Challenge Accepted written by TVD_Lover1999

i. COVER & TITLE

I like how your cover gives us a clear message of what this book will be about, but it lacks professionalism. While the colours, characters and soccer ball are all great aspects, the little designs make it hard to know what I'm looking at, and the thin font of the title increases that problem. I think you should work with a designer to not make an entirely new cover, but to fix up some of the problems I mentioned here.

ii. BLURB

Your blurb is pretty good, but I had some problems with the organization. Some of the most interesting stuff didn't come until the end, and it felt, as a whole, just a little messy. I felt you spent a lot of words talking about unnecessary things, and that space could be used otherwise. Here's how I would rewrite it:

Despite loving the sport with all her heart, Hayley has never played soccer for her school team. Until now, she avoided the team so as not to take the spotlight off one of her closest friends. 

But now things have to change. There's a scholarship up for grabs, and Hayley can't waste this opportunity for any reason. But can two people still remain good friends when they're competing for the same thing? And what happens when somewhere along the way, they start thinking of each other as a little more than just a good friend?

So this blurb is much more condensed, much more organized, and now it also leaves space for you to add in some more information on Hayley that might help pique the reader's interest even more.

1 1 / 1 5

semicolons

The semicolon is a useful form of punctuation that separates two independent yet related clauses. Because both clauses must be independent, a semicolon is interchangeable with a period, and it's only preferred over the period in some cases because the sentences are so closely related. However, the semicolon is often used in place of a comma, which is incorrect. For example:

'Virginia was all I'd known, and riding all this way in a car to a much smaller state, was a bit of culture shock; even to a twelve-year-old girl.

The second clause here is not independent. The comma is the only correct form of punctuation to be used there. Here's a place where you could use the semicolon or a period, but you can't use a comma like you did:

'She always hated the taste; she made that very clear when we went out to eat one night.'

commas

You use too many commas. Sometimes you incorrectly identify something as a nonessential clause and use commas on either side. For example:

'The exterior contained chipped paint, and broken shingles, as well as a lopsided porch...'

You don't need the comma before 'and' there, as 'the exterior contained chipped paint and broken shingles' is all one clause and all one thought.

You also use commas before conjunctions when they are not required. For example:

'I quickly nodded, and opened the car door.'

Since the second clause is dependent, it does not need to have a comma in front of the conjunction. There is no subject in the second clause, and therefore it relies on the first to make sense. They cannot be split with a comma.

awkward stuff

I find you have some awkward little places in your writing that can be fixed up. One I noticed you used a few times was 'had to of verbed xyz'. When I saw this, I had the pleasure of going through a commenter that suggested you use the conjunction of 'to've' instead of 'had to of' which was kinda funky. No, that's not a word anywhere in the world, and it can't be conjugated in a professional manner. However, that person was also right to point out that 'had to of' is not any sort of grammatically correct phrase, either. It's just used as slang when we speak the words 'had to have', which is the correct form of that phrase. You said you can't use that because it's present tense, but it's actually not. Verbs like 'had', 'would' and 'could' are special because they place the 'have' that comes after in the past tense regardless. For example, when you say, 'I'd have wacked her if I heard her say that aloud,' you're saying 'I would have wacked her' which is in the past tense. 'We had to have been driving for hours' is perfectly fine in the past tense.

But none of that matters! Because the sentence sounds awful in all variations. Therefore, there is a simple solution. Just rewrite it:

'We must have driven all night.' or 'We had probably been driving all night.'

There.

1 0 / 1 5

i. PACING

I think you have too much prose, too much description, and not enough dialogue or action. The first quarter of the first chapter is full of what, to me, feels like very unnecessary information. I don't think we need to know that Hayley has never ridden in a car for more than 2 hours. I don't think it really added anything to anything in that chapter. Every sentence of prose should have a purpose, and if it doesn't, you should get rid of it. This constant overuse of minimal information had me feeling that the pacing was dragging quite a bit.

