Title: My Small Town by ghostofjolie and TheLittleMermaid
Source: ELGANZA, INC. | AWARDS by TheCieloCommunity
Category: Historical Fiction
Mature: N (natural disaster, religion)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Ongoing

Special note (judging): I had four books in this category, and the other judges (Karuar and Lunatic_Twilight) had four and three books, respectively.

Result: 59/100

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book, or click the link in the inline comments here. → 

*****

Rubric:
- Title: 5
- Book cover: 5
- Description (blurb): 5
- Plot & storytelling: 15
- Character development: 10
- Writing style: 10
- Grammar: 10
- Originality & creativity: 10
- Emotional impact: 10
- Pacing & structure: 5
- Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5
- Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10
Total: 100

*****

Total: 59/100

Title: 5/5
This is a nice, quaint title. It gives me comfy vibes.

A note about the authorship: I'm sure you have your reasons for posting the story this way, but I think it would be better to move this story to TheLittleMermaid's account so she can take credit for her own work and expand her writing with new stories (if she wants).

Cover: 2/5
It looks like the image got cut off, so not all the title or author's name is visible, but I'd recommend playing with this a bit, anyway. Right now, it's really just text typed over a picture. The cursive font is fine, but the black blends in too much with the background, and the placement feels weird to me. I think experimenting with borders or frames to dress the image up would be a good idea, and as for the text, I think the title would go best either straight across the top or set within the space on the upper left-hand corner where there's open sky. As for your name, I think the lower left-hand corner, right over the cement, would be a good place for that. But those suggestions may be moot, depending on any changes to the image like borders or frames, so you'd have to fiddle with it to see what works. Canva has a bunch of tools that could help you make this look a little nicer. I think the background picture is good and probably appropriate for the title and content of the story, so it's just the extra details to work on.

Blurb: 2/5
This is a very casual, informal blurb. The basics are here, so I know the setting, the plot conflict, and a little about the main character, so that's good, but it doesn't have much of a hook. I'm not huge on requiring everything to have some amazing hook that grabs readers and won't let them go, especially since that isn't appropriate for many genres, but it wouldn't hurt to reevaluate this blurb. At the very least, it has some grammatical errors that need fixing, and I'll go into those here. If you're interested in learning how to write a better blurb, check out the chapter on writing loglines and pitches in justwriteit's 8-Chapter Challenge. The concept is very similar to writing a blurb. Link in the in-line comments. → 

So, getting into the grammar, the first sentence is a run-on sentence that should actually be two or three sentences. "Hi" should be the first sentence, and I'd end that with an exclamation mark, because a period could make it look as if you're not excited about this story. The second sentence should either end with "story," or keep it with the next part by cutting the comma and "it is." Also, "sisters" should have an apostrophe, because it's possessive, not plural (sister's). For the next sentence, I'd cut "then," because it implies a reference to events that haven't happened (first ___, then___). Then, I'd add commas after "strikes" and "that." And in the last sentence, "finding" should be "finds."

Plot & storytelling: 10/15
The plot is simple and straightforward. It's all centered on an event called The Great Wind by the author (The Night of the Big Wind by Wikipedia), during which hurricane-force winds hit Ireland on the night of January sixth and seventh in 1839. If you like history or unusual weather phenomena, look it up. I'm sure you could find lengthy resources on the subject, but the Wikipedia page is actually pretty short for a historical event, so it's a nice, quick, informative read.

So, in this story, the main character is a 13-year-old Irish girl who lives through this. The story begins only a couple of days before the natural disaster hits, so the reader gets a taste of her normal life before, the shock during, and the difficulty recovering after the storm, both personally and as a part of the community. Her little sister goes missing that night, and that's the plot conflict. She's searching for her sister and scared of what happened to her.

There aren't any inconsistencies within the plot itself, but a key part of the strange weather was a heavy snowfall the night of January fourth and fifth, followed by above-average warm weather on the fifth which melted all the snow, and you didn't mention these details. You didn't state anything contradictory, either, so there aren't any historical inaccuracies, but slipping those details into the story would be a nice addition.

I like the little touches about the "sin of gossiping" and those other tiny details that ground this story in a particular time in history, but I have another little suggestion here, although I don't know if you'd want to (or even should) include it. According to Wikipedia, Irish folklore said Judgment Day would occur on January sixth, so some people thought this storm marked the beginning of the end of the world. Like I said, I'm not sure if you would want to include that in your story, as it could make things a lot darker and a lot more adult in tone than what you have here, but it would be interesting if you could find some way to incorporate it.

As far as the storytelling technique, I have an observation and a couple of minor suggestions. First, the observation. These two sentences are repetitive: "I am currently writing in my new journal, it is great enjoyment. I think I will make it my diary." Unless otherwise specified, journals are typically diaries, so the second sentence is unnecessary. The first sentence is also a run-on sentence, which you can fix by swapping the comma for a semicolon or period.

When the storm hits and Aisling gets injured, there's a short section at the top of one chapter where she isn't fully conscious. It gets confusing here, because you start this part in the past tense, whereas the rest of the story is in present tense, and then you flip-flop back and forth. I had a note that you might want to italicize Aisling's thoughts here, just to distinguish them from the narrative, but with this story being in the first person perspective already, I feel like separating thoughts is redundant. I think converting it all to the present tense would fix the problem.

I like the pronunciation guides for the names, but they break up the story, so I think moving them out of the narrative and into another location would be a good idea. You could create a pronunciation chapter where you list all the names and their pronunciations, adding to the list as you write the story, or you could move the pronunciations to the end of the chapter in a short author's note. Personally, I like the pronunciation chapter idea better, because then the reader can get an introduction to the names before they appear in the story.

