✨ Blind Critique 2024 ✨

Story Number Twelve

Hello Writer Number Twelve, here is your feedback from Blind Critique

I feel this story would be better if it was shown with more description rather than told like this. Really try and think about what your character can think, feels, sees, smells, hears. There's also several times where the tense changes from past to present and then back to the past.

***********************************
It's a very humorous scene, kind to the point of uber cheesiness. There are a few tense changes that stand out that I recommend taking a look at. My only other comment is "when did Caden start kneeling" because that shift wasn't obvious. But a very sweet opener nonetheless.

********************************

The feel of this scene is good and has a touch of humour in it which I like. I like Caden's attempts to treat his girlfriend. I wonder if there's any way you could show his anxiety rather than straight saying that he is anxious? e.g. pacing the room etc. The tense of this extract changes halfway through, from past at the beginning into present at the end. The end of the extract also has some repetition ('eyes' mentioned twice quite close together and a bit of redundancy in saying 'knocking off her feet onto the ground'. I think either 'onto the ground' or 'off her feet' would work here).

***********************************

Bit of a cliche to start with a mirror, even though it is just a single line. I would recommend showing that first, so that we can tie the dialog to the boy first, rather than wondering who's talking to then find out.

Third paragraph, you echo Place in the first sentence. Would help with flow and variety to fix that. Though minor, it's very apparent. Same with the fourth paragraph and Ceiling. You could remove the second Ceiling when she looks up, and it would work just fine.

I thought it was rather funny imagine her get piled on with petals. The tone is nice, and give a rom-com feel. I like it. Just need to work out the small technical aspects.

**********************************

This sounds cute, and seems like its in the contemporary romance genre. I like the humor and the ML seems to be a clutz and that's really really cute!

but, I'm sure if realistically its possible for roses to knock one off their feet, but it was a nice moment to have him fall flat on his face too. Nice humor there!

*************************************
12.
Lol, poor guy and poor girl! That was funny. Good start, and definitely a memorable Valentine's for the two of them. I liked that.

I don't like the echo of "place" in the third paragraph; it appears twice in the first sentence; and I'm wondering what taking his place on the floor means. That is not clarified until the last paragraph; I think it should have been mentioned right away that he kneeled on the livingroom floor. Which, by the way, makes me wonder: what shared dorms have livingrooms? Also there's an echo of ceiling in the 4th paragraph; here the first instance could be deleted to have the single petal float down before her.

Some other improvements that could be made: read up on how to use commas. First sentence: add comma before Caden; 4th sentence: remove comma after girlfriend. I would rephrase the 4th sentence: "The boy looked at his caramel-haired reflection..." i.e., because that is what he sees, while he doesn't think of himself as a caramel-haired boy. Last paragraph, last sentence: don't use "the boy" so late in the paragraph because it makes it reads like it's a different boy than the preceding Caden and "his" legs. Just say "causing him to fall..."; alternately, you can start with "Unfortunately, the boy's legs grew..."

********************************
I really enjoyed reading this it was simple yet effective. You introduced us to our main characters I assume very quickly and added a bit of humour to the whole situation. And in this scene it's self no other context is needed as it's all said there for you.

Only thing is what would make me want to read on. It looks like a sweet scene between two people that went a bit wrong. I would keep reading as I don't put books down. But I feel there needs to be something lingering to help a reader feel a sense of wonder and intrigue. I would say it still works without this but seeing if you can add this might make it even better.

***********************************
Why are you switching tenses in the middle? You start narrating it all in past tense, but suddenly when the girl comes into the room, you go to present tense, just to switch to past again in the last sentence.

Also: How can a load of rose petals, no matter how many there are, bring a person down to the floor? Physics don't work that way. Unless you forget to mention the bucket that was falling with them. How else did he get them up to the ceiling in the first place?

************************************

Oh my, this was one of those stories that you think is going to start off really cliche, but then hits you with something that instantly throws you off. I was trying to drink some of my drink and ended up choking on it, before laughing. I could definitely envision the whole scene.

************************************************

I liked the simplicity of the language used in the beginning sequence of chapters. It was straight to the point and needed little elaboration as it was clear what was going on. However, to improve, I would fuse this with some language devices and/or emotive language to describe appearances. At the moment, the description of the appearance of the characters introduced is rather bland and simplistic. You could use this as an opportunity to explore variations of ways to get the appearance across, as well as to elaborate on emotions the character may feel when she walks into the room.