Username: Crystal_0808
Book title: One fated night.
Genre: Fantasy/supernatural
BOOK COVER:
I like the image you have chosen and the mood of the cover does fit well to the themes of the book. But I do think the placement of the title could be a little better. Instead of spreading the title throughout the cover, maybe you could just push it to the bottom, middle or top? This way the image will not be swallowed up by the font. And also the author's name is pretty hard to read against the background. I suggest increasing it contrast as well.
There are lot of wonderful graphic artists on Wattpad. I'm sure you'll be able to find a good one. But if you do want to make them yourself, there are graphic schools on Wattpad that teach you how you can make them better. (I understand how hard this is, I struggle with covers too)
BLURB:
I think your blurb is good. It's mysterious and creates a lot of intrigue. If I had come across this by accident, I'd definitely want to know more.
But I do have a suggestion though.
On Wattpad, books about vampires generally do exceptionally well. I think you can reach a wider audience and get more views if you make it clear in the blurb that it is about vampires. I know it's sort a suspense reveal in the middle of the book but it's not that surprising and readers do see it coming. So I think if you state in your blurb, you'll get a lot more reads coz a lot of people check out vampire/werewolf books. It's kinda like a marketing strategy.
PLOT:
Okay with regards to plot I break it down to multiple sections. I'll explain each one down below:
Premise:
Your premise was very clear. A girl raised in captivity to become a vampire's mate. I can totally see this being popular. I think you can really generate a lot of interest.
Pacing:
The pacing of the initial chapters felt way too rushed. You just brushed past her whole life in a matter of two chapters. I'll be detailing this here and also talk about this a little more on writing style. This is something that affects both aspects of your book.
Okay now to focus on the pacing, let's start with chapter one and explore what all ideas you put forth.
1. Introduction of MC
2. We come to know something traumatic happened to her 8 years ago.
3. We come to know her mom died and her dad blames her for it.
4. Emily and her father's relationship
5. Emily's attempts at bridging the family
6. First interaction between MC and her father.
7. We get to know she is really rich.
8. We get to know she has been help captive for the last 8 years.
You have included eight major plot points/ideas in the very first chapter of your story. Now what happens when you do this is, it really becomes something like a case report instead of a flowing narrative. It's like you are listing off each point one by one.
This makes the pace really rushed and makes it harder for the readers to feel a connection to each of these points.
The thing is ALL of these plot points that I listed are really good. They have great emotional value or are really important in moving the plot forward. But since you haven't spent enough time on each of them, the readers a left overwhelmed at the amount of information thrown at them.
But the amazing thing is, your writing significantly improved as the story went on. It was pretty unrecognisable by the end. I have a lot to say about the amazing plot points which will come later but for now let's focus on the pacing.
Like I said, it improved significantly as the story went on. Let's look at the major plot points in chapter 14 for example.
1. The relationship between Michael, Crystal, Adrian and Alix are emphasised by showing their interaction.
2. We get to know the healing rate of warriors is unpredictable (I'm assuming this is an important plot point which might be referenced later on)
3. Michael reveals Crystal as the new queen and Crystal joins the clan.
Can you see how the reduction in the number of ideas that you put forth in a chapter improves it's quality so much? Because you took so much time to explore each of these things, you allowed the readers to get into the story more and make a connection.
My favourite paragraph in the whole story was "She stood still staring at the glass in her hand..." The end was so good.
The time you took to describe each of the plot points really allowed me to connect with them in the last chapter.
I hope you consider doing this for the initial chapters too.
My suggestion:
Take a look through all your chapters and list down each major plot point. This will probably take you five minutes to do. Once you have all the major plot points listed, go through them and analyze which of those are important enough to get a full chapter on their own. I would say a lot of your ideas have enough potential to be stretched into 1000+ words. This can be done by including more descriptions and dialogue. This really helps the readers to connect with the story and picture it for ourselves.
Originality of ideas:
When I first read the few initial chapters, I assumed it was just another vampire romance. But you really proved me wrong. There is no book which is entirely devoid of clichés and its how the author twists them that matters. When I read your premise, I was curious as to how you were going to put your own spin on it because it's pretty hard to do it in a vampire romance. Wattpad has so many of them.
