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Oh, for crying out loud. The word's a link! Click on it! Respond there, not here.

Judging "Only Once," by Mytyl
--[ Style ] This piece makes good use of minimalism to keep the flow moving nicely, but there is a bit left to the reader's assumption; Tebril mentions that there are "others" who "choose" that line of work. Did the narrator not choose to be an assassin, then? (4 - Above Average)

--[ Narrative ] Female assassins are fairly common in media today. But did she have to be so whiny and teary-eyed? She reminds me of Robert Jordan's Aes Sedai who spend the better part of The Wheel of Time being portrayed as these powerful, serious women, then start tripping on their feet and flaming up all in blushes at the mere mention of handsome men and shopping for new dresses. Eh. Feels fairly real by anyone else's standards, but I'd expect more strength from someone trained to be an assassin. Azumi also comes to mind as another female assassin who has to overcome the so-stereotypical female emotionalism as it is portrayed by modern media. (3 - Average)

--[ Characters ] Tebril was well-thought and seemed less than transparent. The narrator, on the other hand, was not a solid character. (3 - Average)

--[ Grammar & Punctuation ] The punctuation wasn't jarring and seemed to be used quite appropriately. It didn?t trip up the flow of my reading; I hardly noticed it, which is how it should be. I had to go back and look for it to be sure. (4 - Above Average)

--[ Plot | Originality ] There's nothing new about female assassins and certainly nothing original about assassins expected to kill someone close to them. This piece carried itself well enough despite that. (2 - Fair)

--[ Overall ] This is unfortunately 36 words over the 1000 limit. I've reviewed it anyway because I found it worth reading. Despite a dull narrator, the use of minimalism kept this piece moving well and maintained a good level of interest. (4 - Above Average)

I didn't realize my grammar in the peice was so poor...in light of that I think re-writing it would be a good idea. If you could be specific that would be very cool 3nodding Thanks for the review, btw.

Thanks to the erm, person/people (fellow entrant/s) who reviewed it as well (still a bit confused about the whole thing xd )

Ranjir's Review

Tears of Heartbreak
by ~Misty Amethyst~
As I watch you look at her,
Smile, cuddle and kiss her;
My heart just slowly breaks,
But I know that's everything I have to take.
I feel tears form behind my eyes,
Everything I have ever tried,
But I will not cry...


Style -- 2 Usually poety that is only one stanza is by Western standards nothing. Too short to really even think about. But then there is the Haiku. This does a fairly efective job of coveying the emotion that you are trying to get across but you might have been able to do so a little bit better with a slightly longer poem.

Narrative -- 2 Alright, the story is there. It flows fairly well. I can at least tell what you are talking about. There could be a bit more depth but on the whole it was pretty good.

Characters -- 3 Your characters are pretty one dimensional. Though in poetry this is not necessarily a bad thing. It is often hard in poetry to make a character complex. Also it is not always necessary to make a very complex character as most poetry typically deals with only one emotion or idea. In this case heartache. So it is acceptable to have only one dimensional characters.

Grammar/Punctuation/Diction -- 2 The grammar is acceptable. It won't get you an A in a College creative writing course but it would likely get you a C. Upon re-examination you could have chosen perhaps slightly higher level of words to help express your thoughts. Also Instead of basically making it one long sentance turn it into several smaller sentances. Or if you want to make it one long sentance break it up in more places than just at the end of the line, do like Emily Dickenson did. Put some hyphens in your poem. Do not just put them in willy nilly. Think about the place where you truely want pauses at. Also figure out how long you want the pause to be. A very short pause gets a comma. A some what long pause gets a hypen or a period.


Plot & Originality -- 2 This poem while well done is on a topic that is as old as time itself. You did write a good poem, but with all the goths and those who have heartache and are writing about it I truely do not find this to stand out all that much from what has been done before.

Additional comments/overall -- I too know what it is to experiece heartache. The poem is short and it gets your point across, but perhaps you could have added a few more images. Perhaps expanded upon the hurt and broken heart, but on the whole it was good. A solid piece of work which just needs a little bit of polishing. A 3 out of 5

~Deleted~

Author and Title: Glitch Makoto, "The Night Before Christmas"

1. Style Rating: 2

Any criticisms of style are going to overlap heavily with character in this case, so please bear with me.

Critiquing the style of a poem filled with ragged meter, forced rhymes, and awkward, jumpy, breathless transitions should be easy. "FAIL!" But it ain't, because this could all be very deliberate and artistic. Right? It's the classic "I meant to do that!" problem. How can I be certain that what I call "flaws" aren't really clever pieces of authorial sleight of hand that I simply lack the poetic talent to recognize?

Answer: Unless the goal of the poem is pure self-parody, in which case it isn't really very ambitious anyway, there's no excuse for using phrases like "threw out that dumb 'ol mouse" to force a rhyme. There's no good reason to use needless words, or disrupt the readability of the sentences. It's possible to be childish and still fun to read, to be self-parodic and still worthwhile, and this poem doesn't do that.

It's written in the style of somebody trying embarrassingly hard to be childish.

An example of a heavy-handed place:



Okay, so the narrator uses adult word choice sometimes ("booked a flight," as opposed to "got on a plane" wink . Is this consistent with the tone of the rest of the poem? ("making some trains and maybe a vase," "dumb ol' mouse," and so on) Unless Makoto is trying to say that his speaker's a child who's superficially involved in the adult world, or something along those lines, this is not appropriate.

And the sentence as a whole is about as awkward and unreadable as it could possibly be, right down to the jarring parenthetical rhyme-forcing.

That said, the poem does have some potential stylistic strengths. The variation in line lengths really does emphasize the breathlessness of the narration, and the pacing of the first several lines jumps from the cautious to frenetic very appropriately. But this control isn't maintained.

2. Narrative Rating: 3

The pacing is about right. The repetition ("Then I [...] Then I [...] Then I" wink and the way the story careens cheerfully from event to event without pause both convey the speaker's state of mind pretty well.

3. Characters Rating: 2

I'm not certain how far Glitch Makoto the speaker is supposed to represent Glitch Makoto the author. Maybe it doesn't matter. But for the stylistic reasons described above, I've only got a very vague idea of who's speaking here. I see, and appreciate, a cheerful fannishness and a sense of mischief, but that's about it.

4. Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation Rating: 2

Well, I can definitely hit the "drew up new plants" spelling error here if I want a cheap shot. I think I will. Yay me. Nitpick, nitpick.

I don't get any sense that the author gave real thought to the effects of grammatical structure and punctuation on the poem. While the lines seem to be structured to give a breathless feel to the piece (see above), the overuse of commas does not help. Why do we need to say "Then I laughed COMMA My ninja plan worked COMMA But little did I know COMMA What lurked?" Why can't it be

"Then I laughed
'Cause my ninja plan worked,
But little did I know
What lurked."

5. Plot Rating: 3

I could very much like this plot. Ninja kid tries to steal all the presents from Santa. It neatly catches the unselfconscious selfishness, the mischief, and the sense of adventure that I like in a child speaker. Unfortunately, the poem doesn't take this plot very far. I know that convention demands that the gifts get returned, that the kid start plotting again, whatever... but why not defy convention? Why not let the kid KEEP the gifts, and pull something out of that?

Adding a love of ninja stuff to a Grinch story is good, but it'd be better with a more interesting ending.

6. Over-all Impression Rating: 2

I'll admit that I can't give a 1 to a poem that tries this hard to be charming. But I'm not particularly charmed. Unless this poem really is intense self-parody - in which case I missed the point entirely! - it's not going where it wants to go.