Pride, Prejudice, Action! written by shellzels
i. COVER & TITLE
There is one major thing you can do to improve your book's initial impression: Change your cover. I like what it symbolizes, but it's hard to read and doesn't come off professional. Find a designer, and they'll eradicate this problem for you. There are tons in my reading list. Seriously. Do it. Now. Your writing is too good for this cover.
Your title is good...it irks me, though, because I hate exclamation marks. Why? Couldn't tell you. I use like one a year. I prefer italics to indicate expression, but I understand you can't do that here. Honestly, I think most readers will like your title and find interest in it--it's certainly unique. But I just don't vibe with that exclamation mark for whatever reason. Take that with a grain of salt. Anyway, it encompasses what you need to get across.
ii. BLURB
Your blurb reads out exactly like one found in a bookstore. Now, unfortunately...this is not a good thing.
See, the thing about Wattpad-- we don't have to listen to publishers or anyone who works for them in order to do what we want. Often, published book blurbs aren't even written by the author--and that's why they come out so dull. Truthfully, Wattpad is good for blurbs, because it allows us to get a little funky and unique without caring if that's what statistically sells the most copies. In my experience on Wattpad, the blurb needs to be short, snappy and simple to get attention and keep it. Yours is great, but it lacks the funk. Here's what I've done with it:
Sacrifices are necessary to achieve dreams.
Rose knows this all too well. She gave up a lot-- even love-- to someday get the nursing job that she's been passionate about for years. But when her best friend Tilly convinces her to leave her beloved stable job in her hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, Rose is forced out of her comfort zone. Surprisingly, things end up looking rather good in England, where Rose is offered a once-in-a-lifetime job on the set of her favourite movie, Pride and Prejudice.
As excited as Rose was to meet the famous leading man playing Mr. Darcy-- dark and way-too-handsome Ethan Dashwood-- she's disappointed to find that his obnoxious and rude attitude is hard to stand. In conclusion, she hates him.
But the thing is, first impressions aren't always reliable.
This blurb has a little more oomph to it-- created mostly by the first and last one-liners (you already had the ending one, so that's awesome). It's a tad bit shorter and a little more organized, but like I said before, your original blurb was great. I would just recommend implementing a better hook and a slightly more unique tone. I would also add just a bit more about Ethan and maybe hint into what might become more deeper about him later on--just to peak interest.
0 8 / 1 5
i. PUNCTUATION
#1: COMMAS
You've got the occasional commas issue, like every person ever. Yours, I think, will be easy to solve. Recall that commas are used to link clauses, and they're often used with conjunctions such as 'and' and 'or'. The rule is the comma only goes before the conjunction if both clauses are independent on either side.
Now, you don't have a problem with that. However, you have a problem with nonessential clauses. Look here:
'I got up today, despite being tired and cranky, and went to work.'
I've bolded the nonessential dependent clause here (One would correctly call it a phrase, but I always just separate clauses into dependent and independent when I'm explaining. Is it wrong? Technically speaking, yes, but it's dramatically easier to grasp comma concepts by ignoring phrases. The rules don't change either way as far as I'm concerned.)
We call this clause nonessential because it doesn't change the meaning of the sentence. If you take it out, we still have a complete sentence:
'I got up today and went to work.'
So when we have this situation, we surround the nonessential clause with commas. Here's an example from your book:
'Then one comment from her ex, as he unceremoniously dumped her for being a boring workaholic and Tilly had made it her life's mission to get Rose to stay with her in London to live a little.'
Taking out this nonessential clause, we can see the sentence still makes sense:
'Then one comment from her ex and Tilly had made it her life's mission to get Rose to stay with her in London to live a little.'
So therefore, that bolded clause is nonessential, and we need two commas there. If you look at the example from your book above, the comma needs to be after 'workaholic'.
Now, I would not write the sentence that way, but it's correct. This is how I would write it because I'm a comma minimalist, and I think writing is clearer the fewer you use:
'Then one comment from her ex as he unceremoniously dumped her for being a boring workaholic, and Tilly had made it her life's mission to get Rose to stay with her in London to live a little.'
Either is correct.
Here's a different example, where you incorrectly labelled a clause nonessential:
'Most people reclined in their seats, either engrossed in their phones, or relaxing with closed eyes, paying her no attention.'
Now, let's take that out:
'Most people reclined in their seats or relaxing with closed eyes, paying her no attention.'
That doesn't make sense, right? So we can conclude that is not correct. The problem here is you've simply mislabeled the nonessential clause. Look here again:
'Most people reclined in their seats, either engrossed in their phones or relaxing with closed eyes, paying her no attention.'
Now I've taken the comma out and made the whole thing the nonessential clause. Here, we can see how the sentence does make sense if we take it out:
'Most people reclined in their seats, paying her no attention.'
