January 17th, 2010 at 06:59pm
Story/Review.
The summary drew me into this story, because I am a sucker for one-liners and use them all the time. :XD However, I didn't know this was a an RPattz fanfic until I got to the author's notes at the bottom of chapter one, so you might want to include that in the summary somewhere.
I'm going to try and touch on some different issues than the people who have reviewed this story previously and give you my point of view at the same time. There are a few typos in your writing that MLIA picked up on, so I won't repeat those but I noticed you hadn't changed them in your work. As I read, your sentences often seemed stilted due to incorrect grammar or misuse of words. Often these mistakes aren't that easy to put right if you're not adept at constructing sentences, for instance, Robert pondered. To most people, 'pondered' is a verb associated with a noun or another verb, so typically you'd say Robert pondered his choice of coffee. The only help you can really get as to using language properly is to read alot of different types of books/stories, read your work aloud or get someone else to read it over.
The characters all seem really upbeat and relaxed in this, which is a really lovely thing to come across in the story. Just take a moment to make sure your dialogue is not cliche or unrealistic, as in some places it seems like a 24-year-old guy wouldn't say those things in such a manner.
Like someone else pointed out, the lack of description adds to the laid-back feel of the story. As a personal preference, I don't usually go for stories written without modifiers to help create a vivid scene, but here you've managed to add a tone to the story using your own personal, simple style which I think can be hard to do, so well done.
As the story progressed and more characters were introduced, I got a little lost. Point of view changes within chapters can be hard to pull off and sometimes I got confused as to who was speaking to who, who was associated with who and who was thinking about who. I'm guessing from the first chapter alone that you're trying to set up a romance with Robert and Jayden, and if you want to show both sides of that relationship then I'd stick to POV changes between chapters. That's just how I would do it; obviously you don't have to take my advice but I'd reconsider the way you phrase things so that your readers don't have to re-read passages.
Overall, I do really like the tone of this story despite the things you could work on that I pointed out. Despite being a fan of Rob I've never really read a fic about him before, and the tone of this story seems to reflect the laid-back kind of guy he is. :cute:
I hope my review was helpful to you, and good luck with the rest of this. (:
I like the story, it's something different.
Can't wait for more.
<3.
=]