Congratulations to the winners!

There will be three placement winners and one honorable mentions, so four overall winners. Due to the amount of backouts this contest has received, several categories will only have one honorable mention. I'm sorry, I want to have two, but with how many people have been backing out, it's almost impossible for me to. 20+ people have backed out of my summer contests, many of which being for this one, so I'm in a tough spot thanks to that. Please stop backing out when I'm in the middle of judging. I never had this problem before with any of my past awards. I don't know what it is about this one, but I've received a major influx of backouts. Please do not back out anymore since this contest will be completed soon.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know, though I am not tolerating disrespect or hate.

Please read your review all the way through before asking questions since I sometimes take a while to explain, so your question may be answered by the time I finish up the review.

Next: I am working on best grammar and best ending. Best style will be out ASAP.

Now that the contest is more than halfway complete, I am no longer allowing backouts for any category.

3rd Place

Master Plan by InheeStar

Review:

The dialogue throughout Master Plan overall reflects the characters well, and dialogue tags are done correctly. A huge, huge part of this category is dialogue tags being done correctly, so good job there. Grammatically, the tags are done consistently right, and the grammar within the dialogue is good too.

The only critique I have is you frequently use actions as dialogue tags, like Jungkook sighed, or Jungkook typed, or Yoongi groaned, etc. These are all actions and not really tags. This is a bit of a major critique since actions as tags can easily come off as unnatural due to the very nature of the phrase dialogue tag. Dialogue tags tag just that: dialogue, not people. So when there's something like "Jungkook sighed" being used as a tag, it almost implies the dialogue is the one sighing, not Jungkook, even if you're explicitly saying "Jungkook sighed." Because it's being used as a tag, it almost implies the words are the thing doing the actions and not the characters, so that's why I advise against using them as tags, especially since there are really easy alternatives that can keep the actions without making them tags. Here are two alternatives:

Jungkook sighed. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," Jungkook said with a sigh.

So those are two ways to tweak actions as tags without removing the action, though I encourage you to play around with it!

All in all, the dialogue is strong throughout the story and reflects the characters well. Dialogue tags are done correctly, and the grammar within the dialogue is good, so good job with it!

2nd Place

Forget Me Not by LadyBethany

Review:

The dialogue throughout the story is overall solid and does a good job portraying the time period, and the dialogue gets better as it goes on, but it was always solid even from chapter 1, I just wanted to appreciate the clear improvement as time went on. It's always a good sign to see improvement, especially when it started off good too, so that was fun to see. I thought you did a great job in particular with the worldbuilding through dialogue and giving the characters speech styles and little quirks that not only fit in with the atmosphere of the world, but also their personalities.

Only a couple of critiques. In chapter two, tags are written like this: "It is a day of happiness, my love.", Corlys remarked. The period and the comma are placed incorrectly, but this is only present in chapter 2. In every other chapter, even chapter 1, this doesn't happen, so I'm not going to dwell on it since it's not a big deal, but still worth mentioning since I found it a bit odd that only one chapter had wrong tags. But other than that one chapter, the tags were done correctly, so good job!

My second, and final, critique is that sometimes the dialogue gets repetitive since sometimes most of the dialogue will have the same tag intro style like She said, "Dialogue." And She remarked, "Dialogue." The intro tags were noticeable and got repetitive due to how often they appeared. Consider diversifying this more since sometimes you'd have a bunch of tags in a row that all started that way, and since the intro tags are more noticeable as they stand out more, they call more attention to themselves and are more noticeable when they're repeated, so consider diversifying it here and there. That being said, the grammar within the dialogue is good and the dialogue is good otherwise, so those were my only two critiques.

All in all, the dialogue throughout the story is good and reflects the period well. I only had minor critiques, but the overall dialogue is solid!

1st Place

Their Parallel Universe by _reichii

Review:

The dialogue throughout the story is overall very solid and does a great job portraying the narrative's themes and the characters' personalities. I particularly liked Eujae's dialogue and found it to be the most entertaining in the entire book. Along with that, dialogue tags are done correctly, so that's always a bonus! There was also a lot of subtext/hidden meaning inside the dialogue, and the story around the dialogue was interesting, too. You had secondary actions and nonverbal communication present to enhance the dialogue and make it feel more realistic, which I thought was awesome.

The only critique I have is you have a consistent grammar error where you'll capitalize an improper noun when continuing dialogue with a comma and not a period. Here are some examples: "Yay, it's him" his classmate squeals, "He looks really cute today too" (chap 6). "Seriously, you're so cute. I badly want to kiss you right now," Eujae murmurs against Poll's head, "But I know your first kiss..." (chap 32). "You're buying the strawberry cake? I thought you want the chocolate one?" the shop attendant asks, sounding confused, "You can get it now that your boyfriend is here" (chap 33).

