In The Crossfire

YelenaLugin

Initial Impression: (cover, title & blurb)

Your cover has most of the things I like in a cover: it's neat, your name is presented very professional and it's unique. However, it lacks colour and a spark that is needed on Wattpad. I'd recommend sending the picture you have now to a graphic designer and discussing what you can do with the cover. I have a few graphic shops in my reading list that may help!

I love your title! It's short and snappy, but very clearly original. After reading the blurb, I get the meaning behind it as well. Full points here!

So at first glace, I like your blurb. I caught one grammatical mistake but it was concise other than that. However, despite your blurb being very good, I have lots to say about ways to make it better. First off, I never recommend starting blurbs with a name, because to us readers, we really don't care about your name yet. It doesn't mean anything. And on a place like Wattpad, very few words squeeze into the limited description readers see, so make sure your words are chosen carefully, especially in the beginning.

I structure all my blurbs the same way: one standalone, dramatic sentence to begin, a paragraph or two of info, then another standalone sentence to end, hopefully one that connects to your title or overarching themes. With that in mind, I also think there's ways you could clean up the organization of your blurb by mixing things up. Below I've re-written your blurb drastically, but take notice that most of the sentences are still your original writing.

To survive is to adapt.

Sky is caught in a war between angels and hellions. She's been running all her life, leaving behind a trail of bodies while being chased by both monsters and forbidden secrets. There was no hope in her world, not when the goal was simply to survive. And yet, because of an angel, she is tempted to believe in a hope that she had long ago given up.

She is tempted to believe.

Okay so, a couple things. First off, there's room for improvement in that last sentence, I just don't know a lot about your story, so I'm unable to come up with something better. I'm sure you can. The major problem with your blurb is that it's all one big chunk. At the very least, I'd recommend splitting up the blurb you already have.

Also, I think you should add more about the general aspect of the story. Who does she meet? What exactly is she going to do. Your blurb is quite short, so don't worry about adding in extra things.

11/15

Logistics: (grammar, spelling & dialogue)

Your grammar is excellent! At first glance, I don't find anything truly disruptive to the story. However, I'm still going to mention all the things to make your grammar flow a bit better.

Starting off–I think you should use more dashes. Dashes are my best friend–why? Because they create drama–and I love drama.

Look at these sentences above, where I've very obviously overused the dash. But I want to focus on that last sentence:

'Because they create drama–and I love drama.'

You could just put a comma there instead of a dash. It would probably be clearer from an academic writer's point of view. Every time I write an essay for school, I have to go through and make sure I didn't use the dash, because professors hate them. Why? Because dashes are awesome and fun, and writing professors are neither. I'm kidding, but only partly. Academic writing is supposed to be boring. Creative writing gives you the freedom to do what you want. So, with all that inspirational dash talk in mind, let's look at one of your very first sentences from your prologue:

'They all believed that the end would come by human hands. By bombings, radiations, disease, or through the stripping of all Earth's natural resources, but that is not how it happened.'

I had trouble getting through that sentence, even though it's grammatically correct. Here's how the dashes would look if you popped them in there:

'They all believed that the end would come by human hands–bombings, radiation, disease, the stripping of the Earth's natural resources–but that is not how it happened.'

Does this feel smoother to you? That's not a rhetorical question. I really don't know. I've just fallen in love with the concept of the dash, and now I can't dig myself out of my dash-loving hole. But in my experience, the second option is cleaner and easier to read. There were a few sentences of yours I found could be improved by the dash.

Next, the terrifying semicolon (;) There was a time when even the concept of the semicolon terrified me. But they are helpful once you realize they are not all that scary. Again, I found a few spots where you needed a semicolon or a period rather than a comma. Semicolons are used to separate independent but still related causes, such as this sentence from your prologue:

'...sparking hope in all humans, they were believed to be our saviours.'

Both of these sentences are independent, which means if you were to put a period in place of that comma, the concept would remain the same. However, the comma isn't the right punctuation there. It should be the semicolon:

'...sparking hope in all humans; they were believed to be our saviours.'

(Go back and look at the full sentence from your book, I think my point will make more sense. It was just REALLY long to type out.)

As for spelling, you made a mistake here and there. Such as pitter-pattering, which I think should have that dash between the words (you didn't include it) but I'm not entirely sure. A few times you had a double space behind a period, which might've been a formatting/copy/paste error.

You have the occasional comma issue. I think they're simply spelling errors or a lack of vigorous editing. If they're not, and you don't understand commas, please let me know and I will direct you to one of my other reviews or PM you all my comma tricks. I just didn't see enough mistakes to believe you really needed the help. But you miss commas more than you forget them, which is better than putting too many in.

You appear to have the major concepts of dialogue down, but you have one rule left to conquer: when ending dialogue with a question mark or exclamation mark, you still need the dialogue tag to be lowercase. Example:

"What do you what?" he asked.

Also, ensure that every dialogue from a different character is a new line. You cannot have two lines of dialogue from different characters in the same paragraph.

