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Once by Shixotic
Review by coolgirlaamy
Title (2/5)
I’m not sure how I really feel about this title. It’s short and simple, okay, but perhaps it’s a little too simple for my liking - let me explain what I mean by that. Basically, I think the title seems too vague, too vague to be relevant to the story. Yes, I get that she ‘once’ committed suicide and the word ‘once’ appears a few times in the description but otherwise, it doesn’t seem to really be relevant or connect to the story. Okay, she once committed suicide, obviously she would only do that once because then she would be dead. I also don’t think it’s very appropriate for the title to be ‘Once’ if the whole story is in the present tense yet the title is in the past tense. Somehow, it doesn’t seem to be working for me.
I think that the title should be more dramatic - she committed suicide, that’s quite a drastic and dramatic thing to do and you should capture the essence of that in the title, and you should also try to make it more relevant to the story as a whole.
Description and Foreword (6/10)
Similarly to the title, the description doesn’t seem to be working for me. First you start off with the sentence, ‘One-shot, One Word, Once’. I don’t really understand what you mean by this. Let’s start with the word, ‘One-shot’ - does that refer to the fact that this is a one-shot? Or does it have something to do with the suicide? Next, ‘One word’ - what is this about? Is it referring to the word, ‘Once’? And why is the word ‘Once’ there? I don’t understand how this whole line refers to the story and honestly, you kind of confused me here.
The rest of the description I suppose seemed okay. I see the word ‘Once’ appearing again, but in this instance, it works quite stylishly and conjoins with the title. However, I don’t like that last line. I don’t like how you state exactly what she has chosen to do because you have suggested that that is what she has done in the two lines before it, and it’s suggested in the foreword and the rest of the story. You didn’t have to mention it here. I hate it when writers tell me what is going to happen in the story or what exactly it is about. I’d personally rather want to work it out for myself through the context of the story - it makes the reading experience better, in my opinion.
The foreword seemed generally okay. There were a few instances where the grammar seemed a bit off but I will mention these in a later section. However, I like how you have used the foreword to set the scene for the rest of the story.
Plot and Originality (22/30)
The plot of having a character commit suicide because of depression and loneliness has been used before, many times before but obviously you can’t come up with a completely original plot these days since almost everything has been written about so I can’t mark you down. In this section though, I tend to mark more on jow you manaed to make this plot something of you own and you managed to do that to some extent.
The plot in general seemed okay if we are merely talking about the basic plotline of the story - she committed suicide because nobody loves her and then, as a ghost, realises that everyone is hurt because of the choices she has made and they would do anything to have her back, realizing the mistakes they made. Okay, that seemed alright, but once we go deeper into the plot, the flaws start coming out. There were a few things that didn’t seem to make sense to me:
1. Why would she get so upset about her boyfriend making out with her best friend? Hold on, let me rephrase that. I know she would get upset about her boyfriend making out with her best friend, but why would she do something as drastic as taking her life because of it. I mean, yes, her boyfriend may have betrayed her by kissing her best friend, but couldn’t she have at least spoken to him about what had happened, tell him that it had hurt her feelings rather than thinking that the two of them didn’t care about her anymore and taking her life away because of it. It just seems rather strange to me that she would do such a thing as commit suicide when there were other ways that she could have dealt with the issue. I don’t know, maybe there was no other option for her but it just seems kind of strange to me and I have to vent out my feelings about that. When I was reading it, it just came across as, ‘Oh my god, my boyfriend kissed my best friend? How could they do that to me? I guess they don’t love me anymore. I’m just going to kill myself.’ I’m sorry if that sounds a bit harsh but that’s how it felt to me. I think you should try to develop what actually happened a bit more I.e. how Suho and Ally ended up kissing because then it would just make things seem more dramatic than it does at the moment.
2. Didn’t she ever think that it would have been better for her to have spoken to someone about her feelings? I understand that her parents were never around but couldn’t she have like demanded for their attention so they could hear about how their actions were hurting her.
3. Would you really hang yourself mid-afternoon? Don’t people wait until late night to hang themselves or something. It might sound like a stupid question but it doesn’t really seem normal to me that she would hang herself in the afternoon.
I understand with 1 and 2 that if things had happened the way that they would have if she had made better choices then she would still be alive. But then again, I suppose this story has a deep meaning that you should appreciate what you have before you make bad choices - obviously you mentioned this at the end of the one-shot and I suppose that this meaning is as equally relevant to everyone.
Characterisation(10/20)
As a whole, the characters felt very weak. They didn’t seem like developed characters with their own traits and personalitites and I don’t feel like I could really differentiate between them because of this. They just all felt the same to me and I didn’t feel like I got to know any of them either. I also didn’t feel like the relationships between different characters were very well developed either. I mean, Suho mentions things about his love for Susie when she appears in his bedroom but we didn’t really get to know why he felt this way for her or see them in the relationship - obviously since she was dead but I mean, you could have used flashbacks to show how they were in the past together. I also wanted to know about her relationship with her parents. We didn’t really get to know much about them, probably since they barely appeared but I think you could have used flashbacks to differentiate between their actions in the past to their actions now or before she died.
Writing Style and Language (15/25)
I actually liked your writing style quite a lot. You managed to capture the events happening around her and her emotions quite well. I also like how you chose to write in the first person since we got to see things from just her point of view and could tell how she was really feeling just after she died and once she realised how much everyone actually loved her. I do think that in time you can be a really good writer and you show a lot of potential.
In terms of the language, I feel that the grammar and spelling seemed fine throughout the story. I didn’t spot any mistakes except from the letter I not being capitalised in a few areas but generally it seemed okay and I had no major issues with it. What I did have a problem with though was the tenses. You switched back and forth between past and present tense and it kind of ruined the reading experience for me and made my head hurt. Let me show you what I am talking about:
1. “There were voices in my head, it sounds like children fighting over a candy.” - ‘Were’ is in the past tense where as ‘sounds’ is in the present tense. If you chose to write in the present tense it would be, “There are voices in my head- it sounds like children fighting over candy.”
2. First you write in the past tense, “I struggled for a few horrifying minutes.” and then a few sentences later we‘re back to the present tense, “It’s like someone is squeezing all the air out of my body.”
3. “I tried to reach for the shiny door knob.” - Past tense. “I almost forgotten that I’m a ghost. Doors and walls are no longer a barrier to me anymore.” - Present tense.
Do you see what I’m trying to get at here? Please try to pay attention to the tenses because you’ll end up switching between them every few lines and it gets on my nerves.
Flow (10/10)
I think the flow throughout the story was fine. I don’t think there was anything wrong with it and there’s not much else I can really say here.
Total (75/100)
I'm really sorry if i seemed harsh in the review. I did like the story but there were a few things that I wasn't very fond of so it might have came out a bit harsh. Thanks for requesting and I'm sorry the review took so long.
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