So in all of those sentences, the first letter of the second half of the sentences ("he," "but," and "you") need to be lowercase because they are continuations of the dialogue and not new pieces of dialogue or new sentences. If you were using a period/full stop, then it'd be okay to capitalize those words, but since you're connecting dialogue using a comma, then it needs to be lowercase unless it's a proper noun.

All in all, the dialogue in Their Parallel Universe does a great job including subtext inside it to make it feel more well-rounded and layered, and it also has the added bonus of having strong SPAG within the dialogue itself and with the tags. Other than that one grammar thing I mentioned, it's overall good. Great job!

Honorable Mention

Rule #1 by rcpcswrites

Review:

The dialogue throughout this story is really fun and funky, and that's one of the things I liked most about it. There's a lot of flair, fun, and style to it. It's unlike any other dialogue I've seen before, that's for sure, and I mean that in a good way since it stands out and is easily the most unique dialogue in this entire category, and I think you deserve appreciation for experimenting so much and making your dialogue more stylistic.

I honestly like the excessive italics and just how many words were emphasized like that. Normally excessive italics can be hard on the eyes, but I enjoyed its usage here and thought it was fun to read. It gave the story more charm, and I felt the italics fit in with the chosen storyline and characters.

I only have two critiques. One is I'd suggest not using actions (chuckled, laughed, smiled, nodded, etc.) as tags because they can come off as unnatural and like you're saying the words are the ones doing the chuckling/laughing/smiling/etc. That's because they're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so if you have a tag like "he chuckled," it can make it seem like the words are chuckling. I advise against this because there are such easy fixes to this where you can have the action without needing to use it as a tag. Here are two alternatives:

He chuckled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a chuckle.

So those are two more natural alternatives that give the best of both worlds since it still includes the action without making it the tag, if that makes sense. Otherwise, I think the dialogue tags were all good from what I saw; they were formatted correctly.

Secondly, while I did find the italics charming and fun to read, there were times the amount of dashes and ellipses (...) mixed with the italics made it hard to read. There were times you would use like 5+ dashes and ellipses almost back-to-back, and that when combined with the italics made it a little difficult to follow; however, I still respect this because you were playing around with your writing a lot, so I can't fault you too much for this since I appreciate the dedication to try new things with your dialogue and really try to make it unique and stylistic. I'll always praise creativity.

All in all, this story has extremely fun dialogue that was fun to read about and kept me entertained from the very first line, and I think that was the dialogue's strongest part, but the tags were also done grammatically correctly, which is an added bonus. I had some critiques for actions as tags and considering downsizing on ellipses/dashes in dialogue, but I otherwise really liked the dialogue.

ALL REVIEWS:

Broken Hearts by ShuKurenai2009

Review:

I believe I've mentioned this in my best plot review for you, though the dialogue is in script format here, which takes away a lot of the emotional impact from the narrative as script style is meant more for plain dialogue rather than emotional dialogue. Script style is very matter-of-fact and meant to be plain but clear so actors performing the scripts have room to experiment with the dialogue without getting confused about what the dialogue means, so because of that, I would suggest using book format dialogue when writing books. If you'd like to write scripts, I absolutely encourage that. I personally love writing scripts and do it all the time for my job, so I encourage you to try writing scripts if that's what you're interested in! I suggest using a free trial of Celtx, if that's the kind of writing you're interested in. I personally use Celtx and love it. It automatically formats your work to script format, so you don't have to do any of the formatting manually through a site like Google Docs. The formatting of scripts can be hard to learn, so that's why I recommend using Celtx since it automatically does all that for you.

But script format aside, this is written as a hybrid between script and book format, so that's why I'm suggesting not using script format, or going all the way and making it all script format. You have only script format dialogue but no other signs of script format, so that's why I'm suggesting either going to book format dialogue to make it a full book, or going all the way and making everything like a script, if that makes sense.

When it comes to the dialogue, I think there is potential since you have good ideas and interesting characters, and I like the way you write Shu, I just suggest some tweaks to the presentation of your dialogue and the grammar within the dialogue to help it flow smoother and get your ideas across more clearly. I hope that makes sense!

Chefs' Kiss by strawberry1d

Review:

I like the implementation of French in the dialogue, oftentimes with the French being mixed between English to make for an interesting reading experience as we put all the words together like a puzzle. It's a cool, fun thing to do, and it made me laugh at myself cause I learned French for three years and I barely knew bonjour, so that was an added joy for me. Along with that, I thought Jin's dialogue was pretty good and did a good job reflecting him as a person. I loved his cute little nicknames and speech style. Throughout the story, the dialogue tags are also done well.