10/15

Story Flow: (transitions & pacing)

Your transitions are a little off. Not much. But I'd consider going through them again. I think the first chapter ended a little abruptly, although I don't have a problem with when it ended in the story. I just think the ending could've been a little more finalistic. The second ending was much better, and so was the third. As was the prologue. So just that one threw me for a loop a little.

Wait wait. I don't want to delete what I just wrote, but I went back and realized that weird transition is between chapters 1 and 1.5, so would I be correct in assuming that those chapters were only split up to accommodate Wattpad's shorter chapters? In that case, it makes total sense. My fault. But my points still stand, because it is still a transition, and it was still a little abrupt. And I'd like to know how long those two chapters are together, because I thought they were quite long even apart. You might want to consider properly splitting them. Wattpad has a sweet spot of about 1k - 2.5k words a chapter. 

I usually find my chapters anywhere from the 2k - 4k zone, because I could care less what the algorithm or skimming readers want. I'm trying to make a proper story, not adhere to a standard, and I think you seem to be as well. In the real world, the average chapter spans the same as I mentioned above, about 2k - 4k words. So I'm not entirely sure where your chapters were landing, but I'd say on the longer side. However, if your chapters are over 5k words, I'd recommend thinking of ways to split them. I think the second or third chapter of yours was quite long.

Your pacing is pretty slow, not much happens in the first two chapters (chapters 1 and 1.5), but we definitely learn a lot about this word and how to navigate it. We learn about Sky and her tendencies, the things she's been trained for and what she's scared of. So although the pacing is on the slower side to begin, I'd say it's completely fine. And there's a lot of action going on in the first little bit, so that increases the interest. In conclusion, you do a wonderful job of pacing this story to its best fit.

9/10

Description: (characters & scenes)

Your character description is awesome! You spread out physical description just as I always recommend. You have a wonderful way of incorporating your descriptions into your writing naturally, which creates a smooth story.

Buuuut I always have something to say. I'm skipping scene description entirely, because I have nothing to say about it (it's beautiful and perfect!!) however, I think there's something you can work on in character description, and that's description originality.

Think about the descriptions we think of when the word comes to mind: colour, eyes, hair, body height/form, facial structure. Those are your primary things. They're important; I'm not trying to minimize that.

Next are your secondary things, as I call them. I'd put descriptions such as voice and body movement under here. Writers often forget these–you don't.

But there's a third category that I like to think I have invented. When I create a character, I make up original aspects of them to enhance who they are. Specific things that you wouldn't immediately think of. This category drastically improves your character description and also development. Let me show you what I mean.

I have a character in my book, arguably one of my mains, called Silta. (I think you've read far enough to know who this is) This character is described with the primary things and the secondary things. Here are some of the things I've come up with to add depth to her character. I've classified them as this third category of descriptions, as they pertain more to emotional aspects:

- She talks very quietly. This is super important to her character. It acknowledges the fact that she forced other people to listen very carefully.

- She replies very rapidly. Again, super important to strengthening the fact that she already knows what you're going to say.

- She tilts her chin up when talking to people to give them the illusion that she's looking down on them, making them feel insignificant.

Details like those make a character vivid. They form a personality. From those things, you can tell the kind of person this character is. I think you could add in more of these sneaky descriptions to strengthen your characters. Colours and physical descriptions are not nearly as vivid as the three I have above. I'd recommend looking for those to add into your story.

9/10

Originality: (plot & tone)

'The space between us didn't last.' – my new favourite quote, written by you. Just thought I would let you know that. Anyway.

Your plot is quite unique, and I see you narrowly side-stepping some tropes. (tropes = clichés, just letting you know that because I had no clue what that word meant until like four weeks ago) However, tropes are...kinda a good thing. I know, that sounds stupid. But people like tropes. That's why they're called tropes. I have SO many tropes in my writing, and yet people constantly tell me my story is cliché-free and completely original. Why? Because I have tricked them. I have convinced them that my cliché story isn't cliché by taking a cliché idea and writing it in a different way. Did that make any sense? It doesn't really matter, because that whole paragraph was just to tell you that you're doing it right! You've taken the tropes and clichés that people love and written them in a way that isn't cliché. I really don't know if I'm making any sense. But it's a good thing. It made sense in my head.

Moving on to your tone. I love it! Because it's dramatic! Yes, I noticed the metaphors. I love them. You have sly literary devices that catch my attention and keep me hooked. And they're doing that to other readers, too, I'm sure. You have a lovely, unique, developed tone.

10/10

Final Comments:

I really see something cool in this story. To be completely honest, it's one of the only review stories I've added to my library to complete later because I was truly hooked. There are a few things that need to be patched up–I think you could do with a fancier cover and some extra editing. But the harder-to-fix things–flow, description and originality are wonderfully done. I enjoyed reviewing this story! (You didn't reach my 50 points reading list, but I'm still adding your book to another one!)

Final score:

49/60