of the story had a purpose. In the next section, I'll talk about different ideas I have to help make the story even more compelling.

Characters: 7/10

It's difficult to fully flesh out characters in such a limited amount of words, but I think this is one way to get readers on board with the story, so that when they get to that last part, it really hits home.

I would say Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 would be good places to sprinkle in more detail. To me, Miss Williams was one of the most intriguing characters. She is introduced as a cat lover, but because of others' perceptions of her, she has to get rid of the black cats so they don't believe her to be a witch. The way in which she callously discards the kittens doesn't paint her as a cat lover.

I think maybe the stakes could be higher here for Miss Williams. Maybe neighbors threaten to turn her in for being a witch or something, and that explains why she must get rid of the kittens the way she does. The witch trials were a really horrible time for women, and it's also a very interesting aspect to bring into the story a little more.

Lastly, the kittens could also have more distinct personalities I think. When the one kitten is killed by a person, it's a really tragic and gruesome moment in the story, but I think it could be stronger if readers were maybe more attached to the kittens as individual characters. The place to do this would probably be at the beginning of Chapter 2. This is just my personal opinion/thoughts as a reader.

Overall Enjoyability: 8/10

I did enjoy reading this story. It's pretty well-written and the message of not judging based on appearances came across clearly. I think if it was spruced up a little, possibly through some of the ways I mentioned, it would take it to the next level. I've always enjoyed reading short stories because it's really cool to see what people can do with a limited amount of words. Thank you for having me read it!

Total: 38/50