I'm here judging the short story section of my pre-writes contest!
I really like that this story doesn't end in heartbreak! Too many of the Harry Potter fanfiction stories I've read as of late have the OC dying or break-ups or Voldemort destroying everything, so it's nice to have something to right, for a change! Arabella has this kind of devil-may-care attitude to everything she does as well, which makes for a really enjoyable read. Her character works really well with Lupin's character too, as they're both skilled in certain fields of academics. Personally, I think she goes better than most OCs as many seem to take the Tonks route and pair him with someone a little eccentric and completely different from himself.
Your characterisation is spot-on as well. I really enjoyed reading your version of Lupin, because he's so alike to the character in the books and so alike to the Lupin that I know and love, so super-well done on keeping him in character all the time. You have him making decisions that he would make based on what the books tell us and he rarely -- if ever -- strays out of character. It's really difficult to keep established characters in-character for an entire chapter, never mind three of them so super-well done on that!
There were a few things grammar-wise that I noticed on my way throughout:
- Gryffindor’s should be Gryffindors
- You use a lot of commas where sentences could be chopped into individual sentences, which can disrupt the flow of the piece -- this happens particularly within the first few paragraphs of the first chapter.
- Your formatting is also slightly off. When you write dialogue, you should leave a full blank space between the separate lines of dialogue, like so:
“It just I did not know you two were friends.”
“Oh, we’ve been friends since first year, why is something wrong?”
Similarly, you should leave a blank line between the end of one paragraph and the beginning of another, like so:
...Lily began inviting Arabella to the groups section during meal times, at the start of their fourth year.
The rest of his male friends said very little (they were never around...
It means your story follows Mibba's guidelines correctly and makes it a little easier to read as the text appears in blocks and can be quite tiresome to read.
- The sentence Remus watched as Arabella but her full concentration on sorting out his injuries seems to have something missing from it. I'm not too sure if it's just me or whether there's a word missing after Arabella?
- she suffered from violent nightmare - nightmare should be nightmares
These were all fairly minor, though. Everything else was pretty awesome!
I really like that this story doesn't end in heartbreak! Too many of the Harry Potter fanfiction stories I've read as of late have the OC dying or break-ups or Voldemort destroying everything, so it's nice to have something to right, for a change! Arabella has this kind of devil-may-care attitude to everything she does as well, which makes for a really enjoyable read. Her character works really well with Lupin's character too, as they're both skilled in certain fields of academics. Personally, I think she goes better than most OCs as many seem to take the Tonks route and pair him with someone a little eccentric and completely different from himself.
Your characterisation is spot-on as well. I really enjoyed reading your version of Lupin, because he's so alike to the character in the books and so alike to the Lupin that I know and love, so super-well done on keeping him in character all the time. You have him making decisions that he would make based on what the books tell us and he rarely -- if ever -- strays out of character. It's really difficult to keep established characters in-character for an entire chapter, never mind three of them so super-well done on that!
There were a few things grammar-wise that I noticed on my way throughout:
- Gryffindor’s should be Gryffindors
- You use a lot of commas where sentences could be chopped into individual sentences, which can disrupt the flow of the piece -- this happens particularly within the first few paragraphs of the first chapter.
- Your formatting is also slightly off. When you write dialogue, you should leave a full blank space between the separate lines of dialogue, like so:
“It just I did not know you two were friends.”
“Oh, we’ve been friends since first year, why is something wrong?”
Similarly, you should leave a blank line between the end of one paragraph and the beginning of another, like so:
...Lily began inviting Arabella to the groups section during meal times, at the start of their fourth year.
The rest of his male friends said very little (they were never around...
It means your story follows Mibba's guidelines correctly and makes it a little easier to read as the text appears in blocks and can be quite tiresome to read.
- The sentence Remus watched as Arabella but her full concentration on sorting out his injuries seems to have something missing from it. I'm not too sure if it's just me or whether there's a word missing after Arabella?
- she suffered from violent nightmare - nightmare should be nightmares
These were all fairly minor, though. Everything else was pretty awesome!