Welcome to 'A Writer's Desk Critiques' - a Wattpad based help desk offering constructive critiques for your stories.
To decide whether or not you should request at 'A Writer's Desk Critiques', please acquaint yourself with our service, our critics...
Shagun has been on Wattpad for over four years now. She has been writing for equally as long. Her current works in progress areTug of War and Lost Titles. Her short story Cupid's Bug recently won the first prize in a contest jointly organised by ChickLit, cupid and TeenFiction. She has a fairly good command over the English language. She is most complimented for her descriptive writing and smooth transition of scenes. In her critiques, she tries to focus on every aspect of your writing— conflict, pace, plot, characters, etcetera. However, she doesn't always considers herself the best judge of dialogues because of the dialectal differences.
She can critique some FanFiction stories depending on the fandom but she's not always very keen on the genre.
Her Critiquing Preferences:
✔ She is open to critiquing chapters, blurbs, LGBT+ stories and Mature stories that are rated so because of violence.
✘ She won't critique Eroticas.
✔ She will only critique a maximum of three chapters of a story.
✘ She won't critique your latest chapter(s) and will only start critiquing from the first chapter/prologue itself.
Her sample critiques:
Chapter Critique Sample:
The prologue was well-written, without any grammatical errors—as you had already pointed out to me, kudos to you! The opening paragraph was great. I really liked the last sentence of it. However, I do think that in the beginning, if you use "a" instead of "one" before thousand, it will flow more nicely, though both are correct.
The plot of the story is definitely intriguing. Anyone with a liking for Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre is bound to be drawn to the concept. The pacing of the prologue was good in my opinion, it didn't seem to drag and kept me interested throughout. It set just the right mood for the story ahead. The descriptions, vocabulary and writing style were excellent. The paragraph breaks you gave were precise.
I believe this prologue did fulfill its purpose: to lay out all the information that a reader needs to know before reading the book.
As a student, I was not very fond of reading through long History texts to know the stories, and a part of me felt that this prologue was much alike that. Though, the good thing was that this concept was unalike the historical stories taught in schools and was rather a fantasy one. I was pleasantly surprised to see that despite me not being a fan of reading through paragraphs lacking any real action, yours kept me interested.
It didn't deter me from reading the book, but I do recommend either changing the style of the prologue or making it a bit more condensed so as to not make the reader feel too impatient.
Overall, I think you have a story worth reading, an impactful writing style and an engrossing beginning. Good work!
Blurb Critique Sample:
The opening sentence of the blurb was good, drew me in right away. The second paragraph of the blurb, even though gave the necessary details, seemed a bit abstract to me. In three simple sentences you told me that the character was a prison guard who might not be satisfied with his life, there were strange occurrences happening and investigating them led to him getting into trouble. Which is great, however, I felt that they lacked connectivity with each other. It seemed that you picked up three different facts about the story and placed them together. Like the opening sentence was immediately able to capture my interest, the second paragraph didn't. I suggest changing the way you mention these facts, maybe make them more intriguing. The content is great as it is, it's how you tell it that needs improvement in my opinion.
The third paragraph, again held my interest, but I felt that it lacked a bit of connectivity following after the second one. I liked how you ended it on a note that makes the reader unsure of what to expect and doubt whether this book will have that usual concept of happy ending.
The blurb, as a whole, felt aloof to me as a reader, if that makes any sense. Though, I was highly impressed by the opening sentence. This blurb had all the necessary information, yet something felt missing. I was somewhat disappointed with it. Especially after reading the first three chapters, I believe this blurb didn't do justice to the story at all.
Her payment:
For blurb critiques:
Add her book Tug of War to your public reading list and comment on any one short story in her book Lost Titles.
For chapter critiques:
A 3+ lines comment on a chapter of her book Tug of War per critique you request. So if you request a critique on two chapters, comment on first two chapters of her book.
Additional rules/details:
For her payment, she expects you to not copy your comments from previous ones or simply give her a vague, generic statement like "this was a great read", "well-written" and so on. She doesn't expect you to give her a full-fledged critique. She only requests that your comment shows that you have actually read her work. Just like you won't be happy about receiving a vague critique, she won't be happy about receiving a vague comment. She will put her time and effort into critiquing your work and asks that you extend her the same courtesy.
If you still don't do that, she will kindly ask you to redo the payment or withdraw your request along with the objective comment you left her.
Client feedback in the comments section below.
IMPORTANT: Forms are to be posted on the 'Request Critic Shagun' page, not here. Also, if you're requesting on a weekday, kindly check for her current status in the comments on her Request page.
