Title: The Ballad of Time and Moon by MiaKurenai_2009
Source: ELGANZA, INC. | AWARDS by TheCieloCommunity
Category: Short Stories

Mature: N (blood, death, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N

Status: Complete

Special note (judging): I had five books in this category, and the other judges (BANGTANHOLIC_FICS and Lunatic_Twilight) had five books each.
Result: 69/100

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*****

Rubric:
- Title: 5
- Book cover: 5
- Description (blurb): 5
- Plot & storytelling: 15
- Character development: 10
- Writing style: 10
- Grammar: 10
- Originality & creativity: 10
- Emotional impact: 10
- Pacing & structure: 5
- Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5
- Overall enjoyment & engagement: 10
Total: 100

*****

Total: 69/100

Title: 5/5
I love this title. I don't know why, but anything that starts with "A Ballad" or "The Ballad" immediately piques my interest.

Cover: 5/5
This cover is absolutely gorgeous. Props to ReynaBennett. It's dark and elegant, simple and complex, bold and mysterious. I love everything about it, from the frame to the text to the heart in the middle.

Blurb: 3/5
There are some phrasing issues throughout this blurb, but the content is good. The ending of the first line doesn't sit quite right with me: "wasn't her first thought." I'm not sure why. It technically works, but I feel like the rest of the sentence doesn't set it up well for this little phrase here. I can't figure out why, though, so I'm just going to leave it alone and move on. It may just be me.

In the next paragraph, the last part of the second sentence is a bit jumbled. If you just swap "only did not" to "not only," that fixes it. In the following paragraph, again in the second sentence, I believe it should be the noun "Awakening" instead of the verb "Awaking."

The next paragraph/sentence has some issues with punctuation. I'd cut the ellipsis, because it doesn't make sense to have it and not continue using it in the following phrases. An ellipsis typically ends something instead of starting it, anyway. I think ending with a period after "knight" would make sense, because the next phrase doesn't follow from the first part of the sentence. It's a new "From..." not a continuation, unless all these lives start with her being his mistress. If that's the case, some adjustments need to be made here, because that's not how it reads. Assuming that's not the case, I'd end with another period after "killed by him." In the next sentence, the hyphens shouldn't be there, and "had tried all ways" is another clunky phrase. You could condense it to "tried everything," which is much clearer. Then, there should be a comma after "alas."

The next paragraph/sentence is very awkward, and I think a large part of that is just the ordering of the content. Flipping it around and rewording would make it smoother. There's also a verb tense issue with "might," and "her heart lidded with pity" doesn't really make sense to me. Are you saying her heart feels heavy? I'm going with that for now, and if that's correct, this is a way you could modify this sentence: "Heavy-hearted and on the verge of her tenth death, Benzaiten approached her with a solution that could change everything."

And in the last paragraph/line, "can" should be "could," in keeping with the past tense throughout the rest of the blurb.

I think putting some of those single-sentence paragraphs together would also be a good idea, because the divisions don't make sense to me. "From being his" flows directly from the previous sentence/paragraph, and it feels very strange to me for it to get its own paragraph. It's like cutting a thought off in the middle and separating the pieces. So, I definitely think those two paragraphs should be one paragraph. I also think "But everything might" should either go with them or merge with the following paragraph. It doesn't feel quite right to me on its own, but the effect differs depending on which paragraph it joins.

So...unrequited love, heartbreak, death, and a cycle of reincarnation and death with no end in sight. This promises to be interesting.

Plot & storytelling: 10/15
This is a really interesting plotline. Starting the story when Alexial is dying for the tenth time is a good way to throw the reader into the action right away, and you reveal the background information as the story progresses in a way that doesn't overwhelm the reader and doesn't leave them feeling like there's something they missed. I know you wrote this for a contest, so I'm sure you had to deal with deadlines, last-minute writing and editing, and all that fun stuff, and I will say this would benefit from more editing and more details to fill in the story and slow the pace down if you want to go back and do that, but it's still good as is.

Usually, the action is clear, but in the actual fight scene at the end, things get pretty murky. I thought at first there were guards or soldiers accompanying Yui, and then I realized it was just Yui fighting, but since her movements aren't described, it's really just random knives appearing here or there with no apparent force behind them or motion ascribed to them (slashing up, stabbing, cutting to the side, etc.). The details about Kaito's involvement in the initial curse are also unclear, so expounding on that a bit would help eliminate any confusion.

There's also a disconnect between the blurb and the story. I'm guessing you had to write the blurb first for the competition, so it was more of a story concept than an actual story description? Anyway, there's no mention of Duke Chisaka or Alexial's famed beauty and knowledge, and there's no evidence of the crown prince's former friendship with her. Also, the entire paragraph starting with "From being his mistress" doesn't happen in the story at all. The rest of the blurb seems pretty accurate, though, and I think it would be really interesting to incorporate these details from the blurb into the story. I'm guessing you just ran out of space and couldn't fit it all in.

Character development: 5/10
The pace for this story is really fast, I'm assuming because of writing to a deadline and maybe word count requirements, so character development suffers a bit. Alexial is the most developed, of course, since she's the main character. It seems like she's come a long way from the weak, heartbroken woman of her first life/death to the bitter, resigned woman who can calmly think, "Oh. Poison this time," as she dies a painful death. But she's still looking for a way to break the cycle, and when Benzaiten offers her a chance to do that, she begins her next life with a single-minded determination to end this, once and for all.