The main critique I have is there are a lot of editing errors, normally 5-10+ times per chapter. Like "Morning....morning!Do we have a meeting..." and " You don't have to deal... You work so hard, baby. "She smiled and... (chap 5). These are extremely frequent where quotation marks are placed in odd places and there are frequent spacing errors in the dialogue. This made the dialogue really hard to read at times due to the frequent spacing errors and placements of the quotation marks being off, and that when combined with there being a foreign language in there could make it even trickier at times, so I would suggest spending some time editing those kinds of errors whenever you get a chance.

Secondly, occasionally you'll have actions as tags, like bow or chuckled. I would advise against doing this since actions as tags can be really unnatural due to the phrase being dialogue tags: they tag dialogue, not people, so when you have something like "he chuckled" as a tag, it can come off as the words doing the chuckling, not the person. This is a debated topic, though I personally believe actions as tags are unnecessary and extremely avoidable since there are many, many alternatives, some of which even including the action still. Here are two alternatives that still include the action:

He chuckled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a chuckle.

So those are two ways to include the action without using it as a tag. I hope that makes sense.

All in all, the dialogue here is interesting, and Jin's in particular was fun to read about. I just suggest some minor tweaks to help with the dialogue's readability!

Infernal Desires by kookiesandtae01

Review:

I like the intensity of the dialogue in many of the scenes, like in the Rescue Tae chapter, when Y/n is running back and forth all panicked while she feels her world is falling apart. The dialogue being so intense and interesting made that scene even stronger and added more tension for the audience. I think that may be my favorite moment of dialogue in the story since it does a great job capturing that intensity. In general, you do a good job with the intense moments and keeping up the fast pace with them, often including secondary actions and nonverbal communication around the dialogue to make it feel more fleshed out and interesting, and how the characters are feeling heavily impacts their dialogue, like Y/n panting and being unable to finish some of her sentences. So there's a lot to like here about this dialogue, and I think you did good with it.

Dialogue tags are a little inconsistent in terms of their grammar. Sometimes you do them really well with correct grammar, like with special punctuation like ? or !. From the Rescue Tae chapter, there's this line: "What happened?" he asked calmly. That's good! You did it correctly there, which is really good. However, there's also a lot of inconsistency where tags are done incorrectly. For example, from the Ring chapter: "Open the mid last drawer, I thought you might in need of them" He said gently. For the majority of the chapters in the book, you don't have end punctuation for dialogue, but end punctuation is needed, and a lot of the tags are capitalized despite not being proper nouns when they need to be lowercase. So it should be: "...I thought you might be in need of them," he said gently. Since he isn't a proper noun, it needs to be lowercase, and dialogue always needs end punctuation.

The second critique I have is to consider not using actions as tags, like he smiled, he nodded, he laughed, etc. This is because actions as tags can come off as unnatural. They're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so if you say something like "he smiled," it can come off as the words smiling, if that makes sense. This is a debated topic, though I personally align with the side that it's unnatural and unnecessary, especially since there are so many alternatives. Here are two alternatives using the smiled example:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

So those are two ways to include the actions without making the actions the actual tags, making it a little more natural. I hope that makes sense.

All in all, the dialogue has strong moments, particularly during the intense scenes, and does a good job factoring in character feelings to shape how dialogue is presented. I had some critiques for the dialogue tags, which is a very important part of dialogue formatting, though the dialogue was overall good.

Shattered Illusions by ocesasam

Review:

The dialogue is pretty fun to read, especially in chapter 4 where all the guys are bantering and messing around with Jungkook. I thought that whole chapter was really good in general, not even talking about the dialogue in specific anymore, the whole thing was just fun to read and had a lot of fun moments in it, but a lot of that is thanks to the dialogue bringing the characters to life. I also like how many of the characters are very expressive through their body language and hand gestures, like Namjoon using his hands to gesture a lot. That may not seem like part of the dialogue, but it really enhances the lines being said and makes them feel more lively, so that's an aspect I liked a lot about it.

There are some dialogue tag issues with there being no end punctuation for some of the dialogue. From the most recent chapter (at the time of reviewing), chapter 4, there's this: "Sure, it's fine" he whispered. Dialogue tags are also inconsistent where sometimes you lowercase them and sometimes you don't, like this, also from chapter 4: "She'll have something non-alcoholic instead," He said to the waiter. There's end punctuation for the dialogue, though the tag is now capitalized despite not being a proper noun. There's also these two lines right after: "Do you have any non-alcoholic wine?" He asked. "...Which of these would you like to have Ma'am" The waiter asked. So the dialogue tag errors are very frequent. When using tags, they must be lowercase, even in cases where the dialogue ends with ? or !, unless they're a proper noun, like Jungkook. But just pronouns like he/she should be lowercase. Dialogue always needs end punctuation. If you are using a tag, then the dialogue needs to end with anything other than a period/full stop. If you are not using a tag, then the dialogue needs to end with anything other than a comma.

