Dreamland Review Archive

Muderborne (T)

Until he stumbles upon Aeiln, a girl with a similar past who drags Gavin along with her to challenge the system and fight for something bigger.

Esternia has always had three species. But maybe that's about to change.

So this blurb is more lighthearted and fun. Maybe that's not the mood you want. I don't know. I just think it's snappier and might attract more readers. The only thing you really should change in your blurb is the formatting and making double spaces between your paragraphs to split it up. Other than that, my suggestions have just been a matter of cleaning up.

10/15

Logistics: (grammar, spelling & dialogue)

I don't see any persistent problems with your grammar, only awkward sentences- most writers deal with these. Sometimes I re-read something I wrote and I go: okay that makes no sense, let's restructure that. It's just a matter of knowing what sounds wonky. Here's one sentence I pulled from your chapter one:

However, all that changed when she heard a few people shouting near the entrance, and turned her head to look.

So there's an oxford comma in here which I hate but I understand it is preference. If you're not familiar with the oxford comma, it's when the comma is placed before 'and' in a sentence to string together two dependant sentences. In truth, I think this sentence would be better as two independent clauses (that means they stand alone and could be separated by a period). You could accomplish this by adding in a pronoun, in this case it would be 'she':

However, all that changed when she heard a few people shouting near the entrance. She turned her head to look.

Or, you could go with the good old semicolon, because the two concepts are still kinda related:

However, all that changed when she heard a few people shouting near the entrance; she turned her head to look.

Now. Even the two suggestions I've given you are weak, and I wouldn't ever want them in my writing. So what would I do? I'd add detail! Detail helps to make your sentences flow and make them nice and pretty. What about this:

However, all that changed when she heard a few people shouting near the entrance, loud noises piercing the air. She turned her head abruptly to look.

Do you see how this last suggestion is just a little more advanced? It makes us feels something. It turns a rather boring sentence into something fun! I've spent a lot of space on this one sentence, but I think it applies to everything you write. Most of your sentences are like this: they're crisp and for the most part concise, but they need that extra oompf to make them really good.

Spelling is rather good. I didn't catch a lot of pesky mistakes other than one or two. That's excellent, but as always, just proofread like a thousand times before you publish. That helps. One thing I noticed is when you use double quotations not as dialogue. Example from chapter one:

...and she was "helping him", he was still...

I don't like that. But I don't know what the rules for it are in your country. In Canada, we would use single quotations for that. But it's also somewhat of a preference. I would recommend single quotations for that because the rules are murky and that way, it's never confused with dialogue.

You also used some bolded italics to represent thoughts; you don't need the bold. The italics are enough. But whatever. Do what you want. It's Wattpad. Unique is good.

Dialogue tags = perfect. Thank you. I tried desperately to find ONE time you slipped up and you did not. Made me very happy (:

13/15