BookRix

( ︀^_^ ︀) ➜ ｗｗｗ．ｄａｔｅ４ｆｕｑ．ｃｏｍ?pm558fc2daa0235_1394650112.7691938877

ok i love it so far

me too

Well, okay. Here's my review, and I hope you take it for what it is - admiration for a potentially excellent story, and enough respect for your hard work to be flat-out honest with you so in the end, it will be among the better tales in this genre. What I don't want you to see it as, is a mean, critical tearing apart of your first book. I rarely review books like this these days because a) my computer has been making it difficult for me to have a whole lot of time online before it quits on me, and b) I'm working on the final edits for my third book that needs to get to the publisher. So...here goes:

I love the angst of your main character. I also like your intro - prologues don't always work but yours fit beautifully and captured my attention enough for me to want to keep reading.

That said, I have to believe that if you have that good a grasp on storytelling, you've read enough good books to know what a run-on sentence is; to understanding that formal nouns are capitalized (I instead of "i"); that proper spelling is one of the major things that separate good writing from poor, amateurish writing. I wrote a post about the difference between writing a book and writing a text message - I think it was either in "Serious Writers" or "Better Writers."

In a world where the internet and computers make it possible for pretty much anyone to "publish" a story, what will determine the ones that get read, loved and followed isn't the popularity of either the writer or the genre, but the quality of the writing. In other words, it's worth your while to use the spellcheck and grammarcheck features on your computer, and then to have a fresh pair of eyes go over the manuscript BEFORE you ever try posting it.,

Not everyone has the wherewithal to put together a tale of any length, much less one that's appealing like yours. So for that, I give you mega-props. But you sell yourself short when you post something that's difficult to follow because it's hard to tell who is talking, or what a sentence actually means (lack of punctuation and run-on sentences become impossible to keep reading after awhile).

Using all caps once every so often is okay, but not entire paragraphs. It's unnecessary, especially when we can use things like italics, or tags (as in, "You're an idiot!" He was shouting now, his face having gone something close to purple). See? It was clear that the guy was yelling without using blog-caps to show it. And why is punctuation such a big deal? How about this un-punctuated sentence: "Let's eat grandma." Sounds like the words of a zombie-in-training. Now watch what a simple comma does: "Let's eat, grandma." Ah. Relief.

I would love to see you take this story to the next level and make it not only easy to read, but worth writing a sequel for. Watching a young writer grow and become successful means a lot to me, which is why I'm giving you such a hard time here. You have what it takes - I'm sure of that. I mean, this genre has been so flooded that finding a story in it that doesn't make me go "Oh, heck, not again!" says a lot for your potential as an author.

I've always said I'd rather be temporarily offended by the truth than permanently damaged by a well-meaning lie.

And no, I don't mean that the other posts here were lies - good grief, no! Someone can genuinely like something without getting into details, or maybe not even have a problem with the things I mentioned here. I get that. But I wanted you to be aware that there may be others who love you and may see what I saw, but don't want to hurt your feelings. Take this to a teacher or someone you respect who has experience in writing or tutoring, and get their input, too. Then go back to your manuscript and make whatever changes are necessary to turn this into the fabulous book it certainly can be!