The Standouts - A Critique Contest by PAULAPDX (Summer 2019 Edition)

The Standouts - 2019

@DomiSotto (She Kills Elephants and Men) - Logline: In a world ruled by women, an aging mercenary has to defeat sassy young rivals to keep her lover on his usurped throne.

Bonus! - Okay, so the forth Back-to-Backer happens to be THE GRAND PRIZE WINNER from last year's Standouts contest @italychick (City of a Thousand Gods). Now, it pained me that she just missed that cutoff because I really, really enjoy her writing. Then, I remembered that you never got your 3rd chapter review because you took your book down. SO, if you want to substitute a 1st chapter review of your new work, just let me know. I can't let you advance in the contest, but I still owe you a review, so let me know how you want to handle that.

City of a Thousand Gods - Log Line: A South African-inspired fantasy in which a rainmaker from the slums is given the chance to sway the tide of power and change the outcome of a brewing civil war. 

Honorable Mentions - There were two works that I really liked, but their particular market, Urban Fantasy, has some challenges. I'm very familiar with these challenges, writing Urban Fantasy myself. So, I've decided to give Honorable Mentions to @DebAMacD (The Haven High Series Enlightened Book One) and @Groovy_Jedi (The Bone Society). This means that, at some point, I'll share these thoughts with you. It'll be in a less formal way and probably after the Top 20 reviews, but I promise we'll chat about it...just possibly later this summer. I did assess your entries, though, so you have that feedback for now.

Okay, before we dive into the remaining twelve (12) picks for the 2019 Standouts contest, keep in mind a few things:

1) Their assessments are shorter because I had a sense from the logline that the work was a contender and so didn't always need to read their entire Ch. 1 in order to say yes. Sometimes, it was a writer's clear, strong, and distinctive voice, sometimes it was that they started the chapter in a thrilling or very intriguing manner. This kind of quick assessment isn't unusual. I was watching an agent panel and all five of the agents admitted that they make "Yes or No" decisions on a submission within seconds.

2) Some of the entrants had excellent loglines. In particular, I encourage all of you to read the loglines of @hallonn23 @SouthPawStance and @painebook . By leveraging distinctive details as well as compound-complex sentences (Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about), they were able to pack a LOT of interesting information about their story into just a few sentences.

3) This is more for the other chapters where I passed on an entry. Like I said, I really approached this as if I were an agent or editor building my list. Given some of the work I'm doing now, outside my role as a writer, it's not that far off. And no, I can't make you a Wattpad Star, or get your story featured, but let's just say I review a LOT of content and I now understand, even more than before, what agents and editors' roles entail. I get the daunting tasks they're faced with and why they give the advice they do. 

All of this is to say, while I can't be brutally honest (because so many people say they want that type of feedback and then get pissy or freaked out when you give it to them), what you're getting here are my fairly unfiltered thoughts as I made my way trough the entries. This means that sometimes I'm reacting in your review to something I've encountered in other reviews and that creates this running commentary that might not make perfect sense now that these entries are out of order (see my mini-tirade on prologues in the subsequent chapters for an example.)