Essie's Critiques

Like We Used To | CalBrookes

YOUR SPELLING ERRORS: (4/5) For the most part, I was very impressed with your clean writing. It's obvious you went through a lot of editing and proof-reading before showcasing your chapters and the hard work shows. There were times I caught minor spelling typos, but those can be easily fixed and I've pointed them out in your chapter reviews.

YOUR PLOT: (20/20) I love the concept you're using here! I can sense a lot of broken friendships, tentative bonds, and nostalgia. It was so fun to read through your chapters, especially since you've incorporated many fresh ideas and twists into your story that I don't normally expect from a Wattpad book. I can see a strong plot, lots of character development, and I got a good feel for your story. Well done!

YOUR CHARACTERS: (10/10) I was especially impressed with how you expressed your main characters here! I normally have a hard time finding differences between characters written by the same author, but I was blown away by how each character was so different from one another in your story. You established different habits, different lifestyles, different expectations, and different personalities. It was like each new character had his own voice, and I was able to connect a name with a character easily. You did a fabulous job in the character development.

YOUR VOICE: (18/20) Just like your characters, I was easily able to see a defining writing style here. Your choice of diction, vocabulary, and sentence structures only added to enhance the experience of reading the story, and your writing voice was well developed and thoroughly thought out. The grammatical errors I've spotted (too many commas) took away from the experience, but if you work hard to fix these errors, your voice will be close to perfection.

STORY FLOW: (5/5) It was clear you knew when to stop a chapter, start a new one, or end a scene. I enjoyed how you didn't feel like you had to use transition words to move a scene along; instead jumping right in without the awkward feeling I often receive with inexperienced writers.

So, now that the grading/feedback is over, let's turn the focus to each individual chapter.

CHAPTER 1:

1. "The walls elegantly curve, wrapping around to create the inner space, like a sculpted piece of futuristic art." (p.1). You have an unnecessary comma here that I suggest removing. Correction: "The walls elegantly curve, wrapping around to create the inner space like a sculpted piece of futuristic art."

2. "Tall beams support an endless array of windows, that let in the glowing copper light of morning." (p.1). You have the same problem here with unnecessary commas. Correction: "Tall beams support an endless array of windows that let in the glowing copper light of morning." If you wanted to structure your sentence so that the comma used was necessary, you could also write it as: "Tall beams support an endless array of windows, letting in the glowing copper light of morning."

3. "Empty rows of scratchy blue seats surround him, with only the haunting ghosts of people, left behind to sit in them." (p.1). The description here is gorgeous, but (as I suspect you're beginning to understand) you have an unnecessary comma here. Do you see the pattern in your writing? Correction: "Empty rows of scratchy blue seats surround him, with only the haunting ghosts of people left behind to sit in them."

4. "A suffocated hum vibrates to life from his feet, spreading through the rest of his body, when a plane takes off." (p.2). Again, you're using an unnecessary comma here. These are two different clauses, not three. Correction: "A suffocated hum vibrates to life from his feet, spreading through the rest of his body when a plane takes off."

5. "The sudden move to New York, forced him to leave everything behind, including his friends." (p.5). Again, unnecessary comma. Correction: "The sudden move to New York forced him to leave everything behind, including his friends." If you carefully read this sentence, you'll notice that "the sudden move to New York" isn't a clause by itself, it's an incomplete phrase. The entire clause would be "The sudden move to New York forced him to leave everything behind," which is why there shouldn't be a comma separating the two.