Let Me Free written by cziners

i. COVER & TITLE

There are a few problems with your cover. For one, it's not very colourful, which makes it feel quite bland. Second, the cover comes off a little messy with all of the different aspects. The fonts are different, and they feel very basic. I think you should work with one of the designers in my reading list to create a cover that better fits your story and appears more professional.

Now, your title is fine--just fine. Personally, I find the original title of 'Let the Skies Fall' is far more attention-grabbing and even more relating to the story. 'Let Me Free' is just a little generic. There are other options as well, but I think you should stick with the sky theme. Something like 'To See the Sky' or something artsy like 'Heart and Sky'. I think you should change your title to something more along those themes. I still think the best option would be the original 'Let the Skies Fall', but I'm currently listening to the song Skyfall by Adele as I write this, so maybe I'm just biased. 

ii. BLURB

Your blurb has an excellent hook. However, I think you need to clean up the rest of your blurb. I'll rewrite it below, and then I'll explain my reasons for the changes. I'm going to edit the blurb as though your title was 'Let the Skies Fall'.

Heads aren't supposed to explode. There shouldn't be dead bodies under schools. They have to escape this place.

-

The Dome will always prioritize you and your safety. That's what they'll tell you. But Eris isn't so sure anymore. For as long as she can remember, she and her eccentric group of friends have lived in a city with walls so high they cover the skies. Beyond those walls is the cursed darkness that covers the rest of the world and the demons with a thirst for blood.

Slowly, Eris and her friends--and a certain green-eyed girl that has an odd obsession with perfection and flowers--realize that freedom in the Done is simply an illusion. They find out that heros are nothing but empty tales and beautiful lies.

It's time for the sky to fall.

Here's the breakdown of why I made these changes:

- Your hook was a little messy. I shortened it and took out the things I thought were causing the messiness.

- Your blurb was a little too long. Therefore, I took out a lot of information in the middle that I found to be unnecessary. 

- I took out all the names except for Eris' first name. As I explained in my last review, the capacity of the memory of a person is directly related to their interest in the story. By bombarding them with last names and a bunch of first names, you cause the little of their attention you have to be at risk. They want words they know--especially in the beginning of the blurb. Last names mean nothing to them at this point. Leave em out.

- I ended with a dramatic one-liner that connected to the title. Doing this is perhaps one of the most influential things you can do for a reader: Give them an 'ahhh' moment--show them you know how to write a story. That's what a blurb is: Give it a middle, a beginning, and an end.

0 8 / 1 5

i. GRAMMAR

You have some basic grammatical errors that could either be typos or a lack of understanding. They aren't extremely persistent, but every time I saw them, I was hugely deterred--and other readers will feel the same. Here are some examples:

'Bright eyes of unhidden curiosity glinted in determination--one in a mission.'

Correction: That should be 'one on a mission.'

'Well, she did fell headfirst, bled quite a lot and got a concussion.'

Correction: That's the wrong conjugation of the verb there. It should be 'fall' rather than 'fell.'

If these are just typos, make sure you go through your writing with a program such as Grammarly--that will catch errors such as the second one. However, errors like the first one will not be caught by spellcheck. In order to get them out of there, you have to read your story out loud--slowly. Catch those, fix them up.

ii. PUNCTUATION

ISSUE #1: COMMAS

I've never read a book that didn't have comma errors on Wattpad--sometimes I've read one with so few that I didn't feel the need to point it out, but they were still there. It's a very, very hard concept to grasp and to master. However, using commas perfectly will drastically improve the overall look of your book. So, even though you don't have a huge comma problem, it still does affect your flow. Let's look at these examples below:

'He sighed, as he buttoned up the ceremonial blue tunic.'

THE RULE: A conjunction should have a comma in front of it on the conditional that both clauses on either side are independent (they contain both a subject and verb and therefore make sense on their own without relying on another clause to clarify their meaning). 

