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Review by Sunshine: Wings and Claws

Review by Sunshine: Wings and Claws

Author: tigerjourney77

NOTE: The categories underlined are the ones that were emphasised upon request.

Summary: 4/5

Your summary is pretty darn captivating! It introduced the main character, introduced the conflict, and also introduced the witty voice that carries us through the story. I will briefly say that you should try to polish the summary a bit more in terms of grammar. Punctuation is a little all over the place, with commas in the wrong places and some places missing a comma. But you set up the world nicely! Just try reading the summary aloud and work out where you pause for it to have cohesion; then add a form of punctuation whenever you have a gap.

Also, perhaps try to make the summary more professional? Words like 'meh' can be replaced with 'mediocre'.

Grammar: 3/5

You asked me to focus mostly on character and plot, so I'll keep this part succinct.

Your grammar and punctuation is generally pretty good! You've got the basic grammatical rules right, so well done. But there were lots of noticeable errors that came in the way. Most of them, I assume, are typos or spelling errors. For example, you wrote "buisness" instead of "business", and "highschool" instead of "high school". It was actually a common occurrence, and sometimes made the sentence awfully confusing. For example, "Air seems to bed around her" - I think you meant that the air seems to bend around her.

I recommend going back and polishing these, or asking a fresh set of eyes to read over and help clean up all these typos. It did get in the way because there were quite a few of them.

Character Building: 3/5

Firstly, with character, I ADORED the attitude of Cass! Her narration is witty, and I love her almost round-a-bout way of introducing herself at the beginning. She's certainly an engaging narrator - so well done with that! You've captured a really strong sense of character.

Be careful, though - I often found that her dialogue contradicted the sassy attitude in her narration. Whenever she spoke to Elliot, she seemed to lose that cool, witty demeanour to a point where it felt out of character. Try rehashing this wit and attitude into her dialogue as well, because that would be amazing.

Speaking of dialogue, well done with the character interactions. They were entertaining and engaging - the friendship between Elliot and Cass is great!

But you need to flesh out some of these characters more. Especially Elliot. If you asked me to describe Elliot, all I could say is, "Cass' friend". It's very hard to describe characters without breaking away from the story, so I acknowledge that you've done a pretty good job thus far, but you need to give the reader more about him. It's in first person, so you can afford to talk about how Cass and Elliot met and bring about some backstory. You can tell us what he looks like, what he sounds like, what he smells like.

And try to give both Cass and Elliot some mannerisms! Some quirks in their dialogue or gestures that makes them unique. Idiosyncrasies are great, too. Right now, the main issue with character is that they don't feel fleshed out enough, Elliot feels slightly two-dimensional, and Cass' dialogue just doesn't really correlate with her narration. I encourage you to think about these and create character charts that can help you create a fixed foundation of what your characters are like, both internally and externally.

Writing Style: 3/5

Again, I'll keep this one succinct upon request. The main issue with the writing style was that it sometimes deviated into a rather unprofessional style. Please do not use short cuts in your writing. Don't write "ie" or "eg" - use "for example". Whenever you want to emphasise, do not type in capitals. Use italics instead. So instead of, "DO NOT", write, "do not". It gets the emphasis across without seeming unprofessional.

I also encourage you to slow down your pace. I'll talk more about this in plot, but take time to really describe things. Use sensory descriptions to create some nice imagery. And make use of literary devices, such as metaphor, simile and personification. Believe it or not, these literary devices are not just used in poetry - but they also can and should be used in stories!

Generally, though fast-paced, the writing was fluent. So well done there!

Plot and Originality: 3/5

I'll be completely honest - trying to score the plot was really hard. You only have a prologue and one chapter that has been split into three parts. The plot hasn't really been introduced to me, yet. But I have come up with some advice and tips that have risen from this first chapter.

First of all, a handy tip I have been given which I have cherished all my life is to start the story where the conflict/tension begins. Start it off with a bang! Sure, you can have a bit of dialogue and introduce Elliot, but then bring in the tension. What happens that starts the unfolding of the story? You do this pretty well, but I encourage you to really emphasise what the tension is. Really flesh out the introduction of the hag - what's so scary about it? What's so wrong about it? How did the character feel about the hag and why?

Which brings me into the world. I do love the world a lot! It's certainly interesting, and I'm glad you didn't break the flow of the story to explain every single concept there is.

However, the readers need to adjust and ease into your world. When you suddenly have ravens flying in and casual talk about healing spells, it can be a little overwhelming for the reader. This is mostly a matter of slowing down the pace - really take your time on those descriptions and build up your world bit by bit. Only introduce new information when it becomes relevant. You don't need to talk about healing spells until one is required. It'll just help the reader settle in more.

Also, there is a lot of dialogue happening here. I like most of it - it's engaging, as I said before. But try keeping the dialogue relevant. Again, this has to do with starting at the crux of the tension. The first part of the first chapter felt a bit irrelevant to the story as a whole, with them talking about how many phones Cass has broken. It's definitely nice to have that humour contrast the tension, but don't do it too much because then, it loses its effect. If there is dialogue and interactions irrelevant to the plot on a whole, keep it short or don't have it at all.

OVERALL SCORE: 16/25

Overall, nice job! I am definitely loving some things about this story, but I think the most important thing is to slow down the pace, ease the reader into your world, and keep those characters consistent. Really flesh things out where you can. Otherwise, well done!
-ray_of_sunshine9

tigerjourney77 don't forget to give me your feed back on the review!