FLOW | 9/10
Taking out stuff to keep the flow
This story flows very well, but one thing I noticed is a bit of unnecessary details here and there. They're very specific, very nitpicky things, but they tripped me up a bit. For example:
'She recognized him by sight as a regular...'
The 'by sight' there doesn't seem necessary to me, and it kind of bogs down this sentence. It's a lot cleaner and clearer to just say 'she recognized him as a regular.' If you really want to get into details to make this recognition more emphasized, you can rearrange it to play off one of his physical characteristics by saying his shaggy black hair was familiar and now she recognizes him as a regular, that kind of thing. There were a few instances where one detail wasn't totally necessary for either my understanding or the worldbuilding.
Adding in stuff to keep the flow
So on the opposite side of the coin (heh), sometimes you skip by an action that I think needed a bit more focus in order to keep the flow. Using this as an example:
'The woman chugged down the rest of her coffee and sighed.'
To me, chugging down a drink is a long action, and here it felt unnatural how fast it occurred, clashing with the sigh that came after. If you don't want to rearrange something entirely, you could just take out the sigh and put this one sentence by itself, but I think it would be a lot more effective in a circumstance like this to create levels on the time dimension. What I mean by that is having Skye or whoever it is do their longer action (in this case chugging a coffee) while Mori makes some sort of deduction about them. So you could say something like:
'As the woman chugged down the rest of the coffee, Mori noticed her dishevelled hair and dark circles under her eyes.'
While this does flow better, it also creates those levels I mentioned. Often, stories are very linear in the fact that this happens, then this happens. When we have internal thoughts occurring while the characters are doing something, it takes out the awkward pause-and-runs that happen sometimes.
DESCRIPTION | 7/10
Scenes
The absolute biggest issue I had with this story was that the awesomeness wasn't emphasized enough. This is a seemingly cyperbunk-dystopian world where people get sucked into AI games without consent. That's pretty wild, and also presumably pretty futuristic, but I didn't feel a lot of world-building in this story. Maybe you didn't want to lean into those styles to keep the story intro short, but it really would've helped me picture this world and how it's works. I can understand the creative choice to make the 'real world' in this story very simple and boring to contrast this video-game world she's about to enter (in which the description was a lot more prevalent), but I'm not sure its all that needed. I really wanted some cool world-building about the technology or the lifestyle in this world--even if it came in the form of an electric bus or a super futuristic building when Mori goes to see Skye. Essentially, I just felt like there was a lot of opportunity to expand on where we are and fluff up your genre a bit!
Characters
While Mori, her sister and her family are all introduced with excellent expertise, it happened much too fast for me. The biggest problem in my eyes was how little we got to understand Shiori and Mori's relationship before they got ripped apart. Shiori is the driving force of motivation for the upstart of this entire book, but Mori and her only had one interaction before she needed to be saved (in the current timeline). For the readers, that means we never really get the opportunity to get as upset as Mori is about Shiori disappearing. Even though they're siblings, not everyone would go into an AI world and risk death for their siblings (I don't even think my brother would realize I was gone) so I just didn't feel as much for this pairing as I needed to in order to immerse myself in this story.
Now, I understand this is a novella and needs to move quickly, but luckily, I'm one of those people whose first drafts are usually tens of thousands of words too many, so I'm well-versed in crunching down a lot of info into small areas. So here are some tips I have for fitting in a meaningful relationship into just a few chapters:
- Have Mori do something for her sister even when she's not there. A perfect opportunity is quickly showing us when she buys the game for Shiori. This would give us another sister scene without actually having both parties there, and it could be super quick. A lot of small mentions over a period of time=increased importance to the reader.
- Have Mori's internal dialogue turn back to her sister as much as possible. Like when she's trying to make conversation on the date, she could bring up her sister. As someone who is also obsessed with my sister, I rarely go three words without mentioning her. This just shows us how much Mori is thinking about her and how much she means to her.
- Have a false alarm. One of the most effective ways to convey a meaningful relationship is to have some sort of false emergency where Mori thinks her sister is hurt in some way and panics a little to show us how much she cares. For example, when someone who means a lot to me doesn't pick up on the third or fourth ring, my head starts to list all the awful things that could've happened to them. This can also elaborate on a certain protectiveness Mori feels over her sister and why she soon faces the risk of death to save her. A perfect opportunity for this is to move the memory of when Shiori gets hurt in kickboxing to before the incident. This would also allow you to capitalize on how tough Shiori seems now, but how Mori knows she's still scared of the dark before the incident as well.
Overall, I think if you examine the first two chapters of the story, you'll see a lot of places where this relationship can be strengthened! Even just emphasizing the interaction they did have about playing the game could assist this aspect.
CONCEPTS| 09/10
Plot
I've already mentioned that I have some quarrels with the speed of the plot, but those are pretty much vanished by the time Mori enters the game. We have a big scary welcoming moment with the wolves, then a new friend to help her right off the bat, then some more action and resolution. For as far as I read, the plot is moving perfectly from that point on, indicating that the speed in the beginning was just due to a need to get to the starting place of the book. Anyway, excellent plot progression past those intro chapters.
Tone
I really like Mori and her dialogue. She's quite trusting with all these people making her sign things and put little devices in her, but that's understandable with her circumstance. Still, I worry about the intentions of those people, which is great, because it shows how invested I am in what happens to Mori. She's honourable, which is something that's shown both from her bravery to save her sister and also how she encouraged Ronin to show mercy to someone who was being pretty nasty to her. I think your far-removed tone is easy to read and get into.
FINAL COMMENTS | 52/60
I really enjoyed reviewing this story, and other than the Mori-Shiori stuff and digging more into the cyberpunk world-building, I really didn't have much to say. This is such an original idea, and coming back to the coin flip again and again is just such a cool way to tie everything together. I know it's based off prompts, but It's still one of the most unique storylines I've ever seen, and the concept of how the game preys on your intrusive thoughts is so intriguing. All the best with editing, Miya!
Facing Fear (T)
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