To fix this, you just have to do some good old editing. Ask yourself this question often: What does this add to the plot? To the characters? To the vision of the story. Is there a way this could be summarized better to move along the pacing at all?

ii. TRANSTITIONS

I have a few problems with your flow in general, and they come down mostly to the transitions from thought to thought. In your very first paragraph, you have Hayley talking about her fear, then in the same paragraph, you start talking about the actual action of the story, which felt pretty jarring to me. The focus rule asks writers to make a new paragraph every time a new thought, idea, character or dialogue presents itself. I found plenty of places where you needed to split up your paragraphs to better accommodate the focus rule, and therefore the flow of your story.

Next on transitions: Why, why do we use timeskips when we don't have to? The timeskip in the first chapter is completely unnecessary and really messed with the flow of the story for me. In addition, the prologue is more like chapter one. It's a full-sized prologue and has plenty of dialogue and action in it. You didn't really need any of it, in my opinion. 

0 7 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

Sometimes I felt that you had a great opportunity to characterize Hayley, and then you missed it. For example, in the prologue, when you're describing this run-down house, you say something along the lines of 'it would cave in on you at any given moment.' A lot of authors would use this opportunity to characterize the narrating main here by saying something with a little more personality. It looked like it would swallow me up whole--that's an example of what that would look like. Instead of using the second person 'you' in your version, the latter utilizes Hayley's narration to have the reader feel like they're connecting with this character right off the bat.

ii. SCENES

Similar to the pacing portion of this review, I think you've got just a bit too much description, although it is nice. Now, I love description and often include loads of it in my own writing, but I have a few tricks to make that easier on the reader:

Split up your prose with actual information. While you're doing your pretty description thing, include information on the actual characters, the actual plot, or maybe even some backstory on what you're describing. It makes the description feel less like a break from the story and more like a part of it.

Split up your prose with dialogue. This is an old trick, but it works really well. Try to only do a few sentences, then start the action, and include more description as you go on with the dialogue or the action. Again, it'll help with the flow of your story and the maintained attention of your readers.

0 8 / 1 0

i. PLOT

I've reviewed three stories these past few months that start with a single mom carting her daughter off to a new house in the middle of the night. It is an oddly common way to start a story, and that means it's overused. It all feels like it's been done before, and that affects my interest in the plot right off the bat. While I love the premise of the story that is included in the blurb, I just didn't feel hooked on this story. The blurb was so fun, so lighthearted, and then the first chapter started off really dark and heavy. I felt a little like I was tricked into reading something different than I thought. I know this was the prologue and isn't going to be like the rest of the story, bit it's still the first thing your reader will read.

I think you should start the book off right in the middle of a soccer game. It gives off the same vibes as the blurb, and it's always a good idea to present your main character by themselves right off the bat--not interacting or thinking about other characters that will become important later. We just want to see Hayley in a lighthearted moment, like we were seemingly promised in the blurb. Then, Hayley's mom could rip her right off the soccer field and into a moving van. We get to see how long Hayley has been playing soccer, and how disruptive this moment in her life became. Now your story is right where you need it, but the interest of the reader has been captured with something unique and different.

ii. TONE

Sometimes I felt like you were trying to give us a little bit of Hayley's personality through the narration, but it got caught somewhere between that and just unprofessional narration. For example, when you write, 'I furrowed my eyebrows, not even bothering to hide the confusion on my face.' The use of the word 'even' is unprofessional, but if you're using it to convey Hayley's personality, then it's fine. The problem is this was one of the only cases you used this kind of emphasis, and therefore it fell short on the characterization of Hayley and ended up just sounding a bit weird to me. 

As is, I think you should simply edit through and try to take out any of these places where Hayley's character doesn't come through the narration enough to make it unique.

0 7 / 1 0

While there are a few ways to clean up the beginning of this story, I do adore the characters as they begin to deepen, and I like the overall idea of the plot. I think there are some areas that bring this story down, but they can be smoothened out with the solutions above and just some good old practice. Great story!

4 2 / 6 0