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Full title:Whispers of the Night by ash20178 Source: Blossom Awards 2024 Category: Fantasy Mature: Y (sexual content, violence) Status: Ongoing Round 1: 37/40 Round 2: Judged by NoelleAnn397
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*****
Round 1 total: 37/40
Title: 10/10 You've piqued my interest.
Blurb/synopsis: 10/10 Perfect. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, content warnings, and the text itself. You give just enough information to grab the reader's attention while still leaving plenty up for the imagination. Great job.
Cover: 10/10 Yes. The colors, crown, text, font, everything just goes together perfectly.
First chapter (and everything that came before it): 7/10 I like the personal touch of the author's note. It's something I struggle to do without getting too wordy, and a lot of author's notes can get too rambly, but this is perfect.
The prologue is also just about perfect. My only complaint is with the seventh paragraph about the King of Eloria. The first few paragraphs are general overviews of the world, and then the paragraphs about Princess Lori and King Kraven zoom in for quick snapshots of these two characters' mindsets as the story begins. It feels like the first sentence in the seventh paragraph is zoomed in too much, if that makes sense. I've been reading and rereading it to figure out what I think would help, and I think you just need a transition statement at the beginning of the paragraph, similar to what you have at the beginning of the other two characters' paragraphs. Also, I did find one mistake where a comma should be a hyphen or a semicolon: "Little did he care about his daughter, he saw her as nothing more than a pawn in his game of power." But otherwise, yes, this is great, I already feel sorry for Princess Lori, and I want to keep reading.
The first chapter isn't as polished as the blurb and the prologue. Your static descriptions are good, but it seems like you're struggling with dialogue, action scenes, and showing the passage of time, which is understandable. Every author has their own strengths and weaknesses. You have a tendency toward wordiness and run-on sentences in these areas, and punctuation around dialogue is a bit messy, too. Having someone proofread behind you, or looking into using an editing tool that supports your English usage, would really help you here.
I'll use the first paragraph as an example: "The man who was Lori's father walked towards the room where all his ministers were sitting. He entered the library everyone bowed in front of him, to give him respect as he was their king, although most of them knew he did not deserve respect, they were not powerful enough to go against him." Excessive words make the reader circle around the idea instead of getting it right away, and the second sentence is a run-on sentence. How you condense words and split the sentences up is a matter of style and personal preference. Here's a literal fix so you can see exactly where the problems were: "Lori's father walked towards the room where all his ministers were sitting. He entered the library, and everyone bowed in front of him to give him respect as their king, although most of them knew he did not deserve respect. They were not powerful enough to go against him." And here's a more stylistic fix to give you an example of another way to approach this paragraph: "Lori's father entered the library where all his ministers were waiting. Most of them knew he did not not deserve their respect, but they were not powerful enough to go against him, and so they all bowed before him."
As for your dialogue, I'm pretty sure all English usages require punctuation at the end of the quote, and no spaces between the quotes and the letters. In the US, the ending punctuation is within the quote, and in the UK, it's outside of it, but you always need something. So, for the first quote, US English says it would be this way: "I have an important matter to discuss. Last night, I received a letter from the King of the Night Kingdom," the king declared.
The description of Lori sitting alone in her room is amazing. This is where you really shine. I can see the room, and I feel the calm and peace of being there. But when her father enters the room, and the story moves from a static description into a scene with action, your writing gets sloppy again. Like I said, it's just an area for you to work on, but it's perfectly normal for authors to have areas they excel in and areas they need a little help.
The timeline after the king leaves Lori's room gets a bit fuzzy. It feels like she's in her room, and then, suddenly, she's knocking on his door. Adding something to show the passage of time and her walking from her room through the palace to his room would help here. It's the same issue at the end of the chapter. You have a transition statement, but then you start running into verb tense issues. Everything has been written in past tense up to this point, and now you switch into present tense, and then back to past tense. It also feels a bit rushed in that second to last paragraph. Here's how I might edit it: "After three days without food or care, Lori was weak with a fever. Then the door to the basement finally opened, and three maids appeared, helping her to her room and tending to her. They bathed and dressed her, they fed her and gave her medicine, and then she fell asleep, exhausted."
Setting King Kraven's internal monologue apart in italics instead of single quotation marks would make it more obvious that he's thinking the words, not saying them.
A final nitpicky thing - I don't think you need the line of dashes between the last paragraph and the banner.
I know I've pointed out a lot of things that need work, but your story concept is solid, and I can follow the story and still maintain my curiosity about what happens next (and pity for Lori), so I still think this is a great start.