Character development: 2/10
All the characters are pretty flat. I don't get a strong impression of personality traits from anybody, and even Aisling's thoughts aren't very revealing. It's all very factual, telling instead of showing, going from point A to point B with little time dedicated toward the descriptive details that bring characters to life. Adding those details to the dialogue tags would help a lot. Things like tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language speak volumes about a character's personality. Fleshing out Aisling's thoughts with more details about her emotions, specifically the effect they have on her (racing heart, wide eyes, sinking stomach), would make her a deeper, realistic, more relatable character, too.

Writing style: 6/10
Your writing is very clear and readable. It's not as engaging as it could be, but I think that's because of the lack of character development, so working on that would really help to draw the reader into the story and get that engagement going.

There are three specific suggestions that I noted, and the first involves the description of Laoise's appearance (coincidentally, I think she's the best-developed character). She's said to come out of nowhere, and then you say, "But her light wispy blonde hair and pale skin helps with her ghostly appearance." The "but" doesn't make sense here, because you're not contrasting her appearance with that tendency to appear out of thin air. You're reinforcing that implied impression of her being ghost-like.

There's one place where you use the phrase "wide gazed," and while that's technically fine, I'd recommend using the more common "wide-eyed."

And lastly, this sentence: "I had offered to make a soup out of grease and a chicken we pins running about but Aoefe said it was best for me to take a few of the little kids on a walk to keep them entertained." The problem is "pins." There are several instances in this story where the word you use is a close misspelling of the correct word, and I think this may be one of those cases. I can't figure it out, though. Is it "pinched"? Anyway, just pointing that out. The past tense in this sentence is fine, because it's in the past relative to the present point in the story, if that makes sense.

Grammar: 6/10
The problems I noted in the blurb with run-on sentences and possessive nouns continue throughout the story, along with a tendency to underutilize commas, and I already mentioned the past/present tense issues. My best overall recommendation would be to look into an editing tool to help proofread and catch mistakes. The one I use is the free version of ProWritingAid, which is a browser extension that works in the Wattpad writing interface. My only caution with editing tools is to avoid using rephrasing or rewriting functions, because those take your content and then completely rewrite it, so it no longer sounds like anything you wrote, because it isn't. It's now AI-generated content, which isn't allowed in most unofficial awards on Wattpad and none of the official ones.

Anyway, other problems I noticed are some occasional incomplete sentences. The first instance I noted may simply be a case of punctuation error: "I got two new dresses. a petticoat, a journal, and a necklace." The period after "dresses" should be a comma.

There are some noun-verb agreement issues as well: "Her family are farmers." In this example, "family" is a singular noun, but "are" is a plural verb, so you just need to switch that to the singular "is."

Dialogue tags are a consistent problem area. These are usually incomplete sentences describing who is speaking and how they're speaking, and they actually count as part of the last sentence in dialogue. You can often identify these through common phrases like "he said," "she asked," "they shouted." The first word of a dialogue tag should be lowercase unless it's a proper noun (or the pronoun "I"), because it's technically in the middle of a sentence, since it's part of the dialogue. That applies no matter what punctuation mark ends the dialogue. If the dialogue ends in a period, you need to change that to a comma to lead into the dialogue tag. There's no change for any other form of punctuation. So, time for some examples, and I'll try to show how to include more descriptive detail in dialogue tags, too.

"I can't find her," she says, her brows knit together with worry.
"Well, where have you looked?" he asked, trying to keep his tone upbeat.
"I've looked everywhere!" she shouted, bursting into tears.

The sentence following dialogue is not necessarily a dialogue tag. If it's a complete sentence that can stand on its own without the dialogue, it's probably not. In those cases, end the dialogue as you normally would (with a period instead of a comma), and capitalize the beginning of the new sentence as usual.

Here are the rest of the misspelled words I mentioned earlier (correct word on the right): a/I, made/maid, will/while, tis/this, slated/slayed, no body/nobody. There are some words throughout the story I think you should hyphenate as well, like shoulder-length.

There are a lot of questions throughout the story that don't end in question marks, so that's something to fix. And finally, there's this sentence: "I felt in my muddled reality——-that I was being pick up." The dash doesn't need to be there at all, and this is one of those past tense areas that should be present tense. So, the verbs should be "feel" and "am" instead of "was." And it should be "picked" up.

Originality & creativity: 8/10
When people think "original" or "creative," they're often thinking about fantasy stories with new takes on magic, metaphorical descriptions that feel poetic, unexpected concepts never heard of before. But originality and creativity come in all shapes and sizes, and exploring a historical event through the eyes of a teenage girl is original. You're putting your mind, your story, and the reader within the history and making it more real. So, yes, I would like more descriptive detail in this story to paint a more vivid picture, but it's original.

Emotional impact: 2/10
This just comes from the lack of character development. Since I can't connect with the characters, I can't empathize with them, which means I can't immerse myself into the emotions of the story. Working on character development will improve this aspect.

Pacing & structure: 5/5
I think the pacing is appropriate. Not too fast; not too slow. Plenty of room for filling in the details. There's one chapter that has formatting issues with a paragraph, and I could get nitpicky and say I prefer using one consistent type of section divider throughout, but that's not really a big deal.

Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5/5
Free points. Yay! 🙂

Overall enjoyment & engagement: 6/10
This is a cute little read. It taught me a little history, which I always love, and the portrayal of a community coming together to rebuild is heartwarming. I had difficulty connecting with the characters, though, which meant the story wasn't as engaging as it could be for me, but adding in a bit more detail would help with that.