Book: Love is All (Requested Oneshots)

Author: MeowMeow422

Genre: Short Story and Fanfic

Cover: 75/100
Okay, to start with, your cover is lacking in quite a few things, the biggest being what I like to call the “Read Me!” factor. What I’m basically saying is that your cover lacks in making your readers interested and excited to read your book. Based off of the watermark in the corner, I’m assuming you didn’t make your cover, but it’s very simple, and kind of all over the place. I would suggest finding an image to be the center of attention on your cover. Something that really draws people in. Maybe make it one of the main ships in your story, large and in the center, but don’t make it over-powering, with your title above it. Don’t use images from Google though, create something original, and if you struggle with creating covers, you can always ask the Wattpad community to help you out! And put your name on there somewhere. Be proud of your work! 

Blurb: 80/100
Short and sweet. But also intriguing. That’s what a blurb should be. Something about your story that, just like your cover, makes your readers want to read. Personally, I love your blurb, and it definitely intrigues me. But maybe, it’s a little too intriguing? It doesn’t really say much about what your book is. So, my suggestion is this, add an extra paragraph saying something like, “Enjoy this collection of short stories featuring your favorite characters, and a whole lot of love…” or whatever you choose. Just make sure your readers know what they’re about to read. Another suggestion is to change the wording on a few of your sentences to make it flow a little better. For example, remember to use contractions. (Remember this when writing anything!) This will always, always, make your writing more natural and your readers happier. I’ve fixed it for you:

It isn’t merely sweaty palms…

See? A simple fix. And in the last sentence, because the comma looks a little bit awkward there, you could change it to:

Because… love is all.

This also makes it a little more dramatic, which is the effect you're going for.

First Impressions: 65/100 (Forever Home)

Okay… since there were quite a few serious grammatical issues, I’ve decided to break down each one.

Tense - Excuse me while I put on my English teacher voice… Ahem… Past, present, and future. Those are three kinds of tenses that you can use while writing, and the tense you chose to use was, well, all of them. For the most part, you used present tense to write your story, which was your first mistake. It’s perfectly fine to use present tense if you know how to use it well, and unfortunately, this story is not a good example. Luckily for you, past tense is a much easier alternative and is usually the norm for most stories. It’s easier to remain consistent when you write in past tense, or it is my experience, and in this story part, your tense is very inconsistent. So if your heart is set on present tense, here are some mistakes you need to fix:

In the very first paragraph, you wrote, “When he saw Tom, his eyes shone with mischief.” Saw is a past tense (pst) verb, and so is shone.

To fix this, it’s very simple. “When he sees Tom, his eyes shine with mischief.”

Always make sure to proofread sentences and make tense corrections! These kind of mistakes are very frequent in your story.

Another example in the first paragraph is, “As soon as the feline sat down, all the traps sprung.” This sentence is written entirely in past tense. You need to change it to, “As soon as the feline sits, the traps spring.”

All I'm basically doing is changing the tense of the verbs.

Again, if your heart is set on writing in present tense, go for it. But if you can, it’ll be a lot easier to change it all to past tense. And it’ll make it sound better as well. Use google and grammar articles to help you fix these mistakes.

Punctuation and Wording:
What I'm adressing when I say punctuation in this instance, is merely comma use. I won’t go into detail about basic punctuation because you have that down, but you have a lot of misplaced or unneeded commas. 

For example, “Quickly, he wore some oven mitts, then opens the oven to take out the pastry; a banana cream pie, with a cherry on top.” This sentence is an example of over-wordiness as well as unnecessary comma and semi-colon usage. (And tense issues, but we've already addressed that)

A semicolon is used to combine similar ideas. For example, “Cake is good; I like cake.” These are two independent phrases, but you can combine them using a semicolon. You could also write this sentence as “Cake is good, so I like cake.” You can usually replace the conjunction/transitional phrase with a semicolon.

Going back to the aforementioned example in your story, you also used unnecessary commas in your sentence. You could’ve written: “Quickly, he puts on some oven mitts and opens the oven to remove the pastry: a banana cream pie with a cherry on top.” By choosing to remove many of your commas I have improved the flow of this sentence, and I also replaced your semicolon with a colon, which I felt better suited the context considering you were explaining what this pastry was.

Be sure to proofread every word of your story, changing punctuation, wording, phrasing, etc, and it’ll definitely improve your story.

There were a few more more examples of over-wordiness, and to give you just an overall idea, I’ll discuss one more: “Tom was completely unnafected; he simply stood up and brushed off the traps from his butt and sat back down.” In this instance, you should actually use more commas in order to, again, improve the flow of this sentence.
You should change it to: “Tom is completely unnaffected; he simply stands, brushes the traps off his butt, then sits back down.”

Again, don’t be afraid to use a grammar checking app and/or Google articles to help you with your grammar issues. I have to use Google all the time!

Dialogue: Ah, my favorite subject of discussion! First of all, just to let you in on little secret, thoughts are dialogue too! I have a question for you first though… Why do Tom and Jerry speak in sign language? It really doesn’t make much sense since they are both perfectly capable of speaking words. Just some food for thought, by the way, don’t feel obligated to change it. But something you do need to change is the sign-language dialogue. When people use ASL in real life, there are no “connecter-words” essentially. What I mean is when they mean, “I’m going to the store,” they really sign, “me go store.” So maybe when you have either Tyke, Tom, or Jerry speaking in sign-language say something like:

     Tyke made signs asking Jerry if he’d baked something. He nodded, pointing to the kitchen.

     “Banana cream pie,” Jerry signed back.

Keep any dialogue spoken in sign-language short and with little or no connecting words.

