Third Step: Writing the Review

By the third step you should have finished the whole short story collection and you should have a decent note sheet in front of you to use for the writing of the review. The review is generally made up of three parts with the first two parts each being one paragraph long and the third part should be at least one paragraph long, but it can be longer depending on the length of the short story collection.

First Part

The first part of the review should focus on summarizing the short story collection. This can be either very easy or difficult depending on whether the short story collection shared a similar theme or themes. If the collection did share a similar theme or themes, then the first paragraph should be about the theme or themes that the collection centered on and about the intent behind the collection. The intent for a fiction collection about love could be to teach the reader about the importance of openness and honesty in a relationship. The intent for a non-fiction collection could be to educate the reader about a certain period of history by sharing journal or diary entries that an individual wrote during that historic time period. However, if the collection did not share any themes, then the reviewer would skip this part and make the second part of their review.

Second Part

The second part (or first part if there were no shared themes) should focus a bit on the stories themselves. Generally, the reviewer should write a short summary about the one or two stories that the reviewer liked the most. It is important that the summary remains free of any spoilers as the reviewer should not reveal the whole story to future readers. Instead, the summary should just provide enough of a glimpse to attract readers to the collection.

Third Part

“Guess what Jeff found in his cabin for me," Grete says, "another book by the Martian Chronicle guy…Grete says, ‘It's good’. She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book. It's good or it's bad, I liked it or I didn't. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad - like a hot dog.” ― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

The third part of the review should focus on taking the notes and making them into a review that is written in full sentences with proper grammar. This is where the reviewer would in fact write the review part of the review and, like Gillian Flynn said, it should include more than just good or bad, but rather include a discussion of the writing, the themes, the nuances, and the structure. It is important for the reviewer to remember that anything negative should be written in a constructive manner and none of the review should be filled with hate. It is perfectly okay for the reviewer to write about their favorite story or character as long as spoilers are avoided and it is okay to write about something that was not well done. However, the reviewer should also make sure not to get carried away with only writing about their thoughts and feelings about the short story collection as the review should also touch on the different themes, the flow of the collection, setting, character development, and the different plots.

Reference: Gillian Flynn by Gone Girl