But you really delivered. The whole thing with the commoners, aristocrats, warriors and royals was so inspired. You really blew me away.
It's something I haven't really come across before and I thought that was something truly unique. It just raised the enjoyability so much for me. I think this really has to be appreciated.
WRITING STYLE: (CREATIVE)
In this section I'll talk about descriptions dialogue, flow and prose.
Dialogues:
Your dialogues are fine, I don't have much suggestion to offer. There is always room for improvement when it comes to anything, but presently dialogue is not a major point of concern, it works.
Descriptions
When it comes to descriptions, I found them severely lacking. But that's only in the first few chapters like I mentioned before. The last chapter showed amazing improvement and the way you described the last paragraph as Crystal joins the family is seriously good writing.
My suggestion to improve description:
First off, we need to understand the purpose of descriptions. They are main aspect of the story which takes us into the world that the author has created. And there are two genres which really rely on descriptions more than the others: Science fiction and fantasy.
So being a fantasy writer it's of utmost importance you give us enough descriptions because you are introducing new worlds to us that we aren't familiar with.
But there is a good way to use descriptions and then there are poorly executed ones.
The way to make sure yours remains good, is by asking yourself "What can I write to make the readers see the picture that I see in my head?"
Include more physical descriptions, description of the house, you just tell us most of the stuff like penthouse and three cars and stuff. But describe it all.
For eg: how the penthouse feels like a glass cage.
It's just an example but if you put yourself in your MC's shoes and write what she sees, then the readers will see it too.
Flow:
Flow is a bit more harder to master than the other aspects I mentioned. A lot of writers struggle with this (myself included) but I do think if we keep practicing we can get there.
Basically, flow is how each idea connects to the next.
Let's look at the last chapter, even though it was fine with regards to pacing and description, the flow was a bit off.
Because what happens is,
1. The characters are interacting
2. They randomly talk about Adrian's injury
3. Crystal and Michael make out
4. Crystal joins the family.
Can you see how each idea doesn't really correlate with the one before it? It needs to be something of a cause and effect.
For eg:
Crystal's father hates her
Why does he hate her?
Because he blames her for her mother's death (Cause)
So what is the result?
They have a strained relationship. (Effect)
Do you see how the previous idea flows into the next and it forms a coherent narrative?
This might be a bit hard to do for all the ideas, because all ideas don't necessarily connect with each other. But some sort of connection needs to be there. It can be flimsy, but it needs to be there. Especially if you are including them in the same chapter.
Prose:
Your prose is one of the other things that underwent a significant improvement throughout the chapters.
Like I mentioned in pacing, with the first two chapters there was heavy mention of telling us what's going on instead of showing us.
"Show, don't tell" is the golden rule of writing.
This can be achieved through doing three things:
1. Including vivid descriptions.
2. Making sure the pace isn't too rushed.
3. Adding more relevant dialogue and character interactions (Mainly between Emily, the father, and Crystal)
I have spoken about all of these things already so I'm not going to mention them again here, but I just wanted to highlight that all three of these things have a cohesive effect and will make your story that much more richer.
WRITING STYLE: (TECHNICAL)
In this I usually talk about grammar sentence structure etc.
But I'm not going in detail because there weren't a lot of issues and I'm sure whatever typos or other tiny errors can be fixed in a single editing session.
I don't have much to say about this part, I think this was one of the strengths of your book.
But one thing I do want to mention is that, I noticed your dialogue punctuations. Kudos on getting that correct. This is an area most of us go wrong in.
CHARACTERS:
The characters that stood out to me were Crystal, Michael, and Damien and Derek.
I think they were all well written. They all had clear personalities and each of them had a specific purpose in the plot.
I just think you could have spent a little more time on the dad and Emily but I liked Emily's characterisation a lot.
It was a welcome twist on the usual evil stepmother trope. I think that was very well done.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I think your writing and this book shows a lot of promise, but if you make some minor changes this could be something that much more richer.
Overall, I really do think this has what it takes to become popular. Your themes and style of writing are very well suited for the Wattpad audience and that is the real strength of your work. I enjoyed reviewing this and it kept me entertained throughout. I really hope you found this review helpful. I wish you all the very best on your writing journey!