That leads me to my next concern. You see how I formatted the sentences above. Your story margin needs to be all the way to the left, unlike how you have it centered now. And every time someone new speaks, you start a new line.

     Like this. And do you notice that space between the top line and the margin that doesn’t exist on the lower lines? That’s called indentation, and every single paragraph needs to start like that. There are some writers that choose not to use indentation, and in my opinion, it doesn’t look as professional. So if you’d like to indent, press the tab key, or press space five times every time you start a new line.

As an example, I’ve fixed this sentence for you:

     “You’s comin’ whether you want to or not,” Spike says.

     Tom huffs. “I don’t” He gives the taller male a glare.

I like how you used italics to signify thoughts, but the underline isn’t really necessary. Remember, you just want to point out the words as different, not make them the center of attention.

And when you end a string of dialogue, if you use a word such as said, replied, screamed, etc. at the end, use a comma instead of a period at the end of your dialogue. For example:

     “Hi,” he says, "How are you?

And if the says isn't followed by more dialogue, you would end it with a period. But if the dialogue has another string, put a comma after the says. If there is no says and the dialogue is followed by an action or something else, put a period before the second quotation mark.

Example: "Hi." He smiles. "How are you?"

Your dialogue doesn’t always have to be followed by a word like says. You can always show actions that show what the character is saying as well.

When a quote is a question, you should end it with a question mark and simply make the first letter of the pronoun that follows it lowercase.

Example: "How are you?" he asks.

Another thing is that I noticed you like to adress your charcters as the one with blue eyes, green eyes, blue hair, brunette and the likes. But, initially reading this, it was a bit confusing as to who was who, so just try to stick to the characters’ actual names, and focus on describing them at a different point in the story.

Dialect
I get that you mess up Spike’s words to emphasize his inability to speak correctly, but you kind of BUTCHER his speech. There’s actually a lot of debate about whether or not dialect should be present within your actual dialogue, or just in the context around it. What I mean by that is there are some authors that write like you do, typing Spike’s speech mistakes in his dialogue, and there are other who would simply type: 

“You’re coming whether you want to or not,” Spike said in his normal speech, messing up half the words that came out of his mouth.

I personally like using dialect within the dialogue, but there are some points where you took it to an extreme. 

For example, you should change (I’m not going to type out the old sentences, but you should be able to find them) these sentences to, “Me and Cat gives up hope after the tenth home, but one day we was adopted by’s a loving couple.” I literally just tone down the sentence the tiniest bit, yet it sounds so much better. Also, be a little more selective when you choose what words Spike adds an S to. Make it sound like natural messups. You also have inconcistencies when it comes to adding apostrophes to Spike’s misspoken words. Just go back through, and anytime that word is turned into something that isn’t a word, put an apostrophe. Use my example above. Since gives is a word by itself, I put no apostrophe, but since bys is not a word, I put an apostrophe. And also, change Aquarium-ez to just Aquariums. The -ez just adds an extra level of confusion. And “What do you” should be contracted into Whad’ya.

Sound Words!
Bang! Pow! These are words most commonly seen in comic books, and in my opinion, should not be seen very often in book-like written works. AKA: Onomotopeia, sound words were used quite a few times within this story, and I found that you used them fairly well. I also think you used them too much. Try to cut out any unnescesary ones, and again, when you point out a word’s importance, just italicize it. The underline is unnescesary.

Further Analysis: 80/100
Whoo! Finally done with grammar!!! Now we get to move on to the real reason you probably wanted me to review your book: The Storyline. You asked me in your comment to explain how reading this made me feel. But… what exactly do you mean by that? I’m assuming you're asking me to evaluate the tone of your story, and if that’s the case, it’s obviously supposed to be sad, but it really isn’t. Don’t call me heartless, for this, but I kind of laughed when your story said that Tom had stage 4 cancer. I mean, I get that this is a short story, and I get that his depressed mood beforehand is supposed to lead up to this event, but there really should’ve been more development up to this point. Like maybe you could’ve included a section talking about Tom’s declining health over time, and Jerry never thinking it could’ve been cancer. And when Tom dies, I appreciate the both sullen and joyful mood you try to create by him imagining being reunited with their parents.

And I like your character consistency. Oftentimes writers start writing and just write random dialogue that doesn’t seem like something that character would say. For the most part you did well on that, so keep it up! There isn’t really much to say issue-wise on your plot considering this is a short-story, but I didn’t really like the fact that Tom died the morning after he was diagnosed with cancer. I wouldv’e liked to see some more info in between such as maybe just writing that for months he’d been seeking treatment, but it never seemed to help. Just something to prolong his death just a little. I think it’s fairly well written, but you could try to be a little more advanced in the vocabulary you choose. And a lot of times I see sentences that repeat themselves.

FE, There’s a sentence that says: “‘Maybe I should close my eyes…’ Tom thought as he gave into exhaustion, closing his eyes.” I hate seeing words/phrases back to back like that (closing eyes), so you could change that last part to:

“...he gave into exhaustion, his vision fading to black as he shut his eyelids.”

And why are a few words in Tom’s letter bolded? I’d probably remove that...

Final Notes: 75/100
The previous section really just serves as an analysis for the actual storyline aspects of your story such as plot, tone, and the aforementioned things, but really your story is really only lacking in the actual grammar part. Trust me, if you use these thoughts as well as your current knowledge (and maybe some help from Google) you can definitely improve this story by 100%. Also, apply all you’ve learned to the other short stories in your book, and everything else you write for that matter, and you’ll grow so much as a writer. I really enjoyed reading your story, a diamond in the rough, and I can’t wait to see what improvements you make to your story.

Again, LMK if you have questions, and thanks again for letting me read your story!

—Cyprus