Reviewing The Future[Closed for Catch-Up]

The Phantom Princess

Book: The Phantom Princess
Author: MinecraftFan11
Review Type: Intro

//I did four chapters because the book only had four chapters published.
I'm slowly but surely working through these reviews from back in August. Hopefully I'll get the reviews open by mid-May. //

Chapter One "Real, Supernatural - Part 1"
• Do you need that intro? ("The main character is Tattiana, whose siblings are...") Those are things you should be showing more in the story and less as an intro. It's not awful—it can work well in certain circumstance. Like movies do that sometimes as an intro. It's not the worst thing, but if you're just doing it as a cop out to info dump for the reader, not good. You still have to actively show those details in Tattiana's life.
• "*yawn* ...another Friday!", Tattiana stated. There are multiple things wrong with this sentence. First of all don't put actions in dialog. Asterisks(*) are not(or rarely) used in writing, and especially not for actions. Either start with "Tattiana yawned" and then go into the dialogue, or you can exchange the dialogue tag(Tattiana stated) for the action(Tattiana yawned). You also don't need the ellipses(...) in the dialogue, delete that and make sure "another" is capitalized. Next, you never put punctuation outside of the quotation marks. That comma needs to be deleted. I get why you put it—you had a dialogue tag and wanted it to flow as a sentence. It still flows as a nice sentence without that extra comma. The exclamation mark suffices as the punctuation. Never double-up on punctuation. There's only select few occasions where you do, and it will never appear in a story.
• "It was March, only three months remained for her birthday, and she couldn't wait for her special day." First, "remained before her birthday" instead of "remained for her birthday". Second, that's a run-on sentence. Make it into two sentences. You choose where to split it, and there's also the possibility of chopping off the last section of that sentence starting with "and she couldn't wait".
• Don't refer to people based on appearance traits. Call her by her name, not by "brown-haired girl". Only use that when identifying a person the main character doesn't know. Tell the reader the colour of her hair by saying something like "she ran her hands through her brown hair".
• Her school uniform is only a shirt? Not a skirt and/or pants too?
• Please don't do double punctuation for dialogue. Also, if you use a dialogue tag(Tattiana greeted) the dialogue ends in a comma inside the quotation marks. Example: "Hey Nath," Tattiana greeted. Two wrong examples: "Hey Nath." Tattiana greeted. "Hey Nath.", Tattiana greeted.
• Don't tell us Tattiana used a nickname when that fact is obvious. When you use Natasha's full name in description, we can tell Tattiana was using a nickname.
• "Natasha, the older sister of Tattiana, greeted back." First, don't tell us like that that Tatiana's younger. Instead, back when you said Tattiana was fifteen, exchange it for her being younger or something. Second, don't put "greeted back". That sounds weird. Just use "Natasha said", or better yet, exchange it for an action: "Natasha smiled back."
• "Idea of whacks" is this a typo or slang I don't recognize?
• After Tattiana says "we should do it in the weekend", delete the "she continued". It's not needed. It's clear she's speaking, as it's still the same paragraph.
• Try to avoid adding details(like how she inherited her hair from her mother) in a sentence with a dialogue tag. It's too much in one sentence. Put it in a separate sentence, one where you can more fully explain why it's being brought up. Pieces of information like this should have a reason they're being brought up. Is the main character envious of her sister's hair? Or is the main character glad she doesn't have that type of hair?
• You don't need a dialogue tag after every dialogue. If we know who's speaking(when there's a clear back and forth) just don't put any dialogue tag at all.
• It's either sisters' or sisters's. Because there's two sisters, and it is their's.
• The interaction between their brother and the sisters is awkward and stilted. Work with the adjectives—switch them around, see what happens. Also change around what Scott says, to make it more natural.
• Let's be honest here: do siblings actually plan to hang out together? Or talk about their weekend plans like that to each other? Two of them are teenagers, and one's a kid. There's not going to be open communication about plans like you're implying—at least most of the time. If you want them to be that close, maybe give a backstory and a reason why they're closer than normal siblings.
• Don't use "bye-bye". Change that to "goodbye", which fits a lot better in writing.
• Their high school sounds more like a middle school? People aren't constantly running everywhere in an actual high school. The way you wrote this makes it seem like you've never attended high school. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but definitely work on how you can make the high school more realistic.
• You don't need to describe every single feature of Caroline. You use one too many personality traits when describing. Sure, yes, that's her personality, but don't list all those traits in a list(I have a chapter on that in my writing tips book). We're supposed to get that through her actions and dialogue.
• People don't scream when they realize they've been insulted. They might huff, or "hmph" but they won't scream. That's too much of an overreaction.
• Tone down the exaggeration in their dialogue. What Tattiana said sarcastically about Ms. Marshall saying something about doing a project on mythology—it wasn't funny. In real life, Ashley wouldn't have laughed. Maybe smirked, or smiled, but not laughed. Be conscious of this fact: people's actions in real life are often much more subtle.
• You don't always have to tell us Tattiana's being sarcastic. If you do it well, the reader will be able to tell she's being sarcastic.
• Don't use uppercase words—or try to avoid it—in dialogue.
• Instead of saying "by the siblings' mother" just put "by her mother". We know they share a mother, you don't need those extra words.
• You used Tattiana twice when saying what they're all doing, and missed Natasha. I'm guessing one of those Tattiana's is supposed to be Natasha. Typo.
• Delete the "but anyway" in the last sentence of the chapter. It takes away from the drama.
• The history assignment was a great way to introduce the theme of ghosts in the town. A+ way to do it.