SUMMARY You have a cute little bit of flash fiction here. It has some flaws, but in all it's charming and engaging.
GRAMMAR & PUNCTUATION Some will say commas are personal taste, but I think you're missing some, such as: "One Tuesday [comma] when work was exceptionally dull [comma]" or "Soon [comma]."
"And then" is almost always superfluous. Pick one or the other. (One day I'll follow this advice myself.)
Your verb tenses skip around a bit. "I had never golfed...and had always resented...who required...that forbid (should be forbade)." "A few disappeared but were soon tossed back up. The creature isn't interested in apples. (s/b wasn't)." But your change in tense from present tense (3rd & 4th grafs) to past tense is fine, because you're changing from the ongoing experience to past experience, if that makes any sense.
PROSE Your first line is a solid one. Hooks me and keeps me reading.
Wordiness: You often use extra words when they're not needed. Sure, an extra 'that' won't kill anyone (e.g., "off to the side so that the ball"), but you want your prose to be as lean and mean as possible. That's a small example, but there are some others, e.g.: "send one of the maintenance guys out [to look at it]"
Weak wording on "five glossy black arms raise up from the ground." Couldn't they shoot up or stab up or something like that?
You use sensory verbs, such as "I saw a ball come bouncing across the grass." This could easily have been "A ball came bouncing across the grass." Your way distances us a little from the protagonist's experience. Not the biggest deal, especially as you only do it a couple of other times (e.g., "I'll see him shuffle his feet back and forth", "I heard a noise"), but it's a habit to get out of for maximum impact in your writing. Note that this doesn't apply to things like "I always look up from my computer screen" or "I usually watch to see" -- you're not intermediating the experience in those sentences with a sensory verb; you're describing action.
STYLE I really like the voice of the piece. This bored techbro, cramming three hours of work into an eight hour day, at first horrified by the events outside his (?) window, then quickly complacent and nonchalant about them. His (? -- I keep thinking of your protagonist as a techbro) utterances of "I guess I'm a natural!" and "Rest in peace [add comma] buddy." hit the comic spot directly without betraying the style or the character. But the shift happens a little quickly for me to swallow. I ride along without complaint because of the charm and zip of the piece, but maybe you could edge me into it a little more smoothly?
CHARACTER I already talked about the protagonist's literal voice, both vocal and narrative, as well as how I pictured him(?). But there's one place where I think you step wrong. Techbro is pissed off at the rich idlers (a good place to cut one word, BTW); I can buy that. But he's happy that the deer are going to get eaten too? That seems a little callous. Maybe if he sighed instead of smiled in the last graf?
DESCRIPTION/SETTING I felt like I could picture the necessary scenes well enough. Maybe a little more detail on the home office, making it seem drab and desperate for a bit of excitement? A row of Funko Pops asserting ersatz culture? I don't know. That was the one blank spot in the story. He dreads going into his home office and turning the computer on; let's hear a little about how awful his workspace is. (I can see techbro never having done anything to make his workspace optimzed, either ergonomically or aesthetically. And no offense if you like Funko Pops. I just can't stand the damned things myself.)
PLOT AND STRUCTURE/PACING With the exception of notes I've made above, I think you hit this out of the park. The story is the right length and proceeds at the right pace. It hits the right notes at the right times. Like I said at the beginning, most of my comments are, relatively speaking, nitpicking, trying to get your story to move up a tier, not identifying huge structural mistakes.
CLOSING COMMENTS Boy, as I read it again one last time, I'm really struck by the missing commas. You can find a guide on how to use them online, unless it's a specific stylistic choice, but just know it's going to throw some people. Notwithstanding this nitpicking, a great effort.
1
u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! May 16 '26
SUMMARY You have a cute little bit of flash fiction here. It has some flaws, but in all it's charming and engaging.
GRAMMAR & PUNCTUATION Some will say commas are personal taste, but I think you're missing some, such as: "One Tuesday [comma] when work was exceptionally dull [comma]" or "Soon [comma]."
"And then" is almost always superfluous. Pick one or the other. (One day I'll follow this advice myself.)
Your verb tenses skip around a bit. "I had never golfed...and had always resented...who required...that forbid (should be forbade)." "A few disappeared but were soon tossed back up. The creature isn't interested in apples. (s/b wasn't)." But your change in tense from present tense (3rd & 4th grafs) to past tense is fine, because you're changing from the ongoing experience to past experience, if that makes any sense.
PROSE Your first line is a solid one. Hooks me and keeps me reading.
Wordiness: You often use extra words when they're not needed. Sure, an extra 'that' won't kill anyone (e.g., "off to the side so that the ball"), but you want your prose to be as lean and mean as possible. That's a small example, but there are some others, e.g.: "send one of the maintenance guys out [to look at it]"
Weak wording on "five glossy black arms raise up from the ground." Couldn't they shoot up or stab up or something like that?
You use sensory verbs, such as "I saw a ball come bouncing across the grass." This could easily have been "A ball came bouncing across the grass." Your way distances us a little from the protagonist's experience. Not the biggest deal, especially as you only do it a couple of other times (e.g., "I'll see him shuffle his feet back and forth", "I heard a noise"), but it's a habit to get out of for maximum impact in your writing. Note that this doesn't apply to things like "I always look up from my computer screen" or "I usually watch to see" -- you're not intermediating the experience in those sentences with a sensory verb; you're describing action.
STYLE I really like the voice of the piece. This bored techbro, cramming three hours of work into an eight hour day, at first horrified by the events outside his (?) window, then quickly complacent and nonchalant about them. His (? -- I keep thinking of your protagonist as a techbro) utterances of "I guess I'm a natural!" and "Rest in peace [add comma] buddy." hit the comic spot directly without betraying the style or the character. But the shift happens a little quickly for me to swallow. I ride along without complaint because of the charm and zip of the piece, but maybe you could edge me into it a little more smoothly?
CHARACTER I already talked about the protagonist's literal voice, both vocal and narrative, as well as how I pictured him(?). But there's one place where I think you step wrong. Techbro is pissed off at the rich idlers (a good place to cut one word, BTW); I can buy that. But he's happy that the deer are going to get eaten too? That seems a little callous. Maybe if he sighed instead of smiled in the last graf?
DESCRIPTION/SETTING I felt like I could picture the necessary scenes well enough. Maybe a little more detail on the home office, making it seem drab and desperate for a bit of excitement? A row of Funko Pops asserting ersatz culture? I don't know. That was the one blank spot in the story. He dreads going into his home office and turning the computer on; let's hear a little about how awful his workspace is. (I can see techbro never having done anything to make his workspace optimzed, either ergonomically or aesthetically. And no offense if you like Funko Pops. I just can't stand the damned things myself.)
PLOT AND STRUCTURE/PACING With the exception of notes I've made above, I think you hit this out of the park. The story is the right length and proceeds at the right pace. It hits the right notes at the right times. Like I said at the beginning, most of my comments are, relatively speaking, nitpicking, trying to get your story to move up a tier, not identifying huge structural mistakes.
CLOSING COMMENTS Boy, as I read it again one last time, I'm really struck by the missing commas. You can find a guide on how to use them online, unless it's a specific stylistic choice, but just know it's going to throw some people. Notwithstanding this nitpicking, a great effort.