Review Shop - Quotev And Wattpad (CLOSED)

Kayadhu Kalyaan - Detailed Feedback

Overall,  Kayadhu Kalyaan is an entertaining story that impressed me with its visuals and lore. There's a lot to unpack about this book in terms of its historical and mythological content, and I want to encourage any potential readers reading this right now to go check out your work for themselves so they too can immerse themselves in the magical world you created.

~~~

What Didn't Work:

Before I get into some creative suggestions, I'd like to go over grammar. You have tense issues where you flip flop between past and present tense incorrectly. You are writing in past tense, so you should stick to past tense. Sometimes you'll use present tense verbs ("has" and "is," for example) incorrectly. It doesn't matter if you write in past or present tense, but since you chose to write in past tense, try to make sure it's consistently in past tense.

There are some dialogue tag errors as well where you'll capitalize the tag even though it isn't a proper noun. Also, when you are using tags after the dialogue, the dialogue cannot end with a period/full stop.

For example, from the chapter titled Father-daughter conversation, there's this:

"Who is it?" He asked, sounding tired and weary.

"It's me, father." She said, her voice trembling and cracking.

"Come in, my dear." He said, his voice softening and warming.

It should be:

"Who is it?" he asked, sounding tired and weary.

"It's me, father," she said, her voice trembling and cracking.

"Come in, my dear," he said, his voice softening and warming.

Do you see how I put the tags in lowercase because they aren't proper nouns? Dialogue tags are continuations of the dialogue, therefore they should be lowercase unless A) they're starting the sentence (like: He said, "I missed you.") or B) they're proper nouns. Otherwise, they should be lowercase. You do dialogue tags right sometimes, but it's a bit inconsistent.

That leads me into my first creative suggestion: repetition. There are many moments in the story where you say unnecessary words or you overuse certain words. For example, dialogue tags. You often overuse dialogue tags. Many time you'll use a tag for almost every line of dialogue, but that isn't necessary. I would suggest not using as many dialogue tags and doing more showing over telling. Tags are telling, hence why I'm suggesting limiting them. Maybe try introducing who's speaking by using actions, descriptions, speech styles, etc.

In that example I used above, do you see how you use the same structure for every tag? It's *tag* then comma then -ing verb to describe the voice. For the two lines of dialogue after those three, you also describe the voice. Maybe try and change it up instead of describing their voices five times in a row. Maybe describe their body language, or their faces, or their hands (i.e., do they talk with their hands? What position are their hands in?), or their eyebrows, or their appearance (are they dressed elegantly, are they worn down?), or their eyes (do they have bags under their eyes? Are they making eye contact?).

Those are just a few questions to ask yourself while writing. I'm not saying you never do this because that's not true, but sometimes you'll fall into patterns where you'll describe the same thing (in this case, their voices) several times in a row. I think it's good that you're describing their voices, but maybe try and give a little more variety. That's what I mean when I say there's some repetition in the story.

I mentioned earlier that sometimes you take too many words to say one thing. This is an example: "He thinks in his mind." There's no reason to say "in his mind" because the word "thinking" already means that, so you're taking three extra words to say the same thing. I hope when I break it down like that, it makes sense why that came off as a bit repetitive. For your reference, the "He thinks in his mind" is from the chapter titled The Birth.

I want to get into consistency now because you have some consistency problems. Earlier, I mentioned you don't stay in a consistent tense since you often include present tense verbs in past tense incorrectly. You also have some POV issues where you'll mostly be narrating the story in the author's/narrator's POV, then you'll switch POV mid-chapter to someone else's. There's nothing wrong with switching the POV, though I would recommend not doing it in the middle of chapters. I would also not recommend going from third person to first person since it's distracting and a bit hard for readers to keep up with. I would suggest only sticking with one: third person or first person.

The last issue with consistency is dialogue. Sometimes the dialogue will switch to suddenly being in script format. What I mean by that is this:

Diti: Yes, of course. So what happened on that day?

I'm very confused why this switch was made, and I would strongly recommend not using script format for dialogue because it doesn't work well with book format. When you have book-like descriptions and actions surrounding script-like dialogue, it's very hard to read. So that's what I mean when I say consistency issues.

I hope when I break it down like that, it makes sense!

~~~

Summary:

- Creative ideas

- Nice aesthetics

- Cool character lore

- Good worldbuilding

- Some grammar errors

- Be careful with repetition

- Some consistency errors

~~~

Overall:

Kayadhu Kalyaan is an engaging story with unique characters that have equally unique backstories. If you're someone who enjoys works that are rich with history and mythology, then this is the perfect book for you.

~~~

Thank you for submitting your story. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like any additional reviews (when the shop opens again).