Title: Falling Apart
Author: I_Tamilore_Onkowe
Summary: [NO SCORE – WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN FINAL SCORE]
I have decided not to score the summary simply because I don't know how to score it. A traditionalist would probably give your summary a low score, because it doesn't really introduce much of the story. It gets the main character's name across and briefly introduces the theme underlying the story, but it is quite ambiguous and doesn't provide a general overview. However, I have a feeling that you weren't going for a traditional summary. Rather, you were going for an aesthetic one, which is popular on Wattpad. And since that is an intentional choice, I don't know how to score it. Sorry about that!
I will say, though, that it can be captivating to certain people. Some people like summaries like these, some people don't. It's very much a subjective thing.
Grammar: 2/5
This story, grammatically, needs work. You've got the basics and fundamentals down, so well done there! But there's a few things that disrupted the fluency of the story.
First of all, tenses. You need to decide on one and stick to it. Right now, you're constantly switching between past tense and present tense, and this is especially frustrating for a reader because it prevents the story from being cohesive. For example, in one paragraph you have:
"Ashley walks up to the counter and takes his place in line." [the he walks is present tense]
Then, in the next paragraph, you have:
"Ashley settled on the triple chocolate cookies instead." [the settled is past tense]
As you can see here, the tense changes from present to past even though the story is still narrating in a linear fashion. So you need to choose one and stick with it.
You also need to work on punctuation before the end of dialogue. If the dialogue is followed by a verbal tag (such as 'he said', 'he muttered' – or anything that refers to how the character is aying the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, it should be a full-stop. For example:
"That'll be four dollars." She says as she hands it to him.
This above example is inaccurate. The 'she says' is a verbal tag, because it's referring to the words spoken. It should be:
"That'll be four dollars," she says as she hands it to him.
And there are, of course, the subtle but crucial errors. Make sure you only have capitals at the beginning of sentences or for a proper noun, and make sure you learn to differentiate some similar words such as "too", "two" and "to", and "your" and "you're".
Character Building: 2/5
I understand that characters that we create are very close to our hearts. Please forgive me if I, in any way, hurt your feelings. But your characterisation needs work.
First of all, I feel like I know very little about the characters' personality traits. Most of their dialogue sounds awfully similar, and they seem to have very similar quirks. They all stutter when nervous, they all like making little quips, and there aren't enough idiosyncrasies that separates them for me. You need to flesh out the characters a lot more, because right now, I don't feel for them at all.
Part of this is because you don't show us what they are feeling. You need to do this so that readers can sympathise with your characters. For example, in that near-rape scene, when Ashley is slapped by Jonathon, what did it feel like? Did black smudges appear before his eyes? Did pain lance through his skin? You can't just say that he was slapped and leave it like that. There will be more about this in the section about writing style.
And speaking of the near-rape, wouldn't Ashley be traumatised? Because I didn't see any of that trauma show until after he was telling the story, but not before. You need to think these out, write down characters' backstories in a planner, and work out how you will subtly foreshadow information about the characters before they word-vomit it all out onto the page.
The dialogue is engaging and I like the banter – so well done on that component! But the relationships, particularly between Ashley and Ethan, moved way too fast. Soul mates or not, I feel like they didn't even get to know each other all that much. And that's because you didn't flesh out their characters. I suggest going back and taking time to really draw out your characters and help readers understand their feelings.
Writing Style: 2.5/5
I'm glad you take time to describe the setting! That was a nice way to ground the readers. Make sure you keep that description purposeful – don't describe every inch of the room unless it is really relevant to the story to come. And also try incorporating use of sensory imagery – so things like sound, smell and touch. They can be really handy. Literary devices also work really well in stories, so I encourage you to make use of those. Things like personification, metaphor and simile would make your story so much more exciting and interesting to read.
On a more critical note, your POV switches need work. It's far too sudden. I know your story is in third person, but if you're going to switch omniscient narrators, don't do it in the middle of the chapter without any forewarning. Either have an extra line gap, or simply change perspectives with the chapters. For example, Chapter 1 with Ashley as a narrator and Chapter 2 with Ethan as the narrator. If you have time, have a look at writing by the author Sarah J Maas – she has dozens of characters and POV switches, but each character sounds distinct and it is clear when there is a POV switch without her having to explicitly state it.
Also, you need to flesh out feeling more. I spoke about the slap in the previous criteria, so I'll talk about the kiss here. When Ethan and Ashley kiss, tell the audience what it feels like. Describe it for us. Make us yearn a relationship like theirs. And when someone feels angry, don't say that they're angry but describe it for us. Does his face become all red, hot and mottled? Can you feel his body literally simmering in the frigid, cool air? Use those literary devices to provide imagery and help us feel these characters even more!
Plot + Originality: 2/5
On a positive note, there were some pretty unique things about the story! I liked the way Ashley's homelessness tied a few things together, and that epilogue was certainly a surprise. But onto more critical things:
Again, I understand that stories are close to the hearts of all authors. So, again, please forgive me if I hurt your feelings. But I read through your entire story, so I can judge plot and I think I can safely say that there really wasn't much of one.
First of all, have you tried drawing a map for your story mountain for your story? A story mountain details the structure of your plot, and usually follows a similar scheme to the one below:
The reason I bring this up is that I felt like there was no climax to your story. There was no conflict, no tension, no drama. Nothing that made me want to see the resolution. It was just a happy little love story, in my opinion, with nothing that came in the way. And stories need to have something that gets in the way. There needs to be drama and tension – otherwise, what's the point of reading? All the chapters felt like filler chapters.
The only drama that ever seemed to happen was in the past, with Bella and Ashley's devastating backstory. Which is fine – but if that's going to be the case, you need to make that captivating. I read a story where the main character was in coma and reliving the past, but the reason I kept wanting to read was because I wanted to know exactly what put her in the coma and all the past events that led up to it. See how her story, despite all the drama being centred in the past, is still captivating? That's what you need to do.
Another thing: your story is in the paranormal genre. Why? Yes, we have a vampire, we have fairies and people who can produce gold. But what even was the purpose of that? They didn't really do anything with those supernatural elements. You could literally make all the characters humans and mostly nothing would change (except the near-rape, since Ashley used that to defend himself). Keep decisions like these purposeful. I didn't learn anything about your fairies or vampires. You need to flesh out your world a lot more. You also have a lot of dialogue and not enough action to counterbalance this, which makes the story incredibly repetitive.
The only real plot twist I saw was in the epilogue, with Aria introducing herself as the mother. But, again, what was the relevance? It's not like Ashley was actively looking for his mother, and it was never foreshadowed anywhere in the story.
I recommend you go over the story and try to add things that will draw the reader in. Keep them second-guessing, give them a mystery to unravel. And rethink the purpose of those supernatural elements – will they ever come into play? If not, don't include them.
OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/20
First of all, congratulations for completing a story! That takes a lot of hard work and dedication, so props to you. Now all you need to do is go back and edit those pesky grammatical mistakes, and also consider how you can make your story even more enticing for a reader.