Title: The Last
By: Septemberll
Rating: 3.5/5

REVIEW:

Cover:

The cover is good. It is exactly how the story is. The ocean depicting the last of mankind residing in the ocean and the hand foreshadowing the darkness and the vulnerability the people have faced.

Description:

Your description however, needs some work. You have explained good about the world of the story we are about to read but it does not spark any interest, or an urge to get to know what is going to happen. It comes out flatly, like it is an okay world with okay characters and surely, the story would be okay.

This "okay" is what we want to remove. We want people to read and enjoy our story and the very first thing—the first step, is to make them click the "Read" button and that can only happen with a nice cover and a captivating description that simulates the urge to read. And you can make it happen by adding points in your description.

I have read only seven chapter you have posted so these are some of the points that I have caught and think can be useful to be used in the description.

1. You can write about Jayla. A girl who is unaware of her own extraordinary powers and her importance. For some people she is useful for MANY, she is just a danger. Would she be able to survive with a threat at her each step?

2. About Bruen, a charming captain of the ship with the powers the world has yet to know about and a past as dark as the midnight. Despite his role to protect Jayla and feign a great supporter to a criminal, he manages to help Jayla perform a deadly deed. Would they both be able to survive after such act?

3. About Fleet Admiral, the captain of the ship or about the cruelty of the leaders.

Things like these piques people's curiosity. Since most of the majority of Wattpad are romance and thrill lovers (as far as I have noticed), these things in the description would motivate them to click the "Read" button. And since your story already owns romance and thrill, it won't be really difficult.

Character development:

I do not feel connected to Jayla at all. I'm sorry but it is true. Her story is sad, really sad but I do not feel her. And I have my reason why;

In the first five chapters, I personally thought she is just a normal teen only just a little curious. Not until I reached the sixth chapter, Bruer's POV, Then I came to know she is special. Even though we were told that she is important perhaps in any of the first five chapters, I did not think she was because she did not do anything to make her special. She was curious. She wanted answers. But so did Holly, so what made Jayla special? How did it made her nice if she disliked her roommates? How did she was taught to be smart if Holly was the one who seemed more curious? If she is sad, then how come she does not act sad?

These questions arose because you told us, not showed us. There is the biggest difference.

If she is nice and can look past the bad things about people and can find good in them, then she is not supposed to say that she hates her roommates, Emiliane and Alexis. She can dislike them but for a person she is explained in the story, she cannot hate them, for she should know why they are who they are. You can show them how she doesn't really gives a damn about them since she has so much else to worry about.

If she is intelligent, then you can make her think of a plan so brilliant that even Holley gets impressed.

If she is curious, then make her go sneak around, to know more and more about the plans of the leaders, about the world that she left, about the Other Half. Don't make her sit on her bunker all day or even night, make her sneak around, since she is intelligent, it should not be hard for her.

If she is sad, then tell us how everything reminds her of her family. Tell us how even in the shower or during eating and drinking and in doing things just casually, she feels a pull towards her family, that each time, how her heart aches and how she cries herself to sleep or how a smile crawls up to her lips every time she thinks about a little moment or a conversation she had with her boyfriend, Ky. Even though it has been months, you cannot forget the family and the man you loved and not let your mind wander to your loved ones.

These are the ways to show instead of telling. I'd suggest you to learn this technique, it'll help you grow personally as a writer more.

The other character I'd like to discuss is obviously, Bruer. His personality is confusing and I do not understand him . It is hard to tell if he is a person with cocky, jerky attitude or if he is an arrogant captain or if he is a mixture of both. But I liked the part where you described him as handsome but since Jayla is not interested, he is not handsome to her at all. This is a great point. A lot of writer just let the girl describe how handsome the boy is and at the end, say that the girl hates the boy. This really pisses me off but you used it right.

Because at so many pints, I'm like:

Bruer can have so much more to his personality and I feel like he can be crafted much better. Your overall concept of him is good but he is not described well.

Let's move onto the plot. It's already 1000 words and I wonder why it takes me so long. Lol.

Plot:

Well, your plot is interesting but your narration is boring. Now, what does it mean? And why does it happen?

It means that if you think generally, like having a vague idea of the plot, it seems interesting but when it comes to reading it out, it loses it's interest.

Why does it happen you ask, well, it usually happens when we writers try to throw so much information in the first chapter that the first chapter basically becomes the info chapter and it is not correct. We need readers interest, we don't want to bore them and make them say, "Ah! It's to much! I can't take it."
Rather, we want them to say, "Oh My God, let me read more, just one more chapter." And this can only happen if we spread the info evenly.

Like when you began your chapter, you told us about the world, how it was destroyed, what were the reasons, why did it happen so late, how many people were saved, how the leaders reacted and such things. These were important, we needed to know why would she be in a submarine or more specifically, under the sea.

So, that was explained well-descriptively and it seemed good because it was necessary but telling about jayla's family was not necessary. We could come to know about her family in bits and pieces, from scene to scene, like as mentioned above, from little things. This would make us more attached to us because we would be able to feel her pain more, it would hurt us like hell if she would sit by the window of the sub, looking out of the dark ocean and picturing her family, smiling and laughing—to have her reminisce about the happy days of her family and how she could have nothing of it now since everything was gone and destroyed.

It would also help her why would she want to know about the plan because honestly, it still does not make sense to me why would she be suddenly curious to find answers if she had so many months before.

So, these little things help reader attach and encourage them to read further. These help their curiously to stay where it is, since we have not revealed everything.

Apart from it all, I just want to say that I loved your first line of the chapter:

"When the world broke, it did not make a sound."

I read this over and over again and it hit me hard. It is so damn good. I'm going to remember it the rest of my life.

Grammar:

The grammar is alright. We can use some work on tenses, dialogues and punctuations. The rest is fine. Let's talk about them one by one.

Starting with your tenses, I'd suggest you to keep a steady pace upon how you use them. If you are telling us about Jayla's or any past thing, use the last tense (and you can use italics to help readers differentiate the last and present).

About dialogues, they are too long and it gets boring to read a whole damn paragraph about the story we already know or the story you can just narrate is without the use of conversation. Even if you have to write long dialogues, use some actions in them which brings me to the third point, punctuations. If you do use actions, please keep in mind the punctuation.

This is a post I found on Pinterest and it really helps me with mixing dialogues with actions:

And these are the rules for punctuation:

I think this summarises about what I was about to write a whole darn 1000 words on.

Also, make sur that you change your paragraph every time either of these changes:

1. Time
2. Person
3. Topic
4. Place

Just remember it with Tip Top. It helps, it seriously does.

Quality:

Your chapters could use some more cliffhangers. Like your next chapter has this great scene that could be used as a cliffhanger. One scene that comes in my mind is the Holly's death one. I mean you could end the previous chapter of Taking with:

I come back and find Emiliane, Alexis and Grace but Holly ... oh God, where is Holley?

"Hello, Miss Jayla is it? I am Captain levy and I am sorry to inform you that your friend is dying/on death bed/is dead.'

If you would have made this a cliffhanger, your readers would be dying to read more with the questions like, what happened to her? How? She was just alright. Is she poisoned? 2nat would happen now? And so many more.

Overall, I"d say your concept is good. You have explained the LAST quite professionally but things needed to be worked on.

But, keep up the good work and thank you for introducing me to this new plot.

————
huz