Essie's Critiques

That Which is Unknown (2) | cre0adregar

YOUR GRAMMAR: (8/10) The most repetitive mistake I found was that you often slipped up your tense. Whether your story is set in past or present tense, you need to pick one and stay in it. If you're in past tense, you should use words such as "didn't" and "wanted." If you're writing in present tense, you should use, "don't" and "want." I've shown a few examples where you slipped up your tense below, so keep this rule in mind for future writing.

You hardly had any, but there were some instances where you had a comma splice. A comma splice is joining two different independent clauses together, and separating them with a comma, but not a conjunction. An example of this is: "I went to work, I drove in my car." These are two different independent clauses, "I went to work" and "I drove in my car." They both have predicates and subjects, and are separated with a comma. However, you must separate them with a conjunction as well. Without a conjunction, this turns into a comma splice. You have two options in this case. You can either replace the comma with a period and turn it into two different sentences, or add in a conjunction. In this case, the correction can be, "I went to work, and I drove in my car," or "I went to work. I drove in my car." While this explanation is unnecessary, I wanted to let you know in case this is new information for you.

You had some comma mistakes in your writing. Commas are used to separate different clauses. There are two types of clauses: Independent and dependent. They both have subjects (who/what is doing the action), and a predicate (the action being done). The difference between the two is that an independent clause can stand alone as its own sentence, while a dependent clause depends on another clause to make sense. If more than one clause is joined together, they should be separated with a comma. For example, this sentence, "I cried, then Billy ran away," there are two different independent clauses. One is "I cried," and the other is "Billy ran away." You'll notice that they're separated with a conjunction and a comma. You often misuse commas in this sense or forget to add them. Commas can also be used to separate an introductory phrase or word before the main clause. In the sentence, "Today I went to work," the independent clause is "I went to work," and you'll notice that it has a subject "I" and a predicate "went." The word "today" is excluded and needs to be separated with a comma. The correction is: "Today, I went to work."

This next one isn't really a grammatical error, but I wasn't sure where else to put this. You have a habit of repetitively stating names over and over again. For example, this sentence, "Ella went to the kitchen. Ella decided to eat lunch and settled on the couch with a sandwich. Then Ella took a nap," is awkward because of the amount of "Ella"s in it. This makes the sentences flow awkwardly and feel stilted. Instead, it'd be better to write it as, "Ella went to the kitchen. She decided to eat lunch and settled on the couch with a sandwich. Then she took a nap." If you've already mentioned a name earlier, there's no need to do it again (as long as it's obvious which person is being referred to). Instead, replace the name with a pronoun. I've pointed out some examples down below.

YOUR SPELLING ERRORS: (4/5) I spotted no spelling errors, and the mistakes I did spot seemed sparse and accidental (not repetitive). I noticed that some of your vocabulary and diction or phrasing was repetitive, however. This wasn't a huge problem, but when editing your chapters, I suggest limiting the amount of times you use a word. If working on a computer/laptop, you can use ctrl+f to see how many times a specific word shows up. If you also use writing tools such as ProWritingAid or thesaurus.com, there are alternate/more unique options for overused words.

YOUR PLOT: (19/20) Just like the first time I reviewed your story, the plot is impeccable. You've thoroughly incorporated world-building and had your characters have their own voices. You've thought through how each scene should work and even established rules or ordinary things in your world-building that might not be so ordinary in the real world. Your plotline has a clear direction and there is no confusion. I took off a point because as I ventured further into the story, there were specific scenes that were rushed or not expanded on. I've pointed out some examples in the chapter reviews, but I'll also address this when talking about your writing style/voice.