| Fan Fiction |
by th1rd3ye
Title: B.lack M.oon D.estiny
Author: th1rd3ye
Reviewer: Ryuko @ artsyasiancrew.blogspot.com
Title 5/5
- ‘Black Moon Destiny’ corresponds well to what your story will be about, although you can do without the periods separating between the letters – it’s distracting, and unnecessary.
Forewords 7/10
- I’m not too keen about writing forewords myself, but seeing as you’re writing a rather long multi-chapter story, it would’ve better if you had elaborated more than just giving a brief summary. Don’t get me wrong, your paragraph at the beginning is really good – the plot itself and the way you worded it makes people want to find out more.
Plot 17/20
- You have a lot going on in your main plot (ie. the dream that Leila had) and subplots (ie. the romantic interests between the 4 characters, and the adventures they have on each planet), and they are very engaging.
- Something that confused me: you’ve said that the Six Elders actually have magical powers at chapter 1 (that’s why they had survived the disaster), but then in a later chapter, I think you had one of the characters say that the six actually DON’T have magical powers? Or maybe it was that they HAVE powers, but they’re weaker compared to the 4 youngsters?
- Something I was just wondering/curious about: how did they travel from planet to planet? I just had an image of the 4 of them popping out of thin air all over the place. Haha.
Originality 4/5
- I love the whole idea of fantasy and magical powers, especially the initial creation and change of Black. But the use of elements as magical forces had been used so many times in the past that it’s getting a bit old. Also, right after you’ve introduced the first planet as ‘Ice’, I’m sure the rest of your readers can guess the rest of the planets, and that dampened the suspense a bit.
Grammar/Spelling/Transitions 10/15
- You need to watch out for the use of past and present tense – stop switching them back and forth. Stick with one or the other.
- I noticed you keep using ‘but yet’ together – either use ‘but’ or ‘yet’; they mean the same thing.
- Your sentence structures are very choppy at places; it can be effective in conveying certain strong emotions for your readers but it’d be better if your descriptions of characters/settings are not written that way because it can become very bland and repetitive at times.
- Your placement of hyphens is fine, but you don’t need four of them “—-“, just use one.
- Wrong use of semi-colons. (eg. “Even the plants are frozen on the planet; revealing no life and energy.” For this sentence, either just say, “…frozen on the planet, revealing no…” or “…frozen on the planet; it didn’t reveal any life or energy.”) Semi-colons are used to separate two closely related independent clauses, so a dangling phrase after the semi-colon is no good.
- Placement of ellipses “…” is fine, but you don’t need 6 dots (that’s only if you’re writing in Chinese). English writing usually only uses 3 dots.
- You also have the occasional run-on sentences, so watch out for them. (eg. “However, I understood your temperament and knew how you would treat Chris and your child whom I foreseen will be a son and a man who will grow up to be an impressive leader and a filial son.”)
- If a character is having internal thoughts, use single quotation marks ‘…’ (not “…”, which is only used for conversations).
- There’re some minor spelling mistakes scattered around, but they’re not too distractive as to affect your readers. Just take some time to proof-read before posting on the site.
- Don’t capitalize your entire sentence, even if the speaker is shouting. (eg. “PEOPLE OF BLACK MOON, STOP RUNNING!” The exclamation mark “!” is enough. Or if you’d like, you can also do this, ‘ “People of Black Moon, stop running!” an ominous voice shouted.’)
Flow (speed of the story) 8/10
- Since you’ve mentioned that they’ll be going to 4 planets, I was surprised when you say that the Golden Ray planet has already visit them. I don’t know if you’re doing it on purpose so you could end the story quicker or what, but I just have a feeling that you want to end the story as quickly as possible?
- The pace at the beginning was good for majority of the time, except I felt that the four overcame the Six Elders rather quickly and too easily at the beginning, no?
Choice of words/Idiom/quotes 6 /10
- Some of your phrases are very cliché. (eg. “Ron is his name and fire is his game.”; another one is “A new adventure awaits the four of them the next day.”) They just sound… awkward.
- You can use more variety of vocabulary in your descriptions so that your readers wouldn’t get bored reading the same thing over and over again. Try a thesaurus if you can’t think of any; they’re really useful (if you’re using MS Word, it has a thesaurus function – it’s your awesome friend, use it).
- You’ve got some awkward usage of words.
eg. 1: “Ron’s body felt hot and stingy.” – ‘Stingy’ actually means the opposite of generous and it’s NOT the adjective version of ‘sting’.
eg. 2: “Ron mumbled a “Thanks” to Crimson and embraces the red stone.” For this instance, you should’ve use ‘grasp’ or ‘hold’ (or something of the like) because ‘embrace’ actually means to ‘hold’ or ‘hug’ something in your arms, or it can also use as ‘accept’ (ie. She has embraced her true nature.)
- You’ve used some strange hyperboles/exaggerations. (eg. “… the man exclaimed, screaming his head off.” I think you were trying to convey fear and chaos in this sentence, but when I read it, I was laughing because of the image that this phrase has conjured up in my head.)
Details/Settings/Characterization 12/15
- You’ve described the settings quite well as I could imagine the scenes in my head, but again, use a variety of words (it was getting repetitive by the time I’m seeing the word ‘cold’ for so many times – I think your readers would’ve understand by this point that planet Ice is cold).
- I see you’ve described your characters right from the beginning 5 chapters, and that’s good. But I feel like you could’ve delved deeper into them. I especially like the relationship you’ve built between Ron and Leila; I can actually see this developing during their adventure after they had been through so much together. But for Raymond and Michelle, I didn’t really see much interaction between the two, so I was surprised that they had kind of suddenly confessed their love to each other when they arrive at the last planet.
Enjoyable? 9/10
- The entire plot (for now, since your story is not completed yet) is quite engaging, and it gets me to turn the pages to see what’s going to happen next. The suspense is good (ie. Leila’s dreams) and you managed to keep this mood throughout until the very end; that’s one of the reasons I’d like to keep reading to find out what’s going on. So you’ve succeeded in capturing my attention, which is definitely a good thing.
Over All Score 78/100