I read a really great story today.  It was fast paced, funny and held my attention.  I wanted to know what happened next and I cared about the characters.  I liked how the story was woven of several threads that were followed by changing from viewpoint to viewpoint.

Changing point of view is tricky in any story, and this one relied heavily on this technique.  Over-all, in this case, I believe it works well to promote the storyline.  It also needed to be developed more to give each viewpoint character more unique qualities to their voice and the point of view switches were unclear.  These two elements, the voice and the changes between points of view, were unclear enough that sometimes I wasn’t sure who I was following at that moment.  The confusion detracted from the story, broke the flow of the events and forced me on more than one occasion to back up and figure out where the point of view changed.

I was beta testing the story and gave my feedback.  It is really difficult to give feedback.   You do the other person no favor if you avoid telling them about a problem you see in their text.  There is always that fear that you will hurt their feelings or discourage them from taking that marvelous tale and polishing it the rest of the way to make it as fabulous in execution as it is in its bones.

So I enjoyed a fun story today, one that made me laugh and made me care about the characters, and I tried to be clear and honest with the author because he sent me a marvelous story that still needs a little bit more work to be as good as it deserves to be.

And then I want to buy a copy for myself and a couple more to give to friends!

Dear Lord, thank You for persons with such talent! Please help him to recognize what still needs work so that when he publishes this marvelous story it will make a big splash and go viral. Please encourage the author and bless him. Amen.