《Samantha》You Must Remember...

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You Must Remember This by FranklinBarnes

Reviewer: samantha-writes

Cover: 1/5
— I'm not sure what the cover is supposed to be, and I've asked others for their opinions as well, and nobody has been able to figure it out. It just looks like either a bunch of different pictures were put on top of one another or it used to be one big picture that was clear and became morphed and confusing with heavy editing. I'd love to know where you found this picture or if you made it simply because I'm curious and it truly seems like artwork. However, as a cover it isn't very effective or fitting.
— I can somewhat see a theme in the cover. There is so much going on, and the different segments of the cover have different images, filters, and adjustments made to them. In a way, I can see how it can represent the vastly different characters, but I don't find it to represent any sort of main conflict the story holds, if any.
— The title's text is alright, but it could be more visible. Not bad, though.
— There needs to be a mention of the author's name. Maybe you just forgot to put it or it's there and I missed it, but you need to at least put your username if you're not comfortable with putting your full name and make it easy to read on the cover.

Title: 2/5
— I don't particularly find any correlation between the story's concept and the title. The concept seems to be about Heller High School with a new class of freshman and their teachers dealing with them. Nothing in the title indicates that.
— In a way, the title is a bit ironic because a lot of the content of the story is hard to remember, mainly the characters. But I'll talk about that much more later on, even though I'm sure you've already read comment critiquing it.

Blurb: 4/10
— The blurb tells readers what to expect of the story, which is good. It let's them know what sort of genre it is, and I appreciate that as a reader. But we aren't given any character names/backstories, any mention of the world, nor much introduction to the plot.
— I understand that there are far too many characters to include in the blurb without info-dumping, so I'm not too upset about this. However, if you fix that character issue—which I'll talk more about later—then you might be able to include some important characters in the blurb. Until then, this isn't a significant problem.
— I think the most prominent issue is that you neglect to mention the location of Heller High School in the blurb. Since the story is realistic fiction, bringing up the location is pretty much the only way to world-build even a bit in the blurb. It shouldn't be much more than just stating the school, if any more.
— Similar issue with the plot/main conflict as with the characters. There doesn't seem to be a specified main conflict because it seems that your story is a slice-of-life—which I'll talk more about in the Plot category. The blurb mentions at the end that the story is about the teenager's years in high school and how terrible the system is that they're in. That's a decent start, but there could be more to it. That doesn't really get me interested in reading, it just makes the story sound bland and basic. Provide readers with something that gives the story some more spice. (This means that there may need to be some plot changes, but again I'll talk about that later.)

World: 9/10
— You do a fantastic job of setting the scene of Heller High School! It's genuinely admirable how intimate each detail is! The world-building, although there isn't much to do because it's a realistic fiction story, is in-depth and just amazing.
— That being said, it's a lot to take in all at once. I like how much effort is put into it, but throwing so much information at readers all at once can be overwhelming. You should focus the majority of your world-building at the beginning of your story so that readers aren't confused, yes, but you went a bit overboard. Not so far overboard that I was discouraged from reading, but this seems to be a trend with your writing, so I think it's crucial to bring up.

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