So now this is correct, without the use of the second comma.
Your comma errors are decently infrequent, so I wouldn't worry too much. If you implement Grammarly on the device in which you write, it will catch errors like the second one (mine did) however, Grammarly does NOT catch errors like the first one. Because Grammarly is not the god people think it is. You need to think critically about the things it corrects.
ii. DIALGOUE
Your dialogue is all worked out with the exception of one little error, which is the presence of an action tag in between dialogue. Here's one from your prologue:
"No, thank you--" she read the attendant's name tag. "Macey."
My dash is incorrect because I'm typing this on Wattpad. Yours is correct.
This is how you format action tags in dialogue:
"No, thank you,"--she read the attendant's name tag--"Macey."
If you want them to be separate sentences, this is how you would do that:
"No, thank you." She read the attendant's name tag. "Macey."
1 2 / 1 5
i. PACING
I think your pacing is fine. However, I think you have paragraphs-- especially at the start of the first chapter-- that are a little too big to flow right. I would recommend splitting them up now and then to provide a change on the eyes. In addition, I think you over-explain sometimes. I do this too, and I'm learning how to rework it. Your readers don't need to know the implications of everything-- only what's vital. And lastly, I think you info-dump just a little in the first chapter. Try to think of ways you can integrate that info into their conversation rather than writing it all at once before.
ii. TRANSITIONS
I really like the way you end and begin chapters. You clearly know when to pique interest and how to hook people into continuing reading. No problems here! (ew, I'd erase that exclamation mark if I didn't think it was kind of funny)
0 8 / 1 0
i. CHARACTERS
DESCRIPTION IS MY COMFORT ZONE, and you asked for focus on it. Now, I can see you don't have much character description, but I can confirm this is better than drowning readers in it. So how do you create unique, fun and simple descriptions for your characters?
The key lies in the definition of a description. Or, well, my definition. Descriptions should be as much of a story as the rest of your writing. They should have a beginning, middle and end. Don't string a bunch of physical descriptions together and call it a day. Spread out those things throughout chapters, throughout the hole book.
However, if you don't describe characters right off the bat, readers might get there own ideas, and we don't want that. The key is to do something quick and elaborate later. Make it a story, make it unique. Here's an example:
'He was a startlingly beautiful man, his eyes glistening the same colour as the sea he ruled. The golden light cut all the right angles of his perfectly crafted face—as though the sun was on his side, doing its part to make him look as intimidating as it could.
So from this, we get a lot with just a few sentences. However, I've only actually told you one real physical description: the colour of his eyes. Everything else has been left up to you to assume--I wanted my reader to view this character as beautiful, but perhaps our perceptions vary, which is why it's been left so open-ended.
Now, you'll get more of this character as you go along. You won't learn much more on the way he looks, but you'll get to know more about him. In the description above, I've tried to make this character out to be big, intimidating but at the same time, respectable. The bit about the sun makes you think that everything is on his side--and that's important to his character.
This description works far better than just a mush of colours and physical descriptions. Try describing voices, movements and other similar things over describing colour. I don't think your descriptions are terrible, but implementing some of the more emotional sides should improve them.
ii. SCENES
Descriptions of scenes are much easier to create. Your descriptions, in my opinion, are too long, and they cause skimming of your already long paragraphs. Scene descriptions are easy to grasp. You only need one or two sentences crammed with a lot of information in the most unique way possible:
'The cafe was bustling, every seat filled with wealthy clothes and glittering jewels. It was a place for the rich, and it showed.'
That's really all you need--it's enough for most people to create a vivid scene. Describe what is natural as the conversation continues, and you'll be doing great.
0 7 / 1 0
i. PLOT
So your plot isn't entirely original for obvious reasons. However, the spin on the values of the original book-- the way you've incorporated the original book into your version is really unique. I read the original ages ago (I picked it off my teacher's bookshelf in grade five and she told me it was a bit too much for a ten-year-old, so the obvious rebuttal was to read it.) and I don't fully remember what happened, but I see parallels with the idea of a love to hate romance and first impression. You've taken a modern approach to the characters, the plot, and seemingly the overall message. I think it's original and creative what you're doing, and I think you're pulling it off well.
ii. TONE
I think your tone comes off a little heavy because of the long paragraphs and the scene description-- easily fixed. However, I like your MC's voice and the prologue to show us something deep right before it begins. I think everyone could use with a few more metaphors and unique sentences, but I like poetic writing; not everyone likes books written in that style. Overall, I enjoy your tone, and I find it easy to keep up with.
0 9 / 1 0
I like the driving story behind your writing, and I like the work you've clearly put into editing. You have just a few errors to clean up, but other than that, your logistics work out very well. I would focus most on cleaning up your scene description and working out the best way to introduce new characters. This is a great story!
4 4 / 6 0