You could also benefit from compressing dialogue. Those three examples I used were all one person talking, and this is how it looks in the text:

"Sure, it's fine" he whispered, nodding slightly.

"She'll have something non-alcoholic instead," He said to the waiter.

"Do you have any non-alcoholic wine?" He asked.

This is all Jungkook speaking, if I'm not mistaken. You don't need to split it up and give three dialogue tags. Instead, you can just use one. Consider compiling them to something like this:

"Sure, it's fine," he whispered with a nod. He motioned to the waiter. "She'll have something non-alcoholic instead. Do you have any non-alcoholic wine?"

See how that eliminates two unnecessary tags and helps the dialogue flow smoother now that all the lines the same person is speaking are in their own space? So that's why I say consider compressing the dialogue when you have moments like that, if that makes sense.

All in all, the dialogue has many fun moments and really cool aspects, like the hand gestures that a lot of the boys, like Namjoon, make before, after, and while talking, which makes the dialogue feel more well-rounded. I had some critiques for the tags and compression, but I otherwise liked the dialogue.

Just One Night by DragonRose25

Review:

Something I appreciate right off the bat is how dialogue tags are done correctly, and they're also not overused. You don't use a bunch of tags and instead rely on other methods, like the back and forth speech pattern and introductory actions, to show who's speaking instead of tell us, which I think is really good. However, what I love most is how the dialogue bounces back and forth between the characters, and how that reflects of the genre of the story so much. It makes the story feel more alive and interesting when the characters are able to have dialogue that feels like it connects and has meaning while also giving depth to the world, so I think you did a great job with that!

I only have two critiques. One is I would suggest avoiding using actions (gasped, shrugged, laughed, hissed, giggled, chuckled, etc.) as tags. This is because they can come off as unnatural due to the very words dialogue tag. They tag dialogue, not people, so tags like "he giggled" can come off as the words giggling, not the person. This is a debated topic, though I align more with the "it looks unnatural" side, especially since there are countless alternatives to using actions as tags. Here are two alternatives you can use while keeping the action, only not using it as a tag:

He smiled. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," he said with a smile.

So those are two ways to include the action without needing to use it as a tag!

The second critique is there were times I felt your dialogue tags were a little much in terms of what words you were using as tags. I don't think you used the tag "said" once in the entire narrative, and the tags were things like offered, provoked, explained, spoke, sputtered, remarked, retorted, demanded, mused, ordered, faltered, paused, admitted, breathed out, reasoned, introduced, gushed, etc. Paused is used as a tag a lot, so consider diversifying that and looking for different ways to introduce a pause instead of using it as a tag, since the words "he paused" being used as a tag can look a little unnatural, in my opinion (for the same reasons actions as tags look a bit unnatural).

Luckily, you don't use tags too often like I mentioned before, though when you're constantly using the more out-there tags, it's noticeable and can take away from the emotion of the scene. That's why I suggest the 50-30 advice to you, but mostly the 30 part. I'll recite the whole thing either way. The 50-30 advice of dialogue says that of your dialogue, 50% or less should have tags, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. This is because dialogue tags are inherently telling over showing, so the more attention you're calling to them, the more attention you're calling to telling over showing. And, more importantly, what is the single most important part of dialogue? That's right, the dialogue itself! So if the tags are taking away from the dialogue by overusing the more out-there ones, it can detriment the emotional weight. Contrary to popular belief, it's not poor word choice to use said/asked multiple times. It becomes poor word choice if tags are overused, but if there's a good balance, it's actually stronger word choice because those two tags blend in more. That's not to say never use different tags; that's why it's 30% out of 50%, not 50% out of 50%. Not to mention you may be able to get away with more in your genre, so maybe you can bump it down to 25% out of 50%. However, I just recommend being careful with the more out-there tags since they can very easily take away from the actual dialogue and make the dialogue over-reliant on the tag instead of the words actually being spoken to display the emotions, if that makes sense.

All in all, Just One Night has interesting dialogue that has a great balance of tags to dialogue, never overusing tags and also doing them correctly, which I think is great. It reflects the genre of the story really well and does a great job bringing the reader into the moment. Other than some suggestions I had for the tags, I liked the dialogue.