User blog:Mister.. E./Reality Realized - Week One Scores

A hub for all of my official reviews for Reality Realized.

Characters, Characterization, and Dialogue
Now with our first category, we run into our first problem. With the characters in this season we don't have that many who stick out. The first chapter is definitely an indicator of things to come and to have a lack of characterization here is definitely a huge hindrance. The characters just seemed to all have the same dialogue with very, very little difference. It became hard to truly figure out what most characters were supposed to be as most felt sort of the same, which is fine for now, but you need to make more distinct characters in the future or else lots of things will go incredibly flat. Like Space said, there were minor differences between some of the more major characters like Bennett, Claire, Michelle, and Julian, as well as the host Carson who is very well written, but overall many of the more minor characters feel a bit boring and don't seem to stand out well enough.

The best thing in my opinion going forward is to make even the more minor characters stand out, if that means going a bit over the top with them, that's fine. Some over the top antics in a fic does wonders in comparison to more grounded characters, which you seem to have the hang of pretty well. Another thing to improve would definitely be to make dialogue more distinct, give characters verbal tics and perhaps highlight accents more frequently to differentiate them better. I see lots of potential in the characters and with a bit of work I'm sure you can get the hang of it.

I give you a 15/30 in the characters section.

Plots and Flow of the Story
Again, like my fellow judges said I do have some problems with the beginning parts of the story. A lot of it felt a bit choppy and under-described at times. A bit of colorful descriptions go a long way in my opinion and that's something that definitely needs to be improved. However in the way of plot lines you seem to be doing well enough, I see some decent enough interactions going on here and some interesting things happened in the third part what with the team pick and all, but I felt like the first couple parts kind of dragged in what seemed like needless dialogue, sometimes less really is more and that's what I think this chapter really struggled with.

Going forward I'd say probably forgo a bit of the dialogue and add some more action with more description and less dialogue, since too much dialogue can get tedious at times which unfortunately I'd say happened in the first two parts of this, the third part was pretty good and on track so I'd say keep it more like the third part and perhaps refine that a bit more and you should be fine.

I give you a 12/25 in the plot section.

Theme of the Week
You did complete the theme of the week so I automatically award 10 points based on completion but with these intros, they felt quite skeletal and in a Total Drama fic, intros are pivotal to getting to know characters or at least some idea of what they are, I can't really say too much without getting into what I said with the characters, but I'd say just be more emotive with the dialogue and I'd say describe what your characters look like, as a mental picture helps with the immersion aspect of the whole thing.

I give you a 10/20 in the theme section.

Personal Enjoyment
Personally I felt like at times this chapter did drag at times and the characters didn't feel too developed, but it's the first chapter so I can get that. The overuse of dialogue and underuse of description made some of the chapters drag, particularly the second part. The use of flashbacks was interesting but at times felt a bit odd. The third part was pretty good though, tense enough to be interesting and the characters finally felt more full and interesting but that's 1/3 of the chapter so I cannot say I truly enjoyed it that much, honestly. I'm sorry to say this but it's true. Just follow my tips above and you should be fine in the coming weeks for my enjoyment.

I give you a 5/15 in the enjoyment section.

Grammar and Spelling
I don't put too much precedence on this section because I feel like if it's readable it should be fine for me and here you exceeded that by quite a bit and this was a fairly easy read grammar wise, the only thing I caught was tense shifts which you need to catch in the future but nothing too distracting for me.

I give you a 9/10 in the grammar section.

Overall
Overall I'd say this is a bit of a rocky beginning but I have confidence in you as a writer and I feel like if you can fix what I mentioned above you can have a truly great fanfic on your hands here, it's not perfect but this is what this competition is for, to improve people's skills and give them useful feedback on their stories. I have faith you can improve in the future, JE.

Overall I give your story a 51/100, it's not the best score, but it's not the end of the world. I can see you getting a lot higher in the future. Good luck.