Eracelli Package (18 parts)

Title
The title is a bit cliché, to be honest, and it isn't specific enough to tell us how your story is unique from others. These three things—title, cover, and blurb—are detrimental to what makes a reader open up your story to read. Make a good first impression! Make it interesting and unique to your story! Tell us why we should choose to read it!

Cover
The cover is very jumbled, and the composition is not designed in a way that's pleasing to the eye. I get that the message at the bottom left corner says that it's your character's self portrait and that the rest is a mess, but you should try to make your cover professional-looking and to use the elements of good design. For instance, it'd be nice if the title was centered and if the heart was smaller so we can read "love" more easily. Actually, it'd be nice if all the text was centered and not aligned to the left. It'd also be nice if there was a big focal image to the cover instead of lots of little images. That way, our eye is drawn to something that has to do with the story and tells of its identity rather than lots of images which just makes us confused. And the image would be nice to be something that isn't a cartoon—or at least a cartoon that looks professional. I'm assuming this story is supposed to be a serious one. Make your cover look like it!

Blurb
Your blurb consists of a really long sentence and a question. What I believe is missing is telling us what makes your story unique and interesting. What's the main conflict?

For the title, cover, and blurb, I'm taking a point away. I know you can do better!

*since your story comes in 18 parts, I'll be reviewing three at a time, coming to around six portions of review*

Preface–Chapter 2
Okay, preface. An explanation of why you chose to write the story, a synopsis, and then a plea to enjoy and vote if enjoyed. I'd say all of it could be condensed, and I've never understood why people put their synopses inside their stories—especially since yours is the same one. Who cares if people don't look at the summary on the outside? You'll be getting reads until they realize what it's about if they're not into your plot. Let them discover. If they want to read the blurb, they can on the outside, right? Moving on.

The graphic of the bus isn't bad. However, there's hardly any way I can read the words in the windows because the letters are a bit too big—or the windows too small.

The last sentence of the first chapter is a run-on sentence, which are independent clauses connected together incorrectly. You should always connect them with a comma and a coordinating conjunction, an em-dash, or a semicolon. Otherwise, you'll have to change either clause to a participial phrase (change the verb to an -ing verb to make it a participial phrase). Either way, run-on sentences are tell-tale signs of writers who aren't quite in tune with the rules of their language. I'm here to help!

I spot a usage of "you" in the narrative voice, which is something often considered incorrect. Some authors use it, but it doesn't make sense to me because the narrator is almost never talking directly to the reader. Most of the time, this is used as a general term, a "general you", if you will. I'm speaking directly to you in my review, but you really meant Caleb when you used the narrative "you".

"Passed" is a verb while "past" is an adverb. Therefore, "walks passed" is incorrect and "walks past" is the correct way to write that.

When the main character talks about how he knew Caleb's friend Evan, it needs to be in past perfect tense because it references something before what's happening in the present. That means "heard" needs to be "had heard" and so on.

A lot of your dialogue reads a little unnaturally. I know what everything means, but some of the exchanges were things that people I know wouldn't necessarily say ("Oh, I will write it down" for when Caleb gave Jack his address, Caleb asking for Jack's, and then Jack just shaking his head is an example). I think a better grasp on colloquial English will serve you better. Sometimes dialogue seems stiff because of subtle language barriers, as thin as they may be. Your English is way better than my Spanish would be, for example, yet I know dialogue and even some narration won't quite be the same for either of us because we're not native speakers. This is what I'm addressing—and would like to help with!

The dialogue continues to suffer in comprehensibility in the next chapter especially. I can't quite understand the exchange between Jack and his family. The grammar is fine and the narration is typically decent if a little sparse. However, the dialogue makes less sense. I subject, but not specifics and implications. For instance, I get that they're talking about Freddie and that he's a bad person, but I don't get the implication of Jack's mom and Freddie's marriage and what that has to do with Jack. This happens frequently.

Okay, here's another colloquial thing that has to do with the necessity of articles in front of nouns. Things like "prom" and "college" don't need articles a lot of times. For specificity, you can ("I'm going to the college of my choice"), but usually you don't ("I'm going to college"; "I should be excited for college"). The same goes with prom (not "the prom").

Because the dialogue was confusing to read, I didn't really understand the significance of this chapter—which isn't really that great of a thing. Comprehensibility is what reading is all about! Moving on.

Chapters 3–5
"Am" should never be by itself. "I am desperate" (or "I'm") is correct. "Am desperate" is not.

I spot a fragment, which is a phrase missing the essential elements of a sentence. Isolated participial phrases are counted as fragments. Comment if you'd like more assistance with this.

Ah—and there's a semicolon misusage! Semicolons must be used to 1) separate independent clauses or 2) fix structural ambiguity in a sentence. So, "Because they wanted to; they did it" is incorrect because the first clause is independent. However, "They wanted to; they did it" is correct. You can also put a conjunctive adverb at the beginning of the second independent clause if you so choose: "They wanted to; however, they couldn't do it" is correct. The structural ambiguity thing is most commonly seen in lists where items need commas, like if you were to list cities and their states together: "I went to Atlanta, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Houston, Texas" is correct once again. Hopefully, that makes sense. If not, comment below! I'm happy to help.

