These are some notes I made while beta-reading:

• Narrative: Omniscient, past.

• Consistent tenses

• Moderate variety in vocabulary

• Moderate variety in sentence structure

• Occasional spelling errors

• Multiple punctuation errors:

Be careful with your commas. You either don’t use them when needed, or use them too much, thus effectively making your sentences long and draggy.

Here’s why commas (or punctuation in general) are important:

Here’s an example from the story:

She replied tentatively taking a step forward.

It is not clear whether her reply was tentative or her step forward was tentative.

Hence: She replied tentatively, taking a step forward.

Or:        She replied, tentatively taking a step forward.

• Verb confusion:

Throughout the story, there were multiple instances of verb or word confusion. ‘Instance’, being one of them; note how I used ‘instance’ in the previous sentence. Some of them I’ve clarified with you through the comments. These are the recurring ones:

Lay vs Lie:

Lie and lay both have many definitions, but they’re most often confused where lie means to recline and lay means to put down. (Lay vs. lie, 2012)

Lay needs an object—something being laid—: You might want to lay the book (object) on the table.

Lie cannot have an object: Feeling tired after a hard day of work at the bakery, Yongwoon decided to lie on the bed.

Raise vs Rise:

The verbs raise and rise both refer to something going "up". The main difference between them is that raise is transitive (it must have a direct object) and rise is intransitive (no direct object).  (raise OR rise?, 2012)

Something raises something: Sungmin raised his hand to answer the question.

Something rises: The dough rises when baked.

Breathe vs Breath:

I’m not sure if this was an honest spelling mistake, it happened more than once, so I’ll just include it.

Breathe is a verb: The glint in Sungmin’s eyes as he looked at Youngwoon endearingly, made it hard for Youngwoon to breathe normally.

Breath is a noun: Youngwoon’s stunningly good looks simply took Sungmin’s breath away.

• Preposition confusion

Examples: against, on, at, of, off, onto, into

Here’s a link to commonly used prepositions: Click here for list

My advice is to look up what they (the ones that you use often) are used for and their sentence examples.

• Over usage of ‘a bit’

Courtesy of thesaurus.com, here are some alternatives you can use:                    

1. Several
2. Slightly
3. To some extent
4. Somewhat
5. Comparatively
6. Relatively

Be sure to look up what each of them mean individually before using them. Some are not direct alternatives.

• Dialogue format & Paragraphing

Dialogue from two different persons should always be in different paragraphs.

Dialogue from the same person should always be in the same paragraph.

Even if the reply is one word, start a new paragraph. If you feel it’s too bare to be a single paragraph, describe the situation. Provide insight on the characters feelings, actions, intonation, etc.

• Fragmented sentences

Fragmented sentences are basically incomplete sentences. I usually allow artistic freedom with this. I believe that fragmented sentences, when used well, can create a strong impact (similar to that of extremely short sentences) on the readers. So make sure your incomplete sentences are not unwarranted.

• Original phrases

When you have original phrases, ones not commonly used by the general public, be sure to enclose them in quotation marks or even apostrophes (if you want to distinguish it from your dialogues).  An example in your story would be; “grandma weekend”.

That’s all! Good luck on your next story!

~Until Then

Works Cited

Lay vs. lie. (2012). Retrieved January 1, 2016, from Grammarist: http://grammarist.com/usage/lay-lie/

raise OR rise? (2012, September). Retrieved January 1, 2016, from EnglishClub: https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/cw-raise-rise.htm