Story: "Moments I Don't Forget To Remember"

Author: KPossible21

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Since you said you didn’t require an actual review and simply wanted me to take a look at the story, I won’t give you a score but will instead make commentary and offer advice as I see fit. I am still following the layout of the rubric, though, just to prevent this commentary from getting horribly disorganized.

Title

Note: The word “to” should not be capitalized.

It’s not the kind of title that really hooks people, and it isn’t particularly memorable because a lot of people use titles about memories and forgetting. However, it fits your story perfectly. One thing that kind of bothered me was the wording: “don’t forget to remember.” Usually people would just say “don’t forget.” However, that’s just a technicality. It does make sense in that the story is relating memories that Amber not only doesn't forget but also actively recalls for the sake of reliving them. There’s nothing grammatically wrong with the title. It simply sounds odd and a bit redundant at first glance.

Description

It definitely stands out from the usual “blah blah blah was just a normal girl blah blah.” I think that factor alone would be a hook, even though there’s nothing “exciting” about it (and there shouldn’t be since that’s not the point of your story).

The quote you included does a fairly good job of capturing the essence and theme of your story. However, despite what the quote says, it seems like your story spent a lot of time on the physical process and timeline of giving birth proportionally speaking.

I like that the paragraph that follows gets straight to the point and avoids unnecessary details about the characters.

Foreword

Usually, excerpts in the foreword work to lure the readers in by giving a very impactful snippet with an atmosphere that the description may not be able to capture. Your excerpt sounds a bit like something that could go in the description in place of the quote (I’m not necessarily saying that you should replace it though). I think you could have left that one line out and let the story speak for itself. Aside from that, I think the extra lines of spacing in the foreword should be taken out to make it look neater and more consistent.

Presentation

Overall, the presentation was okay. However, there were a few things I noticed.

The first thing is the quote in the description. Generally, it's a good idea to just keep everything in black and plain formatting.

Another thing is the video at the beginning. I know the video is supposed to complement the story, but I think you should have simply linked to it in an author’s note while explaining its significance instead of embedding it up at the top of the story. A lot of authors put videos at the beginning of their chapters, but a large number of people (myself included) will simply skip over them.

Also, the line of text underneath the video is distracting because it’s in purple. A splash of color in the midst of all that black and white is too eye-catching, and you really want the readers to focus on the actual story rather than the statistic.

I don’t really understand why you kept alternating between chunks of normal text and chunks of italicized texts. The entire story was basically a series flashbacks and memories, so you could have simply left the entire thing unformatted and only italicized the important words, phrases, and sentences. There were places where the narration was italicized along with the thoughts, when only the thoughts themselves should be italicized.

I know you wanted to emphasize the last sentences of the various sections since they each summarized a particular theme, but I don’t think you should have bolded, italicized, and centered them. You should have simply left them either without formatting or at most italicized and let the words carry their own weight.

Spelling/Grammar/Usage/Mechanics

Your grammar is very good. The most common mistakes you made were tense inconsistency within sentences (I know you purposely wrote some chunks in present and some in past, so that’s not what I’m referring to) and comma splicing. I don’t think you came to me to pick at your grammar, so I’m going to skip making corrections.

Writing Style

Overall, I enjoyed your writing style. It was consistent and fairly mature. However, there were definitely places where I felt like the particular wording you used was off. Usually, the meaning of the word was fine, but the connotations didn’t really suit the situation, the word disrupted the flow, or the description simply sounded too exaggerated. There were a few places where the phrasing sounded unnatural (because of the order of the words) or didn’t quite make sense. There were also certain places where you were relying on overused phrases to outright state the ideas rather than communicating them through description.

Another issue I found was the parallelism.

“The morning sickness was bearable.

The nocturnal leg cramps were endurable.

The body changes were astounding.

The lower back aches were excruciating.

The weight gain was surprising.”

Usually, the magic number for parallelism is three elements. When you go over three, you run the risk of making it too much. In this case, I think it was a bit of overkill, especially considering that a few of the sentences expressed similar ideas. The first and second sentences go together, as do the third and fifth, and in the case of the third and fifth, one was a subset of the other: the weight gain was a part of the body changes (side note: I think in this case “bodily changes” sounds more natural). Also, parallelism between elements of different degrees usually goes from least important to most important (sometimes the other way around).

I think, in order to make the parallelism here more effective, you could rewrite it like this:

"The lower back aches were excruciating.

The morning sickness and nocturnal leg cramps were endurable*.

But most of all, the bodily changes and weight gain were astounding."

*or bearable, whichever you prefer

This progression goes from extreme to moderate to introducing something a little bit different. Depending on what you want to emphasize, you could also write it in a different order.

Another example of weak parallelism is this:

“Days are filled with constant demands, noise, tears, and nappies.”

Demands, noise, and tears all kind of blur together. The crying is noise, and often the noise is the baby’s way to make a demand of some sort. I’d suggest keeping demands and replacing “noise, tears” with something less redundant.