I went on and finished the rest of this chapter since I still don't understand the importance of Freddie and his identity, which was a big part of this chapter. Looks like he's not very admirable and is involved with both Jack's parents in some way. Moving on to the fourth.

Your timeline and the timeline of the narration seems off—choppy at the least. The first chapter was set in fall it seems, but now in the fourth chapter, suddenly Christmas is approaching. It wasn't clear that the time was skipped. This is a consistent error in this story.

It should be either "it's such a funny thing" or "it's so funny". "It's so a funny thing" is mixing those two phrases in a way that doesn't quite work.

Another thing: your story is set in the United States, right? If so, then "possum" needs to be "opossum" (yes, I know everyone in the US says "possum", but "possum" is Australian whereas "opossum" is North American). They are two different animals, are part of different orders in dichotomy, and look totally different, too!

You know, your timeline also really distances readers from the development of your characters and their relationship. You also write very passively. We don't often get placed in a scene. We're told about what happened, rather, which quickly makes things dull.

I don't get the "milk flow in the ears" rendering Jack speechless. It doesn't make sense to me.

What does this "constitution" have to do with Jack's family life? If you're talking about the US Constitution, then it needs to be capitalized, but I still don't see the connection.

Okay. Let's talk about contractions. Contractions are really useful and showcase colloquialism and efficiency—sometimes. At other times, however, contractions just don't make sense with sentences that you've. See how "you've" really just doesn't make sense even though technically it can be considered correct? Be careful with those. You might've used some in places that won't make sense, especially to native speakers like me who writes a lot of time with grammar "feelings". This contraction thing is a lot of times a "wrong feeling", which is unfair, but it still exists and functions. This is a consistent issue of yours.

Where did that old wine bottle come from?

Keep in mind the difference between "past" and "passed".

Chapters 6–8
"Am" almost always needs the pronoun "I" before it. I think you said something like, "...until the fox snarls and am asked about school." Without the pronoun, it looks like a verb misusage and that you meant to have the fox be asked because of the structure of your sentence. To fix it, all you have to do is put "I" before "am". You don't always have to, like if you said something like, "I get hurried out of the room and am rushed to the hospital". Because the subject is still "I", it's okay. But you have to establish that subject first and there can't be any breaks between the instances.

There are a couple different ways you can format text. You can put it in quotes, you can create a text picture and insert it into story, or—my favorite and preferred way—you can simply put it into italics. Whatever you do, though, treat it as you would dialogue. The same punctuation and grammar rules apply.

The whole scene with Caleb and Jack is a bit strange and not entirely realistic, I think—but perhaps that's the strange dialogue is taking away from the effect you'd intended. When they embrace is an example. This is something for this entire chapter.

Also...I don't review stories with nature scenes, which was part of the rules in the first part. Thus, I will be skipping those scenes to keep in continuity with my rules. Typically, I would stop reviewing altogether, but I want to help. For this reason, I will stop at the next mature scene (if there is one). Note that this would have penalized you a point or two.

The actions done in this chapter—Chapter 8—aren't very clear either. It could have been on purpose, but I had trouble visualizing then scene and gleaning information from the chapter.

When your noun is plural, the verb proceeding it doesn't need an 's' in the present tense. "He reminds me" is correct, for example, but "snowflakes reminds" is incorrect and must be changed to "snowflakes remind".

"I crawl my toes" doesn't make sense. Do you mean "curl"?

Chapters 9-11
You should put the poems that you reference in quotes—single quotes if they're in dialogue.

Why would Jack's mom call him an orb? What does that mean?

I don't really get how Ida broke Jack's heart—even if it was meant to be a joke.

Chapters 12-14
I sped through Chapters 12 and 13.

In 14, however, I found myself asking why they would ever kiss on the school bus. They're in public! I thought they were kind of a secret, and also not that many people kiss on a bus. Mostly because the driver will have a fit.

Chapters 15-17
Aaron's glare with something about dark orbs sliding between white? It was...creepy to say the least. "Orbs" has also become a word that, when used to replace "eyes" or "irises" or whatever, it reads like amateur romance.

Okay. "Well" versus "good" is a discrepancy that so many native speakers get incorrect, too. "Well" is an adverb because it describes verbs. "Good" is an adjective because it describes nouns or other adjectives. "I am doing well" is correct, but "I am doing good" is not, for example.

If you're going to say something about a note being played shortly (about the violin), don't say "sharp". "Sharp" means the pitch of the note is above the standard (what we would call "in tune" where A is at 440 Hz). That typically means it doesn't sound good (music lovers, I'm being very general here). "Short" would be better, "staccato" best.

Following this note, the story was deleted. I only made it to half of Chapter 16, but the review will still be posted. However, because the story is still not up for me to gather my final thoughts and point values, a point value will not be given unless requested by the author.

Overall, a better grasp of the language would make writing so much easier for you, and the quality would really help comprehension and syntax! Reading a ton and writing a lot will help, too. Practice makes perfect, as they say!