In For A Pound - Comments

So my comment may not be as long as the others but I just wanted to say this just made my day, it was the best thing I have ever read with those two :)

I think the dialouge in this story is fantastic. It sounds like two people just wasting time in a hotel room, rambling to each other about life and meaning. The tone is very relaxed, but all the same they're talking about something pretty serious- their relationship- and it doesn't come across as petty. You achieved a very nice balance there.

But, on the other hand, that's really all there is to it- a lot of dialogue. I don't have a good sense of the story world around them. We know they're in a motel, with an interesting ceiling, but that's it.
Why is it interesting? What does it smell like? Is it cold and drafty, or stuffy? What do the sheets look like? I'd like more physical description in this.

I know it's fan fiction, and you assume a certain liberty when writing fan fiction that your readers will just know certain things, but there is a lack of detail to the parts that are not dialogue that would make it more interesting to read.
What are the characters wearing? What are their mannerisms? What are they thinking about that led to this conversation?

I feel like there is no real conflict in this story. You semi develop one, as they question their relationship with one another, and where they would be, but it's very muted, and if this were part of a lager piece, a reader could brush it off as almost irrelevant. I would advise you to play up the drama. Make them ask each other some hard questions and get emotional- there are a lot of feelings between them waiting to be explored that don't quite make it out in this little snippet.

I usually don't comment on layouts, but just a suggestion: Since your banner image has a black border, I would square the text up with the image and align the borders, so it looks like one continuous border, rather than two chunky black ones. It would be more steam-lined.

I think this story is off to an awesome start with such strong dialogue, there are just some narrative gaps that need to be penciled in to make it awesome!

Story Review Thread

Layout & Title
I'm not completely sure how the title will relate. From skimming over the content, I'm assuming this is fan-fiction considering the names sound vaguely familiar to me. Is the title like a song title, or will it actually tie into the piece? On the layout, I like the photo you've chosen, but you could enlarge the font a bit, because it's very small. It was actually kind of difficult for me to read.

Summary
The dialogue you chose was a good portion to put in as a summary, but as a personal preference I would've wanted more to draw me in. Normally a full summary entailing what I'm about to read is what actually seals the deal on whether or not I want to read it.

Content
The first few lines are kind of bland for me. I think for the first sentence, maybe a pause between those first two dialogue sentences would've drawn it more and made it seem more realistic. I also think more description between each dialogue sequence in those first few pieces would be very good. I'm not really liking the amount of dialogue, while dialogue is good it's also great to actually balance it out with description and detail and in just these first few lines that's lacking.

“I just wanted to say thank you.” Patrick said it since you've got a dialogue tag there it should be a comma after thank you," Patrick

There was a shuffling noise, probably Pete looking at semi colon after noice.

I definitely like that bit, I thought it definitely showed how uncomfortable Patrick felt. You did a good job on expanding that particular emotion from the character. You do awesome with your emotion showing, you've got a great way of showing rather than telling and the bits where there were rather detail and description rather than dialogue I really enjoyed it. I'm not saying your dialogue is bad or anything but I feel like the bits where there is dialogue there's just dialogue and not enough surrounding it if you get what I mean.

There was a few more commas needed in dialogue tagged sentences throughout, but otherwise this was a wonderful piece. :)

Story/Review Game

Title:
I'll admit that I was a bit confused about the title when I first saw it, but it definitely interested me, so it made me want to continue on to the actual story to see what it was about.

Layout:
I really like the layout- I'm a huge fan of the simple layouts with a color as the background and a picture for the banner. I think that this layout is gorgeous, except I might not have made the borders so wide (but this is just my personal preference.

Summary:
I'm a sucker for the kinds of summaries that just give a small snippet of the story, and I think you picked the perfect bit here. It really set me up for a bit of a fluff story, and I can't tell you how much I love fluff (even though at this point, I haven't gotten to the story, so I could be wrong.)

Chapter:
Firstly, I'd like to say that I love how you start this off. It's adorable, and it shows me that these two have a very playful sort of relationship, and that they've been together for a while (without you telling me straight-up that they've been together for months and it's such-and-such night together.)

“I just wanted to say thank you.” Patrick said it all quick but when he heard it back it seemed to go on forever thank you thank you thank you thank you. There was a shuffling noise, probably Pete looking at Patrick and wow, fuck, this motel ceiling was so damn interesting.

“For the blowjob? It was totally the best ever, huh?” Pete was joking, clearly, but he still sounded like an arrogant son of a bitch. Underneath the mortification Patrick felt a little smug too.

I giggled. This is adorable. I love how playful they are, and I love how secretly, Patrick seems to be thanking Pete for a whole lot more than the blowjob he apparently got. That also makes my inner fluff-fan girl happy, because I adore adorable stuff like this.

“Well, you’re the best I’ve had so far.”

“They all say that.” Pete laughed at his own joke and Patrick rolled his eyes, but really didn’t mind. “I wonder where I’d be too, Patrick.”

“If it weren’t for the band?”

“If it weren’t for you.”

This also made me really happy to see. I love it when writers do lovey stuff like this without making it nauseating, and it just makes me want to know all the million things that Patrick and Pete have changed about each other, since they are truly convinced that being together has changed them both for the better.

“You have no idea how much I changed when I met you. I mean, you can’t, because you didn’t know me before you met me. But I was different back then.”

“You mean, you were even more of a tool?”

Okay. Can I just say that, despite my not being a ginormous fan of the Fall Out Boy fandom, I really adore these two together now. And I also think that you are now one of my most favorite dialogue writers ever, because the way they talk to each other is realistic and humorous and seems very, very natural. I love it.

I also loved the last couple of lines- it shows me how much this relationship means to Patrick even more than the beginning did, and it made this whole chapter sweet without being sickeningly sweet (if that makes any sense at all.) Overall, this is a lovely one-shot, and I really did enjoy reading it. I also would like to say that I now understand the title now, thanks to the chapter (and I should say that I love non-generic titles and when they fit into stories so perfectly like this.)

I didn't really catch any mistakes here, and I don't think that I would have changed a thing, so I'm giving this a ten out of ten.