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The Camboy - Detailed Feedback

Maybe I'm stretching there, but I can tell Nevan's going through a lot, and any subtle details you give to show what he's going through is always appreciated, and I interpreted the all caps as A) a style choice and B) a way to show Nevan's emotions without directly telling us.

Lastly, I like the cover. I like the aesthetic and how the man's face is almost hidden behind the colors. I also like the font choice. It's a creative cover with an interesting aesthetic that definitely aligns with the overall feel of your profile.

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What Didn't Work:

I would suggest putting direct thoughts in italics or giving them their own space away from the rest of the text. I only say that because when there were direct thoughts, it took me a moment to understand they were thoughts due to the tense change. I thought it was a tense error at first, then the "thought" tag came after it. Since the first direct thought we received (in chapter one) was in the middle of a paragraph, I wasn't expecting it.

The paragraphs are a little too long for my liking. I read on laptop, but a majority of Wattpad readers are on mobile, so if they're long for me, they're much longer on mobile. That's just something to keep in mind while writing. For example, the chapter "The Cute New Guy" has an opening paragraph that is about 15 sentences long. It could have been split with the sentence that starts with "I go in my bathroom..." since that's a new idea that can start its own paragraph.

There are tense issues where the tense flip flops between past and present tense incorrectly. You are writing in past tense, so present tense is used in rare circumstances, such as direct thoughts. There are times you slip into present tense outside of character thoughts.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm fine with the chapter lengths, but the pacing was a bit slow in some areas. It took two chapters to cover the livestream, which can work, but since it was the beginning of the story, it felt a bit slow to me. The later chapters are fine pacing-wise, all I'm suggesting is tightening the hook a bit. The long paragraphs also impact the pacing.

There are frequent spelling errors in the story that I would recommend going back and editing at some point. For example, from the chapter The Team Leader, "Who is this Rhys? You're friend?"

With corrected spelling: "Who is this, Rhys? Your friend?"

I added a comma since when there is information that is not essential to the sentence, we tend use a comma to separate it. Most commonly, names. So in the sentence after that, "Oh no Boss man," it should be, "Oh no, Boss man." Only because "boss man" is not essential to the sentence, and without the comma, it can change the meaning of the sentence.

I have another creative suggestion. I would suggest not using as many ellipses (...) as you do. In creative writing, ellipses are most commonly used to show a pause in speech, so when you're using them often, it makes the dialogue hard to read and is another reason why the pacing slows down. It's unnatural for us to have that many pauses in our speech. It's one thing if it's a character's speech style, but they all do it. Ellipses tend to be used in emotional moments or to show a character trailing off, so when you overuse them, it makes the emotional moments less effective since we're so used to seeing them already. I hope that makes sense.

This is a nitpick but make sure dialogue tags are next to the dialogue, not below it. Since a tag is a continuation of the dialogue, it needs to be either before or after the dialogue, not under or above it.

So, for example:

"Hey," he said.

^ That's a correct dialogue tag.

NOT:

"Hey,"

He said.

Or:

He said,

"Hey."

It's very hard to read when the tags are separated from the dialogue. It gets too confusing trying to understand who is speaking.

Lastly, you use "ocean blue" to describe a lot of eyes in the book. I would recommend looking for new descriptive terms you can use. It's a bit of a cliche term, so using it often can feel a little repetitive at times. There were some other cliche descriptions such as "not getting a wink of sleep." I would recommend limiting those types of descriptions as much as possible.

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Summary:

- Interesting set up

- Interesting cat and mouse game in the beginning

- Rhys is cool so far

- I want to know more about Tieran and see Nevan and him interact casually in the future

- Some grammar errors (spelling errors, punctuation, tense issues, etc.)

- I would suggest tightening the pacing and splitting up the paragraphs more

- I would suggest making direct thoughts more clear, whether it be by putting them in italics or another method is up to you

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Overall:

The Camboy is in the beginning stages, but from the ten chapters that are currently published, it is clear the author is setting up a nice narrative that will revolve around two men who have a lot more emotional depth than they are saying out loud. So far, there is a lot of sexual tension/content. If you are looking for a steamy story, then this is the book for you.

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Thank you for submitting your story. It's early in the book so I couldn't comment too much on the plot or characters as I didn't get to see them fleshed out much yet, but I hope this review was still helpful and will help guide you in the right direction when you continue the story!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or would like any additional review(s).