AdriannaRaines3172

Rating: C, would need revision.

Remember, these ratings don't define you or your work, but rather sum up what I've seen to give you an accurate image of what's ahead of you.

We start our story in the shoes of April Park: A South Korean young woman who aspires to be more independent in action and thought. The way you write her is, in my honest opinion, not that bad. Without overdoing her characterization we are able to see her aspirations, her challenges that she faces, and her personal thoughts and opinions through dialogue and thought. Your characters, maybe despite their cliches, are your strongest parts of your story. This in important in a mystery/thriller, so good job.

But, let's get right into it. I felt the need to comment on your book rather than give a few examples in the review itself because there were... a lot of little typos and such that nipped at me like gnats after barbecue sauce. That's why I'll just sum them up in the review rather than directly engage them here.

In the next few paragraphs I will take on each gnat individually.

Firstly, the grammatical errors. These come in all forms throughout your piece, but the most common are the ellipses, thenospace, the to o man y spaces, and general format issues. Run ons and commas I will address further down. What I noticed with your piece with the ellipses was that they weren't... like that. They had unnecessary spaces around them. It's not...like this, and it's not ... like this. It's like... this. I also found there were quite a lot, and my personal advice is to save them for more shock value rather than overdo them. For the no spaces between words and the too many spaces, I found both were most common around punctuation, specifically italics around punctuation. That's more with the extra space, though. As for the general format errors, this revolves around dialogue. It's good to break up paragraphs when a new idea or sentence is offered, and especially when dialogue commences. If you ever need reference, just take a look at any real book in your home and search for the dialogue. I just wish wattpad would let us indent, but that's the way it is.

The next topic I'd like to address are the descriptions. I know you have some really specific in mind, and that's okay. I've felt that way once while creating a very specific villain in a past story. I had his exact appearance figured out and everything. But it's important to note that the reader creates the characters in their minds and watches it all unravel like a movie. With barely any information given, the reader will create the image nonetheless. You can give them some tips and hints as to what they look like, and if their clothing style offers a lot to who they are as characters then you can keep in those small details. but you shouldn't go all out with every character and appearance. This also translates when you write imagery. It's important to only give a couple details, and only the ones that matter, or only the ones that really ground the reader in the story.

The next point regards the run on sentences and comma overdose. It's everywhere, especially when describing details and imagery. It's important to cut these into halves, or even thirds, to deal with them. I used to have a tendency for run ons, but luckily they're an easy fix. When you start noticing them you start noticing them everywhere and whenever one pops up, and so you should be able to get rid of them in no time moving forward. But you know, the commas. Only use them when you have to. For so many sentences it's oftentimes better to just add a period, a semicolon, or even a colon. And most times you can even just straight up remove them and it's instantly better.

And finally, while writing cliches it's important to put your own spin on them; to make them original in your own way. It would be incorrect to tell writers they shouldn't use cliches. Cliches only are cliches, or rather only are so common because they work. They're good at what they do, so everyone uses them and suddenly they're unoriginal and boring. However, this doesn't have to be the case. As a writer, you can use this to your advantage. Introduce a cliche and then maybe use it well. Or, introduce a cliche and then reveal something later to contradict it. There's so many different ways you can use them, but please do use them and don't put them in there as an escape goat for writing good characters.

I hope this review was helpful to you. I've told everyone this, and I will tell you this too, because it really is important:

Never stop writing.

Every writer is a student, and every teacher is a student as well. I hope you keep writing and really transform your work into something especially great. Good luck!