I'm here (finally!) judging the entries for my An Album of Inspiration contest!
Layout and Summary
The layout is nice. I like using the album cover int he background, and also the way that the content box covers the faces. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it works well. The only thing I'd suggest is that the content box itself is a little large. In terms of summary, there isn't much to go on for plot, so it might be an idea to pop a little summary in it.
Content
The first chapter is really poetic and lovely. I like that it seems to tell this heartbreaking tale of someone who crushed their dream by thinking they could fly. It's a really nice metaphor. You get this really solid insight into the character as a whole.
Honestly, I was very confused when reading everything because I just couldn't make the connection, but when I got to roundabout chapter seven, everything started falling into place, and it was really clever! The firemen, the explosion, the suicides, everything. It's a really clever way of linking things and although I was really confused at first, when everything started to fall into place I was really impressed.
The last chapter was really short and to-the-point, I wasn't expecting that! It worked well as an ending though. The entire story worked really well together.
Constructive Criticism
The one thing that I don't like is having the entire song at the beginning of the chapter -- it's a big bunch of text for to read through before getting to the actual story. I think that if you were looking to have the lyrics for people to read, linking them in the author's note would suffice.
The only other thing I noticed was that there are slight grammar errors within your dialogue. When you're following dialogue up with a tag (he said, she said, etc.) then you should always make sure that the first letter of the first word outside the quotations is in lowercase, and that you use a comma before the closing quotation mark instead of a period. For instance, the following line:
"Don't call me unless you're dying." You answer easily.
should read as:
"Don't call me unless you're dying," you answer easily.
It's a simple little fix to make, and nothing major. The only other errors I noticed looked as if they were intended (no capitalisation, etc) so I won't comment on those.
Overall
Although this story is slightly confusing at first, it works really well when everything finally clicks! The characters are intriguing, the storyline is impressive and I really liked the way this turned out. It wasn't a cliched ending or anything like that, it just worked. Awesome job!
Layout and Summary
The layout is nice. I like using the album cover int he background, and also the way that the content box covers the faces. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it works well. The only thing I'd suggest is that the content box itself is a little large. In terms of summary, there isn't much to go on for plot, so it might be an idea to pop a little summary in it.
Content
The first chapter is really poetic and lovely. I like that it seems to tell this heartbreaking tale of someone who crushed their dream by thinking they could fly. It's a really nice metaphor. You get this really solid insight into the character as a whole.
Honestly, I was very confused when reading everything because I just couldn't make the connection, but when I got to roundabout chapter seven, everything started falling into place, and it was really clever! The firemen, the explosion, the suicides, everything. It's a really clever way of linking things and although I was really confused at first, when everything started to fall into place I was really impressed.
The last chapter was really short and to-the-point, I wasn't expecting that! It worked well as an ending though. The entire story worked really well together.
Constructive Criticism
The one thing that I don't like is having the entire song at the beginning of the chapter -- it's a big bunch of text for to read through before getting to the actual story. I think that if you were looking to have the lyrics for people to read, linking them in the author's note would suffice.
The only other thing I noticed was that there are slight grammar errors within your dialogue. When you're following dialogue up with a tag (he said, she said, etc.) then you should always make sure that the first letter of the first word outside the quotations is in lowercase, and that you use a comma before the closing quotation mark instead of a period. For instance, the following line:
"Don't call me unless you're dying." You answer easily.
should read as:
"Don't call me unless you're dying," you answer easily.
It's a simple little fix to make, and nothing major. The only other errors I noticed looked as if they were intended (no capitalisation, etc) so I won't comment on those.
Overall
Although this story is slightly confusing at first, it works really well when everything finally clicks! The characters are intriguing, the storyline is impressive and I really liked the way this turned out. It wasn't a cliched ending or anything like that, it just worked. Awesome job!