Anehalia

An interesting concept that needs a lot of polish

I want to start with the things I liked. I read the summary, and thought, “hey, this could be a great sci-fi space story, and I like sci-fi.” Reading the first chapter, I can tell that with some work and rewriting this concept could be turned into an interesting story.

I also want to praise the author for the lack of spelling mistakes. Most first time author’s works are littered in spelling mistakes (including my own early works).

I took off stars in grammar and punctuation because the the sentence structure and grammar could use a lot of work. The chapter is littered with run on sentences and sentence fragments.

What really needs work is the author’s implementation of their idea. They spend the first two thirds of the chapter explaining the character’s life up to this point and the details of the world. The world concept seems interesting, but the execution through explanation is terribly boring. I had to fight my desire to start skimming or just quit reading while going through this section. It reads like a concept summary and not an actual story.

This can be improved by removing this section and slowly releasing this information through the story. This allows me (the reader) to learn about the world and the characters backstory while having actual events happening that keep my interest. You can show some of this information by starting your story with a couple days of school and maybe have the main character receive money from their absent parents.

The next section of the chapter has time entries. I think this is where the chapter should start. Except remove the mirror part. I did that in one of my early stories as well, and it makes me shudder every time I see it. The mirror is the young author cliche way of telling your reader how the main character looks. Don’t fall for that trap. Do anything but that.

Also, when you finish a flashback, don’t tell your reader you finished the flashback. They are smart, let them figure it out. (Always assume your reader is smart and let them figure things out for themselves. Readers enjoy a story that challenges their brain). If you want an example of a story that starts in medias res and does a large flashback masterfully I recommend reading Robin McKinley’s “The Hero and the Crown”.

I think you have potential, but you really need to work on your writing style. I recommend writing some short stories and taking writing classes to polish your skills.

Interesting the further in you read

This review is for the first chapter:

I struggled to get through the first couple of paragraphs. The first couple of paragraphs were all setting detail without any introduction of characters. The description of the setting used repetitive words and had some tense mix up for words. It made for a very hard info section. (all the behind and beside that was hard to read).

I could tell the author was writing the story as if it was a fairy tale, which was well done, after I got past some of the setting set up.

The story became quickly interesting, and I was hooked.

Chapter 2:

The story was a lot more interesting to read that the first couple of chapters. I quickly read through it and I am now working on the third chapter. The one part that dragged a little was the introduction of the six characters. I knew who the characters were and what must have happened to them long before the author ever said a word. It really made the characters feel slow.

I have not finished the third chapter, but I look forward to reading it and more.

A cute romance story

I’m not normally a person who reads much in the werewolf style stories, but this story is from one of my favorite authors.
The author delivers a fresh read that is a slow burn romance.
The prose in this story are enjoyable to read and well written with very few grammatical and typo errors.
The characters are well written with depth and interesting motivations.
I look forward to reading more of this story!

A prose style that reads well

Your natural writing style is very strong and drew me in. Your style feels like prose poetry, and I think you should lean into this in your future writing. It felt like I was reading a backyard stream flowing over rocks. It was calm an enticing, tricking serenity into a story worried by issues of the characters coming wish.

To improve your style, you might want to try and start paragraphs with something other than the word “I” at the beginning of most of your sentences. You might also try and incorporate more metaphors in to show the feelings of your character in more ways that are new and exciting. In the second chapter, she says she loves Ben, but what makes her think that? What makes her think he doesn’t love her. You could describe her thinking she would trap him in metaphors.

You spelling was decent and I noticed no glaring errors that took me out of reading your story. There were some grammar errors. I wasn’t reading too carefully, but your hook sentence is difficult to parse. You really need your hook to be solid and easy to read to draw your reader in. The way it is currently written caused me to almost not read your story right from the start.

You have a really interesting plot for your story. You might shorten timeframes a little (I can’t imagine that dimes would even be used in hundreds of years. Also large cellphones still being used in 2200? Read up on Moore’s law. 😀). Some things I thought were interesting include the new religion, the fantastical elements with wishes that come true in a way you don’t expect, and the fortune teller that seems to be a friend to the main character. I also thought it was interesting that you decided to go back towards a patriarchal society in your futuristic story.

I also liked how you didn’t tell us all the details of your world and are carefully feeding details. That’s something a lot of new authors struggle with a and it was a breath of fresh air to have to keep guessing.

I look forward to reading more.

(P.S. I recommend not reviewing your own story. Boosting reviews by reviewing your own story and adding author notes at the top of chapters are both a bit tacky.)

I think I lost my appetite

The end was a properly horrifying conclusion to a monster story, and the description at the end left me with zero desire to eat lunch (and I was very glad I wasn’t eating lunch.

I felt like the ending was the best part. I struggled to keep the multitude of characters straight. I forced my way through the first part, drowning in all of the characters and dialogue interactions that I had to take notes and reread to keep straight. I think I became hooked right around when Marisol told everyone the truth. From there it was less of a struggle and I’d started to figure out who everyone was. And then the ending. *shudders*.

I think more engaging descriptions would have helped me keep everyone straight. The description fir what the different monsters looked like was lacking. Zombies were described as looking like a zombie, and seeing as these seem to be intelligent zombies, what does that mean? Do they have other defining features? Another criticism on description is the lack of creativity in description. The author did not use any creative/imaginative descriptions in the first part to describe things in terms of other things. (You might have said, “his skill peeled from his forehead like a banana” or something similar to bring in more creative and eerie descriptions.

The grammar was decent but sometimes encountered errors around dialogue which made it more of a struggle to figure out who was speaking. I didn’t notice spelling errors. I did find the choice to randomly italicize the middle section of the story strange and distracting.

The last comment I had is that the first line uses an adverb that weakens the delivery of the attempted hook.

Overall this is a decent read that with some work could become a really fun short story.

Tissues Required

For everyone who loved Monsters, Inc. as children, this story is definitely one that will make you tear up.

The story was engaging and interesting to read. I felt that the story was lacking in detail though. The author relies on the reader's knowledge to fill the universe, and very sparsely includes information. I think that going into this endeavor pretending that this is completely your own universe and the reader understands nothing would build this into an even better story.

There were a couple things that felt mildly out of place or confused me as a reader. I put the direct mentions to these issues in the spoiler section at the end of the review.

Otherwise I thought this story was interesting. I saw no grammatical/typographical issues and the plot of the story was decent. I would suggest this to anyone interested in short stories.

****WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD***

The advice about school to the woman's daughter felt very strange and out of place.

There is a confusing sequence of please come to my funeral in monster land, and please come to die here. Isn't he visiting her because this is the last time he can visit her before he dies? I became really confused by this sequence of events.

Interesting outline but lacking detail

The story itself was very interesting, but there was very little characterization and detailing to the story.

It took me reading through the first paragraphs a couple times to get the names straight. There were no details associated with the names and characters so all they were was names that I had to try and somehow keep straight.

Even by the end of the story I had no idea how anything looks. The holograph had no physical characteristics, the people had no physical characteristics, and the house's only physical characteristics were a couple of rooms and hallways.

This story has a lot of potential in terms of an interesting plot for a short story. The plot was engaging and was what kept me reading, but I felt like I was reading a white world with gray walls for rooms and black shadowy outlines for people. (I did imagine that the holograph looked like Spike from Buffy because spike...) but otherwise everything was a very blank world. Even a couple of details would have spiced it up a little bit.