Title: Anagata

Author: artemisbreeze

Summary: [no score – will not be added to final score]

I decided not to score this summary simply because I don't know how to score it. It's not a traditional summary, as it doesn't introduce the main characters, conflict or stakes; rather, it focuses on the themes of the story in an ambiguous manner. I like to call these aesthetic summaries because they're flowery, intriguing, but don't really tell much about the story. And since that is an intentional choice, I don't know how to score it – sorry about that!

Grammar: 2/5

Right off the bat, I noticed that the first thing you need to work on is sticking to one tense. Your entire story kept going back and forth from past tense to present tense, which inhibited the fluency of the story. Let's look at the very first two sentences in your story:

"I looked up at my ceiling for the millionth time." [looked = past tense]

"As I navigate trough the old photos..." [navigate = present tense]

You need to make sure you stick to one. Also, 'trough' should be 'through.' This brings me onto my next point: spelling. There were quite a few incorrectly spelt words, or mix-ups between homophones. Along with this, you had some nouns that were capitalised even though they were not proper nouns.

A lot of the sentences, in general, just kept changing tense within the sentence. Example:

"Let's head back, shall we?" I said while Noah follows behind me in silent as we leave the shop.

The 'said' indicates past tense, but the rest of the sentence is present tense. This happened very often in your writing, and made the writing within your story very clunky and awkward to read.

Next: be careful of contractions. Basically, a contraction is when two words have been shortened into one by removing certain letters. An apostrophe is used to show those missing letters. You often used contractions even when they were not appropriate. For example:

"... my older sister, who's hair is in a bun..."

"Who's" is short for "who is." Therefore, you have written, "... my older sister, who is hair is in a bun." It should be:

"... my older sister, whose hair is in a bun..."

Finally, let's talk dialogue. Whenever a new character is speaking, their dialogue must be in a separate paragraph. Let's look at an example from your work:

I opened my door. "God, Hannah! How many times do I have to tell you!" I yelled back. She shrugged her shoulders. "Don't blame me."

Since both Hannah and Noah are speaking in that paragraph, it is incorrect. It should be split into:

I opened my door. "God, Hannah! How many times do I have to tell you!" I yelled back.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Don't blame me."

Next, let's talk about dialogue and punctuation. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"I'm deadly serious." she said.

That above example is incorrect. Since "she said" refers directly to what is being spoken, it should be:

"I'm deadly serious," she said.

Character Building: 3/5

There are some great things happening with your characters. I found Ava incredibly relatable – she made me laugh many, many times, from not being able to turn on a stove, to her sarcastic little quips as she internally cringes at how much of a poet she sounds like as she falls in love.

Additionally, the dialogue between her and Noah is very cute. You can tell straight away that they are very close, and that they are both very caring people. Speaking of Noah, his realisation that he loves her is really cute – his denial and confusion is incredibly realistic, and the way his stomach fluttered and his cheeks turned warm was a great way to show and not tell it to us! The kiss at the end of that last chapter (chapter twelve) was really sweet, and the build-up to it was pretty smooth.

Next, let's quickly talk about Ava again. She almost felt stoic as a character, even though I know she isn't. I think it came down to you telling and not showing us some parts of her past. For example, when she was talking about the divorce, you wrote:

"Sure, it was a long time ago, but it affected me a lot."

Then, you didn't go on to elaborate this. That sentence, alone, didn't feel like it contained any emotion or heart in it. I encourage you to think about which moments of your story you want to be intimate, and think about how you want to portray that intimacy. Don't be afraid to make Ava talk about how it affected her. Don't be afraid to show us her pain.

You introduced quite a few side characters: Dylan, Hazel, Maddie, Ella, and Julian. However, I don't feel distinct personalities coming from them as of yet. Maybe it's because you're in the early stages of the story. However, I think you should make sure that their dialogue contains idiosyncrasies, and that each character plays a clear role and purpose in regards to the plot.

Also, when all their classmates and teachers die from the explosion, that is one massive moment! Don't gloss over it. Yes, I know Ava was sad and shocked from it, but give us more from all the characters. It is huge – it's bound to scar normal people for life, and it's perfect for character development. If something like that happened before the adventure began, then the adventure would seem more bleak than exciting. Your characters should show complexity by responding to such a tragedy in a realistic way.

Writing Style: 3/5

Alright, so, there was some beautifully poetic moments of writing throughout the story – I absolutely adored the scene where the kiss was described as a completion of the photograph. I was also constantly amused by the witty quips littered throughout the story – especially the, "girls with their mother's stolen credit cards" moment. Well done!

However, please remember: you are in a new world. Make sure you slow down the story to help the reader live and breathe this new setting – show us the meteor shower, and don't be afraid to highlight the differences between Anagata and Earth! Show us how the mechanics work! Living on Mars, I imagine, would be very different – make sure you do some research into it and weave those glimpses of information into your story.

Again, show more and tell less. When you describe the explosion, it was great to see the shattering glass and smoke. However, flesh it out more – when Ava hits her forehead and she can feel blood, describe that pain to us. Before she passes out and everything goes black, show us how she is feeling – show us the nausea that would be involved before passing out. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 3.5/5

At first, I almost felt like nothing much was happening. The characters celebrate, go to school, go to the movies – and I wasn't even sure where the story what leading me to. Then the explosion happened, which led to the adventure, and now I'm excited! I'm excited to see where the story goes!

My advice, though, is to keep every moment purposeful, but also engaging. Let's go back to when the explosion happens, followed by the bad guy stuff that happened. It's all explained in the dialogue by Maddie, since Ava passed out. However, wouldn't it be a lot more engaging and thrilling if one of the protagonists was there to witness it and described what was happening to the reader in the moment? Or maybe if Maddie had a chapter to herself so that the reader could feel the action rather than just having it repeated to them through dialogue?

In other words, if you were watching a movie, would you rather see the action, or have one of the characters sit down and describe to you the plot of the movie? 

OVERALL SCORE: 11.5/20

Overall, an interesting start! I'm glad to see that the conflict of the story is beginning to emerge. Just make sure you polish up your tenses, and you should be good to go. I hope this review helps!