So you might have just said--but, like, those clauses are both independent, Tari. You would be right. The problem here is that 'as' is not always a conjunction. That sounds stupid--how can 'as' be a conjunction but also not--but stay with me here. The issue with 'as' is that it has two different meanings depending on the context of the clauses. 'As' can have the meaning 'while' but it can also mean 'because'. Look here:

'My father cleaned the sink, as it was bothering my mother.'

Here, my father cleaned the sink because it was bothering my mother. That is a completely different use of 'as' than your sentence, which states that he sighs while he buttons his coat. In the context that 'as' adheres to the meaning of 'because', you'd put a comma--because 'as' has taken on the definition of a conjunction. In the situation that 'as' retains the same meaning as 'while', like your excerpt above, you would not put a comma--because 'as' is not considered a conjunction.

But how in the world are you supposed to know that? Truth be told, I looked at the sentence you wrote, went 'yeah, that's wrong' and then when I went to explain it, I realized it went deeper than the simplicity of independent clauses. I started to confuse myself--I don't think of these elaborate rules every time I type a comma. I've just typed enough commas to know when it's wrong, and then I go from there. I think you're very close to that point in your writing, when you'll just know. But you'll need to brush up on some other things before you get to that point. Here's some other errors I caught:

'She doesn't recognize him so perhaps he teaches in the Second Sector.'

The conjunction 'so' is just a regular old conjunction. That means that if both clauses sandwiching it are independent, there should be a comma before it. And both of these clauses are, so you need a comma before 'so' to make this correct.

'A fire was in her heart and it was a flame none can stop.'

Same situation as above. 'And' is another conjunction, and both clauses here are independent. There should be a comma before 'and' to make this correct.

ISSUE #2: THE ELLIPSIS

Like (almost) every other person I've reviewed, you don't capitalize independent clauses after the ellipsis (...). In American grammar, you need to. In Canadian, they tell you that you could but you don't have to. Therefore, I'd recommend (if you're British, Australian or Canadian) going with the American rule. It's developed, and it makes far more sense. So here, from your book:

'This whole thing is...it's not gonna work.'

This should be a capital after that ellipsis, as 'it's not gonna work' is independent.

iii. FORMATTING

You have two formatting problems: For one, you indent the first paragraph of each chapter. Since you're using block format, that's incorrect. As long as you have the space between paragraphs, you shouldn't have any indents. 

The second problem is the dash. You have the right length of the dash, but you put spaces on either side. This is, for one, not the correct format of the dash, and two, it makes the whole sentence super long and disrupts flow. Just write the word--type two hyphens--then immediately go onto the next word without spaces, and Word (Wattpad won't, most other programs will) will elongate it to the correct dash for you.

iv. DIALOGUE

Your dialogue is almost flawless, but you occasionally make the common mistake of confusing a dialogue tag with an action tag. A dialogue tag is anything that describes the way the words are spoken (he said, she scream, they whispered) and an action tag is anything that implies dialogue by describing the action related to it (he smiled, she shrugged). So here, from your book:

'His eyes narrowed dangerously, "Eris, what are you doing?"'

'His eyes narrowed' is an action tag, not a dialogue tag. Therefore, this sentence above should end with a period. 

1 0 / 1 5

i. TENSE

I knew immediately that you had a major problem with your story. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. I was thinking maybe you just have awkward sentences, but I didn't find that many. And when there's a problem in the writing that you just can't seem to place, it's always the tense of the story.

Your story is written back and forth between present tense and past tense, which affects the flow of your story in a very bad way. It causes a disruption between the narration of the story and the tense of the story. In order to write a proper story, you have to pick a tense. I've included the explanations and also the reasons to pick each tense below so you can make this decision. keep in mind that although you cannot switch tenses in the middle of a story, you can switch it from chapter to chapter. That being said, switching, even from chapter to chapter--in the same character's head--would confuse readers. If you have different POV's, you're probably fine to switch between chapters. But every single chapter or POV needs to adhere to only one tense.

A. PRESENT TENSE:

Present tense is the way you would narrate something happening in the now. The verbs would all be conjugated into present tense. This means you use words like the following: says, does, he's (he is), they are doing this, she yells, she can't believe this. These verbs usually end with an 's'.

