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Review by Gnome: I Can't Think Straight Around You

Title: I Can't Think Straight Around You

Author: aar_nalu

Reviewer: GnomeMercy

Just a note: this will be a smaller review (in general) as there are only five prose chapters thus far.

Summary: 4.5/5

A very nice summary! It has everything a good summary needs, well done! (That's basically things like characters, setting, stakes, dilemma.)

There was a small error I noticed in the first sentence. It uses quite a lot of commas, which makes it a little harder to read. Maybe you could use a colon to clear it up:

Two women are coming to Stowe, Vermont, for Christmas: one of them visiting their sister's fiancé's home, the other coming home from college.

(You also repeat "home" twice in that sentence, so consider using a synonym or rephrasing it to make it a little easier to read.)

Other than that, you had a very clean summary. Always make sure that your summary sounds nice (I have no other way to explain that, sorry) in your head. It should be easy to read and understand, and should have a nice ring to it. Well done, however!

Grammar: 3.5/5

Overall, you definitely knew your basics when it came to grammar. However, I did find a couple of errors.

Firstly, I did notice some typos. Here's an example I found:

"Hey, I—I'm Sorry..."

I recommend you do a quick reread and edit to find them all. (I also saw a misspelling of "Santa Claus"—it was written as "Santa Clause" which is actually incorrect. I also noticed that "never mind" was spelled "nevermind", which is actually incorrect as it is two words.)

There was a small verbal tag error I saw:

"That's the most words you've said in a sentence, way more than last time. I'm proud of you," I slowly clapped my hands. "But you were pretty loud mate... we might get kicked out now and you haven't even gotten a book yet."

The reason this is incorrect is because "I slowly clapped my hands" isn't a verbal tag (anything like "she said", "they replied", "he stated"), so you don't need a comma before it. It should be (correction in bold):

"That's the most words you've said in a sentence, way more than last time. I'm proud of you." I slowly clapped my hands. "But you were pretty loud mate... we might get kicked out now and you haven't even gotten a book yet."

Other than these few problems, you had a pretty clean story in terms of grammar, so well done!

Characters: [no score -- will not be added to final score]

Since there were only six chapters posted, I can't really judge your characters.

(I do advise you to show their personality traits through their actions and words instead of outright telling it, as that is a very common mistake lots of people do—and it makes your characters more believable.)

Writing Style: 3.5/5

Your writing style definitely made it easier to read and understand what was going on. However, I did notice some small problems.

Firstly, you did have some similar sentence structure. That's basically when your sentences start similarly with a (subject + verb) beginning. It becomes a little noticeable when it's been done three times or more. Here's an example of that:

I looked...

I sat...

I finally...

I woke up...

It makes it seem a little stilted and robotic, so to solve to this problem, try rephrasing your sentences to have some different sentence types.

I also noticed you had some redundant sentences. That's basically when you repeat the same or similar word/phrase in a sentence multiple times. Here is an example from your story:

I frowned, hoping I didn't offend her, her blue eyes full of amusement.

Her amused eyes crinkled.

This happened a few times throughout the chapters, so I recommend you to a quick reread and edit to solve them! To fix this problem you can either try rephrasing the sentence or finding synonyms (but with synonyms you have to be more careful when using them).

Overall, you have a good writing style, just a few small problems that are easy to fix!

Plot + Originality: [no score -- will not be added to final score]

Since there were only six chapters, I can't really review your plot—but I will say that I did like the beginning. It looks like it'll be a really fun story, and I was interested in Aloryan and Onsana's relationship.

OVERALL SCORE: 11.5/15

It looks like this is going to be a very interesting story! You definitely knew your basics when it comes to writing and grammar, but there a few things to work on. Good luck and I hope this helps!