The End. (OneShot) Completed.
by UnknownViet
Chapter 9
Arsty Asian Crew
* Title 5/5
- ‘The End’ perfectly corresponds to what the story is about.
* Forewords 9/10
- Short, but quite engaging so that it can appeal to the audience to continue reading (especially the first two sentences)
* Plot 12/20
- There’s not much going on in terms of plot. You could’ve gone deeper into the reasons WHY she’s breaking up with him (I know you’ve said that she’s tired of the fights, and the constant ups and downs). But at the same time, she’s still in love with him. There’re some conflicting emotions there, and you could’ve expanded a bit more on that aspect.
- Adding the flashback is a good touch – it shows the warmth and instant attraction at the beginning of the relationship. It would’ve also been helpful to add bits of past argument – how badly had those fights gone so that it served as one of the motivations for her to suggest a break-up?
* Originality 2/5
- I understand break-up stories are hard to do in an outstanding, original way since this kind of stuff have been done by so many others in the romance genre.
* Grammar/Spelling/Transitions 10/15
- You need to watch out for your past and present tenses usage. Stick to one or the other unless you’re very clear cut about using past tense for flashback scenes and present tense otherwise.
- Your sentence structure is very choppy most of the time. It can be effective in some places (like when you were describing her feelings before she breaks out the bad news), but over-using them can ruin the effect.
- You’ve got some incomplete/dangling sentences as well. Again, they can be effective in some places but in others, it’s not necessary (e.g. “It wasn’t warm like before. Like the day we met.” You can try “It wasn’t warm like before – like the day we met.”) Don’t begin with a sentence with “And…”. ‘And’ is a conjunction, which means it should connect 2 phrases or clauses together.
* Flow (speed of the story) 10/10
- The flow is good.
* Choice of words/Idiom/quotes 5 /10
- I noticed you had used the description that something is ‘unconditionally cold/warm’ – it’s a rather awkward usage of the word.
- You don’t use a lot of variety of words, which can be tiring for your readers because they might get sick of reading the same thing over and over again (this is especially obvious when your story is a short one-shot). I know you’ve said that your vocabulary isn’t very large, and that’s fine, but you can get lots of interesting and effective words/synonyms by looking through a thesaurus.
* Details/Settings/Characterization 10/15
- I see you’ve tried to describe the boy when she first met him during the flashback, but you could’ve gone more than just saying he wears ‘fashionable clothes’.
- Since you wrote this in first person point of view, you could’ve done more work on her characterization and her inner thoughts. For example, you’ve mentioned that the boy has changed – but how? Was it this change that made her decides to break up with him at the end?
- You somewhat described your settings, so that’s good. It also helps if you imagine yourself in the setting and describe it using the 5 senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch).
* Enjoyable? 7/10
- The foreword made me expect a bit more than what you have written. But the flashback and the fact that she matured at the end made it bittersweet, and I liked that.
* Over All Score 70/100
________________________________Reviewed by Ryuko