EXAMPLES OF THIS TENSE IN YOUR STORY:

(I've bolded the verbs that indicate the tense.)

'Sometimes, there's a shred...'

'When he's particularly worried...'

'One day, she'll walk through...'

'And probably won't ever...'

WHY USE THIS TENSE?

Present tense is more commonly used. However, it is far less natural to the human mind--because it's not the way regular stories are told. It can be exhausting to read, because everything happens in the now. Present tense is more aggressive, more dramatic, and less literary. I only use present tense when I want to utilize its strengths: I use it in my prologues and my epilogues. These are usually short portions of the story that are meant to be extremely impactful. Present tense is best utilized in genres like horror, thriller or mystery--these genres want to make use of present tenses' ability to create stress.

B. PAST TENSE

Past tense is the way you would tell a story to your friend. You would talk as though it's already happened, and the verbs would indicate this. (said, yelled, did, didn't, wasn't) The verbs would end with 'ed' usually.

EXAMPLES OF THIS TENSE IN YOUR STORY:

(I've bolded the verbs that indicate the tense.)

'His eyes narrowed.'

'A hand roughly grabbed her...'

'She struggled to get out...'

'He said with a smile.'

WHY USE THIS TENSE?

Past tense, although less common on Wattpad and in modern stories, is far more common in old literature. That's because past tense has a more lyrical and natural feeling. It comes off a little less complicated and a lot less aggressive. This tense is better for more metaphorical, literary writing, as well as long-winded stories. That's why most fantasy stories utilize past tense, but most adventure stories go for the excitement of present tense. However, if your story is a little more on the literary side--you focus on the storytelling style--then past tense is probably the choice for you. Since your story has a dystopian ring to it, you'd probably make best use of past tense. I'd also consider you a writer who focuses on deep meanings and beautiful sentences, so I think past tense is for you. That being said, you are free to choose a tense regardless of your style or genre.

iii. PACING

I think your pacing is perfect! You have just the right amount of dialogue to complement your descriptions, and your story moves along at an excellent pace. This includes your transitions as well--they're very well done! No problems here.

0 7 / 1 0

(The lack of a true tense in your story is the root of your problems. I'd recommend prioritizing that issue over any others mentioned in this review.)

i. CHARACTERS

There nothing wrong with your description--it's not dumped on us and it's done well. That being said, there's nothing phenomenal about your description, either. I think you need to focus on the unique aspects of a character. Make each character have their own quirks, their own little unique things. Make sure you mix physical description with emotional description. Make sure we get to know your character's personalities and pasts. 

ii. SCENES

You have a beautiful talent for describing a scene as you go. It's a lovely world you've created, and you allow that to shine by describing it exactly the way you need to.

0 8 / 1 0

i. PLOT

Your plot is definitely unique on Wattpad. That being said, there is a book, Under the Never Sky, that is very similar to your plot. I like your style better, but there are ways you can make your worldbuilding even more unique and separate it from similar books. What are the weird quirks of this place? I'm sure you get more into this later, but it might be worth establishing how unique this world is early on in the story.

ii. TONE

You're a beautiful writer, and the potential in your tone is unrivalled. It's clean, unusual and fun. Unfortunately, the tense problem is so glaring that it's hard to see your tone through it. Once that is fixed up, I think the originality of your tone will shine amongst a lot of other books.

0 8 / 1 0

It's always hard for me to review an excellent story that lacks a lot of reads. I have this feeling that writers think they're doing something wrong, so they come to get a review to find all the things they can fix, and then they think they'll get the reads they deserve. And although you do have some issues to focus on, your story is already better--by far--than most of the famous ones on Wattpad. The truth is, I don't think your tense problem is the reason you don't have thousands of reads. The only things I can recommend are to keep publishing, keep doing reads for reads, and keep finalizing your story to make it as good as possible. However, I think that if you get your cover professionally done, you'll have a bit more of a boost to a wider audience. I hope this helps.

4 1 / 6 0