In My Opinion

The Distorted Ones by Scanking7

Full title: LOD - The Distorted Ones - Book 1 of the Series LOD by Scanking7
Source: Blossom Awards 2024
Category: Fantasy
Mature: Y (violence, explicit language, sexual content)
Status: Ongoing
Round 1: 16/40, did not progress to round 2

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book.

*****

Round 1 total: 16/40

Title: 8/10
This piques my interest, which is the whole point of a title, but it's too long to fit on my screen and has unnecessary repetition. It's pretty easy to fix that, though. Just condense it down. I don't know if it will fit on the screen after being condensed, but that's more of a Wattpad issue than a title issue. Something like this would show all the info you want - the name of the series, the book number within the series, and the book title: "LOD: Book 1 - The Distorted Ones"

Blurb/synopsis: 6/10
There are issues with phrasing, tense consistency, sentence structure, things that I'll try to go through, but having someone proofread behind your, or using an editing tool that supports your English usage could be really helpful.

So, the first sentence/paragraph. I like the initial short hook, because not everybody clicks the "more" button to see the rest of the blurb. The phrasing isn't quite as smooth as it could be, though. I've been looking at it, trying a few things in my head to see what works, and I think it's just a bit wordy. You can play around with it to see what you like, but here's one example of how you can eliminate excess words and improve the flow: "Welcome to the League of Orphan Dreamers world, where you'll drown in deep mysteries and inexplicable events."

Okay, now, the second paragraph has some tense issues. That first paragraph is in present tense, but the second paragraph switches back and forth from present to past and back again. You need to pick one for consistency, and if you're going with present tense in that first sentence, that needs to be the tense throughout. There are also issues with sentence structure. The first sentence in the paragraph, for example, is in present tense, so that's good, but it's incomplete, and the bit about famous orphanages doesn't make sense, because the first paragraph didn't mention multiple orphanages, or famous orphanages, just orphans. The second sentence is in past tense and kind of rambles, and, again, the bit about a regular dream world doesn't make sense, because everybody dreams differently, and dreams can get pretty crazy. Same thing with advanced walls. What are advanced walls? The third and fourth sentences are okay, but, when I was playing around with the first two sentences to see how to fix them, it was easier to look at the paragraph as a whole instead of the individual sentences. So, this is what I came up with, but there are so many ways you could flip it around, condense it, reorder it, whatever. Just play with it, bounce it off of a friend, pull up an editing tool, and see what you come up with. Here's mine: "A famous orphanage run by well-known billionaire Leah Roosevelt holds mysteries, secrets, lies, and rumors of a prophecy within its walls. Sleeping children visit an unusual dream world that gifts them with abilities you have never seen before. If I told you this world exists, and it's not just the orphans' imaginations running wild, would you believe me?"

I like the offset last sentence, set aside in its own paragraph, but, again, I think a little reworking is in order. The "well then" isn't necessary, I wonder about the capitalization of Arcadia (which may be something you want to keep - I haven't read the story yet to see how it fits, obviously, so maybe it's better fully capitalized), and I'm not sure you need the "where everything is a challenge," but if you want to keep it, you should put a comma after "Arcadia." So: "Welcome to Arcadia, where everything is a challenge." Or just: "Welcome to Arcadia." I think the latter has more suspense value, so I prefer that, but it's up to you. Anyway, the point of a blurb is to catch the reader's attention, and this does, so good job, and just play around with sentence structure a bit.