The Aristocrat's Daughter written by annabellacx
i. COVER & TITLE
Your cover is pretty, representative of the story, and it creates a professional vibe. Nice. No problems here. There is potential for it to be just a little deeper; I know some designers are able to do manipulation and shadows that just make the cover pop, so perhaps you might be interested in one of the many graphic shops in my reading list. As for your title, I have similar thoughts. It's unique and it's mysterious. Perfect.
ii. BLURB
I think you need to rewrite your blurb. Here are my tips to getting started:
Don't use dialogue in your blurb. You have only a few words to hook your readers--don't waste them on commas, dialogue tags, or quotations that mostly include empty phrases. Pick a one-liner that is abstract, meaningful and contains no inside punctuation. Make good use of your space. If you absolutely must include the dialogue, put it at the end. But I didn't think yours was essential.
Don't use last names in your blurb, and avoid as many first names as possible. As harsh as it sounds, people really don't care about the last name of your character--nor is it meaningful to them at this point. Ideally, you shouldn't use names at all in the first two paragraphs of your blurb. Here's the science behind that: The capacity of a person's memory is directly related to how interested/invested they are in what they're reading. In the first few lines of your blurb, your reader will only remember things that are interesting to them. In addition, confusing things like names will deter the reader from reading further. However, towards the end of the blurb, once you've caught their interest, they're more likely to be able to remember and make use of the names. Ideally, you shouldn't use actual names until the very end of your blurb (if you're wondering how on earth this is possible, take a look at my sample blurb below).
Don't be afraid to edit. Blurbs are the kind of things you have to write, write again, then write again and again. Unfortunately, I don't have a blurb rewrite for you as I usually do--I simply didn't get far enough into the plot to create one I think is substantial, so instead I've tried to put together a process for you:
Step 1 Write down everything you want to put in your blurb. Write them in short, choppy sentences, and don't worry about the length at this point, nor the flow or word choice. Just get the info out. Example, done with my characters:
There is an oprhan that is morally solid. He has a plan. It is very dramatic. It involves Archer leaving his island to find a deadly ship. The ship is beautiful. The ship is captained by a man very ruthless. Archer must trick the captain. He wants to become a crew member and ride the ship to the Kingsland so he can kill the king. The king is bad. Archer is morally solid, the rest of the crew is not. He finds himself caught up in a lot of mind games with a strategist aboard the ship. She is very smart. She is also a Siren. In order to be successful, Archer must lie a lot. He must kill a lot. He must fight for his morality. Then I want to say something connecting to my title for a dramatic finish.
Step 2 The next step is to separate the information into paragraphs:
He has a plan. It is very dramatic.
There is an oprhan that is morally solid. It involves Archer leaving his island to find a deadly ship. The ship is beautiful. It is invisible and takes its prey at nighttime. The ship is captained by a man very ruthless. Archer must trick the captain. He wants to become a crew member and ride the ship to the Kingsland so he can kill the king. The king is bad. Archer is morally solid, the rest of the crew is not. He finds himself caught up in a lot of mind games with a strategist aboard the ship. She is very smart. She is also a Siren.
In order to be successful, Archer must lie a lot. He must kill a lot. He must fight for his morality. But he's pretty brave, and he can probably pull this off.
Dramatic title finish.
Step 3 Now, this is the opportunity to clean the blurb up. Here, I'm going to put together all my sentences and try to make them flow better. I'm going to create a story--by picking out my words very carefully. I'm going to rearrange the sentences until they fit with those around them, and I'm going to try and make my transitions work. With blurbs, you're better off with long, smooth sentences to get the most information in that you can. Use semicolons, use dashes and use complex sentence to put everything together. Here's what I ended up with after doing this, then editing and rewriting things over and over:
The plan is insane.
There's nothing normal about the deadlist ship in the sea--the one that cons its prey in the dark of night under an invisible viel. There's nothing straightforward about tricking a famously charismatic Captain or playing mind games with his cunning Siren strategist. There's nothing safe about stepping into the role of a pirate headed to the most dangerous island in the ocean. And there's nothing easy about assassinating a king.
But luckily, there's nothing ordinary about Archer Kingsley--the man whos going to pull of every one of those insane tasks, no matter what it takes.
There's adventure in the uncertainty.
By taking my choppy sentences and stringing them together, I've managed to include all the important information in a way that is clean and is a story. Often, we think of blurbs as this annoying descriptive few sentences we are forced to make. Your blurb is a story--just like the rest of your writing. There should be a hook, a beginning, and end, and a plot. It's just condensed. I suggest you rewrite your blurb entirely, following all of these steps. I think you've missed some essential information and included some nonessential information--plus you have some repetition in the structure of your sentences. It'll take weeks of rewrites to get what you truly want, but in that time you should take breaks and come back to it in a few days. Scrap and rewrite. But start with the steps above--they should make it easier!
1 2 / 1 5
i. THE REGULAR COMMA
You have a fine understanding of commas, but you make some mistakes. I'd like to point out your most common mistake: the lack of a comma, as you have below:
'The customer nodded then I handed her the receipt with a polite smile.'