Kaito's character is one I don't have too good of a handle on. He's obviously intelligent and magically gifted, but there's just not enough time for me to really know him. I get the feeling he should come off as a sarcastic, cunning, potentially suspicious character until the final fight, when his care and protectiveness for Alexial becomes apparent, but again, that's me making an assumption based on what little I know of him. Similarly, the relationship development between him and Alexial isn't shown too well. I do like the epilogue where they get their happy ending and we get more of their relationship, but I'd like a little more at an earlier point in the story, too.

The crown prince is little more than a name in the story, with the only real appearance he gets being the moment she wakes up to hear him jabbering about Yui. Yui is...well, just a name until the last chapter, at which point she turns into a cruel, selfish woman. Showing more of her, maybe in flashback form with Alexial's memories, would help develop her and the crown prince more, and you could drop hints about her true nature that way, too. Also, adding something about what happened to Yui and the crown prince in the epilogue would be satisfying, especially if things didn't turn out too well for Yui.

Writing style: 8/10
I think you have a nice writing style that's generally clear and conveys the message you want. Grammatical issues get in the way, but they don't impact the readability too much.

Grammar: 5/10
The issues I noted in the blurb with awkward phrasing continue throughout the story, but they're not as much of a problem as run-on sentences and verb tense issues. There are a lot of slips into the present tense within the narrative. It's important to stick with one tense for consistency and clarity. There are also occasional slips into the past tense within dialogue, too, which feels very unnatural.

Run-on sentences are usually due to punctuation issues where commas should be semicolons or periods. Also, when you use hyphens/dashes, they should come in pairs most of the time. Here's an example: "Her vision blurred with tears-- sharp knives, betrayals, and fire she had seen death approach her in many ways, however, poison was a new way." There should be a second dash after "fire," and the comma after "ways" should be a semicolon.

More issues with hyphens come with incorrectly hyphenated words ("once--pristine" should be "once pristine" or maybe "once-pristine" with just one hyphen so it doesn't look like a dash) and hyphens that should actually be colons, like here: "There is a path yet untraveled, a name that can rewrite your fate-- Kaito Haku."

There are some incomplete sentences, too, which you can usually fix by merging with another sentence or tweaking the wording. For instance: "Just as she was mere seconds away from her end again--knowing the feeling all too well." There's a missing part to follow the "Just as" phrase, because the format with that phrase needs to be something like, "Just as such-and-such happened, this-and-that happened." You can simply cut "Just as" from that sentence, and then modify the phrase after the dash from "knowing" to "she knew," and that becomes a complete sentence.

Another frequent problem is ending sentences with commas. Commas are never ending punctuation marks. They can end dialogue that leads into a dialogue tag (or end a dialogue tag leading into dialogue), but they can't be the last punctuation mark. Periods, exclamation marks, question marks, and ellipses are the only ending punctuation marks (except for a rare dash to indicate an abrupt interruption in thought or speech).

Commas are a pretty frequent problem throughout, largely because they're a pain. There are places where they're missing, places where they're unnecessary, and, as I already mentioned above, places where they should be semicolons or periods. If you're not already using an editing tool, I'd recommend looking into one to help catch these (and many of the other issues I noted). Just be careful not to use "rephrasing" functions, which basically rewrite your work and turn into AI-generated content that sounds nothing like you wrote it. Grammarly is really bad for that, from what I hear. The one I use is ProWritingAid, and the free version is not only more than sufficient for editing, but it also limits you to a handful of rephrases a day, so it would be really hard to get into trouble by having it do that too much.

The last punctuation issue is with question marks. There are a couple of questions that end in periods instead of question marks, and questions always need to end in question marks.

Other issues are missing articles before nouns (a, an, the); noun/verb agreement issues (singular noun with a plural verb or vice versa); singular nouns that should be plural; plural/possessive issues with nouns (apostrophes in plurals and not in possessives); and some misspellings (correct spelling on the right): tounge/tongue, rob/robe, twelth/twelfth, increate/intricate, revibrated/reverberated.

In this sentence, "basking" isn't the best verb: "Opening her eyes she found herself in the royal garden, the floral scent basking the surroundings." The floral scent is not the object "basking" in something. It's producing something that others can bask in. So, I think using "bathing" would work better there. Similarly, in the epilogue, Kaito's "hands bracketed her," which technically works, but I think "walled her in" is more natural.

There's also the phrase "as the back of my hand," where "as" should be "like," and "giving her utmost on," where "on" should be "for."

Originality & creativity: 10/10
There's no disputing this. Death loops, reincarnation, magical curses, and wicked people stealing the love interest aren't new ideas, but the way you've put it all together here is very unique, and you've made everything your own with the details you've added in.

Emotional impact: 4/10
This suffers because of the fast pace and the negative impact that has on character development. The way to forge an emotional connection with the reader is through well-developed, believable, empathetic characters, because once the reader connects with those characters, they're invested in the story. Then, all the emotions really have a strong impact. I think just taking the time to slow things down, fill in the blanks, and develop your characters a bit more would bring this score up.

Pacing & structure: 2/5
The chapter content is good, I think, but there's an overall rushed feel to this. Again, I'm guessing that's because of you writing to a deadline and having to meet certain word requirements. I don't necessarily think you need to add more chapters or spread the content of one chapter over several chapters to fix this. Just taking a step back and adding in more detail would bring the perceived fast pace down to a comfortable speed.

Accuracy (if non-fiction): 5/5
Free points. Yay! 🙂

Overall enjoyment & engagement: 7/10
I enjoyed reading this. It was an interesting story with a unique plotline, and while I would like more detail, what you had was really good. A warning about the gif at the beginning of the story would be nice, though, because that triggered my vertigo right away. I had to scroll down really quickly to get it off the screen, so I couldn't exactly read that section too carefully. Not sure how many people that would affect, but there's that. Anyway, if you wanted to go back and edit and flesh this out more, I think that would make it even better.