Story Title: Accidentally Laughing
Author: Sherry
Story URL: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/49985/accidentally-laughing-heysayjump-japanese-oneshot
Reviewed By: SkyeLin @ memorablefootsteps.blogspot.com

Title: 3/5
There was a lot going on throughout this oneshot and after reading it all, I feel like a better more relevant title could have been chosen because it’s still unclear why laughing is an accident. Maybe you could have used the word dandelion in your title since it’s an important contributor to the imagery in your story? Still, the title in itself is unique and though not completely attention drawing; is still very original. It just seems like a different title could do a better job of drawing the reader’s attention and linking it to the idea/plot of the story.

Forewords: 8/10
The forewords was wonderful--short and sweet and gave a brief introduction to the plot. It doesn’t give out too much to spoil the story and it keeps the reader wondering. Your metaphors to a game of hide and seek and ‘prayers of love’ is unique and catches the reader’s attention. You introduced your main character well and gave readers a brief understanding of her personality and asked questions to get readers to want to find the answers by reading on. Very well done.

Poster: 4/5
Your poster gives off a very fresh feel. The picture quality of the two guys could have been better because the quality differences between their picture and the girl’s stands out a lot. I think the font and color used is very appealing.

Originality/Creativity: 7/10
I have to give you huge creativity points on the dandelion descriptions at the beginning. This is what really caught my attention, and I’ve already said this somewhere else in this review but I really, really liked how you used the characters actions towards the dandelion and thoughts on it while you slowly revealed their characters because it’s a very unique way of developing characterizations while linking it to something external. I like the creativity of having Remika and Yuri both ‘switch personalities’ even though it seemed a bit too sudden for Remika. I think more explanation could be given in this area to make it more original and unique. You did do a good job of incorporating the description of your story into the story through Yuri’s dialogue. This helped to link everything back to your forewords. I really enjoyed how you brought the dandelion back at the end of your story because it was a very beautiful motif you chose and kept throughout.

Flow: 9/15
I like how the introduction of your story flows very smoothly as you take your time revealing the characters, using a simple dandelion as a part of your plot to add structure while you describe the characters. The first error in the flow is when Remika starts developing emotions because it happens too suddenly, and I think you should’ve given emphasis to why she suddenly develops feelings before the tears started flowing from her eyes, because when the reader is reading this it seems like two guys are joking around about her, she scolds them, they continue arguing and suddenly she starts crying. No hints were given earlier so to a reader it kind of seemed too sudden, showing a rush in the flow in that area. Comparing the flow from the middle-end of your story to the beginning, there’s a really huge difference. At the scene of the event, you should have explained what exactly the guys were trying to do, what they took from her belly, because at this point of the plot, the reader would still be a little flustered.

Plot: 8/15
The conflict of the story is revealed through Remika’s thoughts and it’s very interesting how the very conflict of the story is linked to her characterization so you’re basically killing two birds with one stone. One contradicting thing about your story is that you say Remika is completely emotionless and cares for nothing in the beginning yet here in this sentence it shows that she does have an emotion—hate. Here’s the sentence: I hate it when they say that, I barely know my dad. Hate is a very strong emotion so it kind of contradicts with Remika’s emotionless character. If you thought of a more significant reason to why Remika suddenly developed emotions than just the two guys being ‘cute’ then the story’s plot could have been less awkward and more unique. Another awkward scene in the plot was when Remika was encountered by the ‘erts’ and it wasn’t awkward because of them, it was awkward because there was too little description in why it was happening, where they came from, why his hands wouldn’t move and etc. This story hasn’t been known to be supernatural as far as a reader knows so without giving explanation to why the guy’s hands wouldn’t do what he said confuses the reader. The plot is really vague even though you explain what’s happening very well, the reasons why it’s happening or how it’s happening isn’t met as strongly. The ending seemed really rushed and so I think if you spent more time on the last few events of your one-shot, the plot could have unfolded more naturally.

Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling/Vocabulary: 16/20
1. “Just like playing hide and seek… no matter where it hides or even if you can’t see it, it must be waiting at some place for me.”The strange thing about this sentence is that you start it out using the word “you” and end it with “me” which changes how the sentence should be directed to the reader. You could’ve written it “Just like playing hide and seek, no matter where it hides or even if you can’t see it, it must be waiting somewhere for you.” Or “Just like playing hide and seek, no matter where it hides or even if I can’t see it, it must be waiting somewhere for me.” Keep the tense consistent, the second example was written in first person.
2. “Chinen Yuri's the only one who actually talks to her, who is he really?”One thing to make this sentence better would be to use the conjunction ‘but’ right after your comma. The sentence will sound better.
3. In this sentence segment: “matching his personalities”, the word personality should not be plural because your sentence does not signify that he has more than 1 personality.
4. Perhaps there was a mix-up in the verb you intended to use here? “I sat up right away, squatting the poor flower away” Squatting is a form of sitting. I think you meant to say ‘swatting’ which is a form of pushing away?
5. For the most part your story is written in past tense so this sentence here: “Studying isn’t his best priority.” Can be fixed by changing ‘isn’t’ to ‘wasn’t’ and with the word priority, the word first would work better than best.
6. Your spelling and vocabulary is great. I didn’t see any typos in your story, it’s only your tenses and word choices that may need some work on.

Characterizations: 8/10
What I really like about your characterization is that you don’t just pour out all the descriptions of your characters in one sitting, but you slowly let the thoughts of your characters reveal themselves and reveal their personalities through actions and subtle descriptions. It’s good because it gives the reader time to slowly understand each character and how they fit into the story. I prefer your way of characterizing over showering one sentence with descriptions of one character and ending it there. The character of Yuri is very fresh, young and cute, and how you developed his character to become as such was marvelous. Most of Remika’s personality had already been revealed in the forewords so it gave you more time to create your other characters in the actual story. Giving background on your characters such as the family background of Remika all adds to the development of their character so it was a good choice to give background on her parents. You last few characters weren’t introduced as well as Remika, Yuri and Hikaru which may explain why their appearance was so sudden and shocking.

Writing Style: 5/10
Sometimes your sentences tend to be choppy, and too many choppy sentences right after one another leads to a bad flow because the more periods, the more times a reader has to pause while reading. Other times you add too many commas into one sentence. Generally for a long sentence I would make the maximum comma use be 3 because when there’s just too much, it disrupts the flow of the sentence which is a similar effect to having too many choppy sentences. Usually for average length sentences like this: “As the sun sets, the sky’s filled with various colors, the bright sunlight shone through the classroom, embracing everyone and leaving no one out.” The flow could be improved by taking out a few commas so that it reads like this: “As the sun set, the sky is filled with various colors and the bright sunlight embraced everyone in the classroom, leaving no one out as it shone through.” There was one more problem in this sentence which is the tense. By putting the letter ‘s’ after ‘set’, you prepare the reader to see the sentence as present tense but then you switched it into past tense mid-way with the word ‘filled’, the ‘–ed’ signifying past tense. For sentences and the story as the whole, unless through the use of flashbacks should be kept in the same tense. The descriptions you put into your story are very effective in helping a reader visualize the scene that the story takes place. This is a good thing and you’re doing great with creating imagery. What I don’t recommend is the use of 2nd person as the perspective of your writing because it is not a favourable or popular tense for readers to read because it is too direct. To differentiate between different perspectives, in second person a sentence could be written like this: “You run over to the car.” And first person is written like this: “I ran over to the car.” And 3rd person is like this: “He/she ran over to the car.” For story writing, 3rd person and 1st person are the most preferred. There are also incomplete sentences throughout your story such as this: “Not caged in this stupid classroom, this stupid seat.” I would really discourage the use of incomplete sentences. This sentence is what really throws the perspective off course and gets the reader confused: “That’s what my heart is saying, but up front, you can only see the hardworking face of mine.” It’s like a mix of first person and 2nd person, and generally you would only write a sentence like this if it were in dialogue, but not actually in the bulk of the story. It seems like it’s only the first paragraph that has a perspective mix-up because the rest of your oneshot seems to follow first person consistently. This next idea isn’t a big deal but it is a way you can improve your writing. Between extensive dialogue, you can add descriptions to show the readers just what the characters look like while they’re interacting with each other in their conversation.

Total: 68/100
Please don’t be offended by the score, I think you’re a really capable writer so if you keep going at it you’ll be wonderful! You’re very commendable with characterizations and imagery, I think you just need a lot of work on flow and plot.