Review of Short Story "A Meeting of Artists"

[YourStoryClub]

Short Story: “A Meeting of Artists” by KEVIV

Dear Writer, thank you for asking us to review your short story ‘A Meeting of Artists’. Please find below our objective review comment based on five key elements of short stories:

Character: There are few characters, more than needed in a short story. However presence of many characters has little or no negative impact as they are short lived in the story and as story is around incident and not around any main character. Furthermore, by its special style, story has hardly any character build up but direct characterization and thus this element is grossly missing, making a strong plot cliché. You may like to refer short story “Aborigines” by Anton Checkov for character development for such plot.

Setting: Timeframe used in this story is very short – ideal for short stories. Good use of dialogues to make meetings of artists interesting and real. There is apt description of surroundings as and when scope permitted such as:

“On a serene day of a fading spring many people came out of their homes to spend the day away from the bounds of their houses. It was as if the weather had beckoned them and almost all of them had obliged to it. At one of the sidewalks along the channel of a river stood a man who kept gazing at the pattern of the water. Soon he was joined by another man who was still in his night wears and had a bag of fruits in his hands”.

Plot: This story is very straight forward showing contrast between philosophical thinking and practical behaviour. Such directness makes the plot bit less interesting. We suggest avoiding making plot cliché by portraying the conflict subtly. When story starts descriptively as does this story, it must gradually grip interest of the readers. This story progresses smoothly and then, however, suddenly reaches climax without offering clarity of both sides of the conflict. This sudden happening to show contrast may work better in suspense or thrilling plot but hardly for giving message.

Conflict: Conflict is the strongest element in this story and therefore must be supported by equally strong plotting and characterization. Unfortunately both elements could not support this element very effectively. Although the message of the story is very clear and citing rain as reason by artists to leave the accident place indeed brings out the conflict, the story would have been plotted perhaps even more interestingly.

Theme: Theme gets absolutely clear at the end and undoubtedly is tightly supported by all other elements as it should be in any short story specially story with message.

Having said the above, we strongly believe that story is an art and every art is invaluable – there is nothing good or bad as art is beyond boundaries of these adjectives. Therefore the creator is the best person to decide whether the creation meets her expectation. We like your story in total and our comments are just objective comparison with the patterns we observed in most liked short stories.

We also recommend you to read 10 Tips for short story writing by our Chief.

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