☀ l e m o n swirls → reviews!

Hello, you are now speaking to SAPPHiREDREAMs...

Sunday, August 14, 2011 @ 9:29 PM

Hi, kids! Alright, who am I kidding, 89% of the people who are reading this are probably older than me. :P

Let's cut to the chase, shall we? :) My name's Jessica, feel free to give me a nickname (SONES, yes, you may call me Sica, if my name reminds you of Jung Jessica, hehe.). Just don't call me "SAPPHiREDREAMs", it's a mouthful, and hard to type. XD I'm a new reviewer here at LS, but I've done reviews before, and am very experienced with it, I'd like to say. Thanks to Angela for letting me join the family; I hope I'll be able to fulfill a lot of review requests!

Now, let me say something before you scroll down a bit and look over my rubric. All stories are cliche. They are, and you can't deny it. Every idea came from something--a real-life event, a song, a book, a movie--something. So I won't ever slam you for cliche-ness (unless you write a story called "My Love Story" and yeah, you know what I mean. There's a limit, folks.).

Now, onward!

Jessica's Review Rubric

Title: /5

How appealing is your title? Does it catch the wandering reader's eye? More importantly, does it catch my eye? A title is one of the most important parts of the story, because it's the few words that draws readers' attention. You want something interesting, catchy, or just an overall unique title that no one else has, okay?

Poster: /10

Is your poster nice to look at? Does it match the theme and mood of your story? Is it neat, is the font read-able, and are the colors not distracting? To me, a poster is a crucial, essential part to a story. It gives visuals, and can you imagine walking through the movie theater to see a sign that says, "HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2, COMING SOON." instead of the actual poster with the characters and all the epicness? :)

Foreword: /10

Forewords are pretty hard to do, I get it. I mean, I myself, will spend like half an hour thinking of the perfect way to write a Foreword. In reality, as long as you don't tell too little or give away too much, you can get full points on this--assuming your grammar is impeccable, of course. What you'll lose points for: Character profiles. If you're writing a story and you write that "____ has a crush on _____, but what will happen?", I'm gonna give you close to or exactly zero points. All that aside, I usually give fair scores for this.

Originality: /10

In other words, how original and creative is your plot? Like I mentioned above, I won't take into account cliche stuff, but if your story is about two high school best friends and they begin falling for each other, you won't score high on this. If your writing is fantastic, but your idea is a bit cliche, you need not worry about this. :)

Plot: /15

Ah, we've arrived at the plot. Does your plot move along at a good pace? Is it dragging or going by too fast? Example of dragging: Your story is about a new girl starting her life at this fancy new academy. By Chapter 21, she's still on the first week of school. Example of going too fast: Chapter 1, your two main characters meet. They make their relationship official, break up, and get back together, all in the first chapter. However, the case is different for one-shots. Don't worry too much about this either. The one that should have you panicking is coming up...

Mechanics: /20

A fancy word for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, all bundled up together in one fantastic package. I can't give you much advice for this; I recommend checking out MusicChibi's guide to grammar and other tips. My rule with this is that I knock off a point for every ten errors, so you might wanna look over your story again or get a friend to look over it, or something. You could lose points easily on this. Using chatspeak or having errors every three words, I'll just start knocking off points randomly.

Characterization: /15

The way you portray your characters--do they have well-rounded personalities? Do we understand them well? Does their personality fit with the story's genre and blend with the others? Do your characters are interesting or complex relationships with others? All of this is important, and you should be asking yourself these questions. Is your female protagonist the typical, cliche female protagonist? If so, fix it, immediately. Your characters should be interesting to read about, and not bore me to death.

Style: /5

Is your writing style unique? This category is pretty easy, as long as you're confident in your writing skills. Make sure you use a wide vocabulary and good details; I wanna picture what's happening in your story.

Overall Impression: /10

Self-explanatory, right? Did I enjoy your story? If I did, full points. :)

Total: /100

Comments:

Just extra notes, anything I particularly liked or disliked, and what you might need to work on or improve. If I don't think you have any issues with writing, I'll be giving you praise and good words! ^_^

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