Both clauses here are independent, meaning they have a subject and verb. 'The customer nodded' is independent, and so is 'I handed her the receipt with a polite smile.' The conjoining word, 'then' needs to have a comma before it in order for this to be correct grammar.
ii. THE OXFORD COMMA
As promised, I always bully those using the Oxford comma into not using the Oxford comma. I have some really good reasons for why the Oxford comma is B A D. Remember the rule for using the comma before any conjunction: If the clause that comes after the conjunction is independent, then the comma should go before the conjunction. The Oxford comma, which is just the comma that comes before 'and' in a list, is used even when the clause that comes after is not independent--even though that's against every other grammar rule. Example:
'My room is painted black, white, and gold.'
'Gold' is nowhere near independent. It's not even half a clause. So WHY would you put a comma before it??? That being said, if the last clause is independent, then by all means, it should be there:
'My room is big, the window is beautiful, and the desk is very expensive.'
'The desk is very expensive' is independent. So the comma before 'and' makes perfect sense. But again, if it weren't independent, it doesn't make sense to put the comma there. Okay, hope I've converted you.
iii. THE COLON
The clause after the colon needs to be capitalized if it is independent.
Example: (CORRECT)
I understand you're upset...You have every reason to be. (Capitalized)
Example: (CORRECT)
I understand that you're quite...upset. (Not Capitalized)
You misuse this a few times. Make sure you go through and fix this little problem up.
1 3 / 1 5
i. THE HOOK
I can't stress the importance of hooks enough. I can't. The hook determines whether people stay to read or not. And your hook is not good enough to make them stay. It's a start, but it needs to be more abstract, more interesting. For starters, it shouldn't be dialogue. Dialgoue isn't usually that interesting without context--not as much as narration is. Your hook needs to be something outrageous. I recommend you do something to enhance your hook. For example, the hook of chapter two is far better than your first hook.
ii. TRANSITIONS
Be careful of the number of timeskips you use in a single chapter, and overall. You have a timeskip only a couple hundred words into your first chapter. The problem with too many timeskips is that it takes away the stability that readers want in the first few chapters. We need a long, interesting scene that gets us involved. Timeskips disrupt flow greatly--especially if they're not done in the right way. You should only use a timeskip if it is absolutely essential. Once every thousand words.
iii. PACING
Your pacing is a little quick in my opinion. I don't usually read this kind of mature, but I don't have an issue with it--that's not my problem. But I felt like the dive-right-in scene in chapter one was a little abrupt. We don't truly know Melanie and who she is. I think that as of now, you're catering to an extremely narrow audience. If you introduce your readers to the maturity only slightly slower, you'll gather a wider group--people like me, who usually avoid genres like this, might give it a try. Ease them in by including that scene just a tad bit later--even just put one more scene before it. I think you'll gather more readers that way. In addition, I noticed you have an accent over your swears--that's unnecessary for two reasons: One, swears aren't actually included in Wattpad's 'mature' label, and two, your story is marked mature anyway. Other than that, your pacing was nice and smooth!
iv. AWKWARD SENTENCES
You have a few awkward sentences here and there that I had to read twice to get through. Remember the tips to get rid of these:
- Read your book out loud to catch errors you can't find in your head.
- Get someone else to read your book out loud.
- Move around sentence structures.
- Use synonyms to increase flow and avoid repetition.
- Break up or put together sentences with commas, semicolons or dashes.
0 7 / 1 0
i. CHARACTERS
Your characters lack some depth. It's hard to really relate to them when we don't know all that much about them--you haven't given us any reason to truly love them. Tips to help you with this:
Mix physical description with emotional description. Physical description, such as the colour of a character's eyes, is less important than emotional description, such as if a character is short-tempered. It's the emotional descriptions that make a character well-rounded.
Use flashbacks and stories of the past. This helps build your character into something real.
Use literary devices. Use metaphors, use similes. Use irony and a bunch of other cool things to make your character unique. Comparisons go a long way to a reader--and they make your characters feel real and relatable.
Introduce quirks. Try to come up with quirks for your characters that make them relatable. Biting their nails, fidgeting, stuff like that.
ii. SCENES
I find your scenes excellently described. They feel real! I always recommend adding in a bit more of the unique senses: smell and stuff. But other than that, you introduce scenes in a lovely way and keep them running well.
0 7 / 1 0
i. PLOT
Your plot has cliches in it, but you don't focus on them too much. Plus, people like cliches--that's why they're popular, especially on Wattpad. I didn't read too far into your plot, but I can see you have a general direction and a firm handle on the growth of your characters. Try your best to avoid sentences we've heard before, and I think you could work on your pacing a little bit. Other than that, I see an excellent story about love and coming-of-age here.
ii. TONE
Your tone is simple and uncomplicated, which makes it easy to read. I noticed metaphors and similies here and there, which definitely helps establish your tone. The few awkward sentences littered throughout your writing do affect your tone, so I'd work to eradicate those. But your word choice, and Melanie's sarcasm helps to make your tone a little more interesting--but there is potential to add more of that!
0 8 / 1 0
I can see places to improve this story, but they're pretty advanced ideas to make the characters feel a little deeper, clean up the transitions and places where the pacing feels a bit rushed. There is the occasional comma error, but they are decently rare. Your dialogue is fun and interesting, and your scene description is excellent! It was fun to review this story and I hope this was helpful!
4 7 / 6 0