Flow/Pacing

The flow is mostly fine since the events followed chronological order. However, the alternation between chunks of present and past tense narration disrupted the flow a lot because it seemed like Amber was referring to the present, the time during which she was narrating, even though all of the events described happened in the past.

Another thing that interrupted the flow was the use of footnotes. I’ve read exactly one work of modern fiction that used footnotes, and it was a stylistic thing. The little numbers in superscript are distracting for readers because the readers will either interrupt their reading to find the corresponding footnote or they will continue reading but wonder what exactly the footnote is for.

Moreover, the things that you made footnotes for didn’t strike me as particularly important to the reader’s understanding of the work.

The first one was an explanation of “crowning of the head,” but I was able to guess what the phrase meant from the context. You could have either simply described it in normal terms or left out the footnote and allowed readers to infer the meaning.

The second footnote was the background information on Toulouse. While the story is set in Toulouse, and setting is usually very important, in this particular case, the specific details of the setting didn’t strike me as being all that relevant aside from the fact that Amber is in a foreign country. Your story concentrated far more on the emotional rather than the physical backdrop to the events.

The third footnote was not really necessary at all because it’s not important for the audience to know who originally developed that psychological concept. If you had directly quoted the psychiatrist, then sure, you should cite him, but Amber was simply echoing his idea, so it’s not necessary to cite him.

The pacing was like a flat line, consistent throughout the entire story, without any real build-up or , and because it’s a story of reflections and recollections, that’s fine.

Characterization

The other characters didn’t feature prominently enough, so this section will simply address Amber’s character. I definitely was able to feel Amber’s character through her thoughts and reflections. Throughout the story she was struggling with the concept and reality of motherhood, and as a result of these events, she became more mature. However, since I don't have the background and context of the story this is the spin-off to, I got a very narrow impression of her personality because the whole story was about her experiences being a mother. I didn't really get to see her express her personality in a variety of situations, which is often inevitable in oneshots.

Plot

• Comprehensibility/Believability

I can tell you definitely did a lot of research about pregnancy for this story. There was nothing that was particularly unrealistic about it. The only confusion arose from the narration in two different tenses.

• Originality/Creativity

There are many stories on AFF that involve pregnancy, but your take on it is definitely a different kind of angle than most. The way you set it up with Amber essentially talking to her daughter is a kind of second-person narration that I have yet to encounter, and I think it leaves a greater impression because it contributes to the image of a mother confiding all of the things that she couldn’t tell her child before, making everything even more personal.

• Unity

All of your sections tied back to the central theme, but I think there was a problem in the unity within particular sections and with the scenes and moments you chose for Amber to discuss and relive.

One of the things was the occasional references to Myungsoo. Although he’s the father of the baby, the appearance of all of those worried and even angry bits about him distracted from the point of your story, which was really supposed to be about the child herself and the mother-daughter relationship and not her father, no matter how much she reminded Amber of him.

In the second section, the paragraph about how much Amber owed Yuri and Sungyeol also struck me as a digression, especially considering the paragraph that came immediately after. The focus shifted from the baby to Yuri and Sungyeol and back to the baby.

In your second-to-last section, the scene with the joke and Sungyeol seemed out of place and by far less impactful than the other events and scenes in the story. I don’t think it really needed an entire scene to itself but rather just a passing mention. Also, even though Amber might remember that her daughter made silly jokes, it doesn’t seem that likely that she would remember a particular joke, not from that long ago. If you really want to include it as an illustration of the moments Amber cherished, that scene plus the sentence before it (in the previous paragraph) would probably fit better in the final section, after the first sentence.

Your description mentioned the first day of kindergarten, but when that event appeared in your fic, it wasn’t elaborated on enough, especially compared to the joke scene. I think you should have gone into more detail about that particular event and dramatized it further. It would serve as an effective contrast to both the scene where Paris got lost and the scene where she’s arguing with Amber. It would create a series of snapshots that demonstrate the progression of Paris’s relationship with Amber from dependent to independent to a bit rebellious.

Emotional Reactions

Although your story is a touching one, it’s not really the kind that people will actually cry over. I think the emotional impact of it would be greater and deeper for people who have personally experienced pregnancy and childbirth. My reaction to it was more contemplative than anything else.

Overall Impression

Your writing is flawed but pretty solid. I really like that your story explores themes deeper than the superficial crushes on oppars that AFF fics tend to focus on. I think it’s a thought-provoking read in the sense that we readers, who are still young and not mothers ourselves (at least, the vast majority of us), get to glimpse something akin to our mothers’ side of the story and perhaps learn to appreciate that motherly presence more. However, the story seems almost a bit too universal. The events and experiences don't feel specific to the characters, so the "fan fiction" element gets lost a little. I think I would more inclined to recommend your story as a general read rather than as a fanfic.