AmySuju – In Our Hearts, There’s Love…

Title:  [7/10 points]

Though it fit the mood very well and sets the mood for some sadness and fluff, it’s too long. Also, I don’t think the ellipses (…) is needed at the end. It stands well on its own.

Points to you on proper capitalization, though.

Appearance: [6/10 points]

• Graphics: Beautiful. Fit the mood perfectly.
• Font: I had to make a separate note about it because it seriously bothered me. Comic Sans under NO circumstance should be used for a story. I don’t even understand why AFF makes it an option. I cannot take anything written in it seriously. Please, I beg you, change it to Times New Roman or something.

Description and Forward: [7/15 points]

• Description:  This was great. Short, straight to the point, and get me enticed. Good work.
• Forward: But this seriously put me off. There are words not capitalized, not properly punctuated (ex: the use of ?!), in Comic Sans, typos, inconsistent tenses... It made me seriously wonder if someone else had written the description for you. Honestly, if I had come across it to read it myself, I would’ve just stopped there.

Characterization: [9/10 points]

The characters are relatively consistent throughout, so good job there.

Side note: I don’t know where to put this and this doesn’t affect your score. I don’t think it’s necessary to put whose point of view it is. I don’t think you should give you readers some credit and that they can figure it out for themselves. But, as the author, you should help them out too by not changing so many times in one chapter.

Plot: [10/10 points]

I wish that this category was a bit bigger so I can give you more points, but I really liked the weird love triangle and it hooked me right from the beginning. Good work.

Flow: [3/10 points]

Ok, the next two are going to be whammies.

I felt it dragged on way too long. I am a max three-shot writer so I internally groaned to see thirty chapters. I think this could’ve been wrapped up in a third of the amount. I am a big believer in not overextending your stay as much as you love the story. Tell the story and be done with it.

Grammar and Spelling: [10/25 points]

I think this is definitely where you need the most work. So, I’ll try to break it down some.

• Capitalization: ‘I’ (first person) should ALWAYS be capitalized. As well as beginning of sentences.
• Dialogue: Every time someone talks, it needs its own paragraph. No excuses.
• Tense consistency: You should pick a tense (past or present) and STICK with it. It gets very confusing at times.
• Punctuation:  Punctuation marks should NEVER be used more than once, especially right next to each other. So, none of the ‘?!’ or ‘!!’  business. For the former, chose the ones that’s more important and for the latter, one suffices.
• Word choice: This is something that you need to learn on your own and it’s just learning the nuances of the English language, or any language in general.

So much of this I think could’ve been filtered out (except the word choice) if you had simply did a spell check on Microsoft Word. Heck, even AFF has that option! Please check it out before posting.

Also, there are some wonderful tutorials here on AFF on grammar and writing such as MusicChibi and Scheherazade’s Grammar Tipsy. You should check them out.

Bonus: [10/10 points]

I just think you deserve some more points for trying and making an effort to learn and improve, so some more points for you. (And to buffer my reined-back harshness)

Comments:

I’m sorry if I sounded harsh, I really did want to give you a higher score.

I actually held back a little because I don’t want to discourage you. I completely understand that this is your third language and I think it is wonderful that you are trying your best and learning. I believe that sugar-coating everything doesn’t get anywhere for someone who wants to improve so I hope you’ll take this and keep moving forward. As they say, “You are more than the score.”

Thank you for choosing me and let me know if there are any questions! Hope you’ll request from here again! :)

Score: 62/100 = 62%