As far as first impressions go, I really liked the simplicity of the layout. I felt like I was able to get a gist of what the story was about through the combination of the layout and summary, so I definitely was able to tell what I was getting into before I actually delved into the content of the story. I would suggest maybe making the summary a bit more concise though. I loved that you included a moment from the couple’s past to sort of “set the scene,” but because this is only a oneshot, I feel like it could definitely be trimmed down a bit. The only real issue I could say that I had with the layout was that it was really difficult to read the white text on the dark blue background, and I had to switch over to the default layout when I went on to read the actual oneshot.
Moving onto the content of the story, I really admired how you chose to focus on a career path/situation that isn’t typically written about in online fic. I also thought that you definitely wrote the kids in a realistic manner, and in fact, there was never a moment in this oneshot where I thought something felt off or I read something that made me roll my eyes to myself. I felt like all of this was written very realistically, and you did a brilliant job portraying the stress that the main character experiences, both in her day-to-day life, in her marriage, and in the moments when she feared she was going to lose her husband. I thought the dialogue certainly sounded like things that actual people would say, and all in all, I thought this piece flowed effortlessly, though there’s one thing that I think would make it flow even better, which I’ll mention in my constructive criticism.
As far as constructive criticism goes, I didn’t come across any grammatical errors in this piece. The only thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that this was written in present tense, which made it a little more difficult to follow. In general, present tense is a really hard thing to pull off, and it generally only works well in say, action sequences or things that are written solely in one moment. Because this piece goes back and forth between the past and the present and follows the span of mainly a day, I feel like it would read more naturally if it were written in past tense. Also, I do have to admit that I did find this a little too predictable at times. From the phone conversation between the main character and her husband, it’s kind of obvious to the reader that something is going to happen to Shane at work, and while I don’t know what to suggest to improve that, I just thought I’d let you know that the progression of the story is a little on the cliché side.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece because I felt like it really embodied what I had in mind when I created the contest. Thanks for entering!
Moving onto the content of the story, I really admired how you chose to focus on a career path/situation that isn’t typically written about in online fic. I also thought that you definitely wrote the kids in a realistic manner, and in fact, there was never a moment in this oneshot where I thought something felt off or I read something that made me roll my eyes to myself. I felt like all of this was written very realistically, and you did a brilliant job portraying the stress that the main character experiences, both in her day-to-day life, in her marriage, and in the moments when she feared she was going to lose her husband. I thought the dialogue certainly sounded like things that actual people would say, and all in all, I thought this piece flowed effortlessly, though there’s one thing that I think would make it flow even better, which I’ll mention in my constructive criticism.
As far as constructive criticism goes, I didn’t come across any grammatical errors in this piece. The only thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that this was written in present tense, which made it a little more difficult to follow. In general, present tense is a really hard thing to pull off, and it generally only works well in say, action sequences or things that are written solely in one moment. Because this piece goes back and forth between the past and the present and follows the span of mainly a day, I feel like it would read more naturally if it were written in past tense. Also, I do have to admit that I did find this a little too predictable at times. From the phone conversation between the main character and her husband, it’s kind of obvious to the reader that something is going to happen to Shane at work, and while I don’t know what to suggest to improve that, I just thought I’d let you know that the progression of the story is a little on the cliché side.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this piece because I felt like it really embodied what I had in mind when I created the contest. Thanks for entering!