Maybe This Is Love, written by killerberri

i. COVER & TITLE

Your cover is good, but it's just good. There's not really anything overly unique or exciting about it, but it does fit the genre. I would recommend sending your pictures and the star font to a graphic designer (I have a reading list full of them) and see what they can do for you.

The title is unique because of the comma, but I'm still not sure why that's there. Otherwise, the title is decently unique, but it does contain a lot of common words. It might be a good idea to brainstorm more unique titles just to help you stick out.

ii. BLURB

Your blurb is very long and contains a lot of ellipses. In addition, it lacks the essential organization that satisfies readers. I think you should focus on the over-arching concept of the book. Since I wasn't entirely sure what that was, I sort of just made up what I assumed it was going to be. So my recommendation might have to be adjusted a bit.

Can it ever be love if we refuse to call it that?

Parker wanted to finish sixth form and travel to Italy to attend the best fine art university in the world. He has plans to avoid love at all costs--he won't admit it, but he's simply afraid.

And Hayley-Blair is still dealing with the death of her father after four desperate years. She planned to keep quiet.

As it turns out, neither's life will go according to plan.

This blurb is more organized, and it works better with the dynamic of your book, I think. You could keep the excerpt in the ending, but I wouldn't. I don't think it adds too much.

0 8 / 1 5

i. COMMAS

Important definitions:

An independent clause is the part of a sentence that can stand completely alone and does not require any clarification to make sense.

A dependent clause is the part of a sentence that relies on the independent clause to make sense.

Conjunctions are words that link clauses, such as and, but, as, for, ect.

Introductory phrases are words that introduce a concept, such as so, maybe, even so, ect.

PROBLEM #1: COMMAS BEFORE CONJUNCTIONS

THE RULE: If you have two independent clauses separated by 'and', there is a comma before it. If you have a dependent clause either in front or behind, you don't put the comma before 'and'.

Examples from your book: 

#1: 'It's a Friday morning and instead of sitting in a classroom full of overachievers debating whether or not I truly belonged there, I was here.'

'It's a Friday morning' is completely independent. So is 'Instead of sitting in a classroom full of...' and continued on. Therefore, there should be a comma before and. To find out if a clause is independent, you can try seeing if it makes sense on its own. That is simply a trick--the real rule is if the clause has both a subject and verb, it is independent. Again, that means it can be its own sentence.

#2: 'My old therapist tried and tried for months to get me to talk to her but I never budged.'

Again, there should be a comma before 'but', since both clauses are independent.

PROBLEM #2: COMMAS AFTER INTRODUCTORY PHRASES

THE RULE: Commas after an introductory phrase are widely considered optional. This is stupid. Commas only make sense after specific introductory phrases.

Example from your book: 'Maybe, I was depending on summer for happiness.'

That comma simply just does not make sense there. Commas are considered a pause, and no one pauses after saying 'maybe' there--it is a part of the second clause. This applies to introductory phrases such as 'so' as well. 

However, some introductory phrases often are said with a pause, such as 'even so' and 'eventually'. My made-up example below:

'Even so, I knew he was a liar.'

The trick here is to read these sentences aloud. If you pause after the introductory phrase, put the comma there.

ii. GRAMMAR

You have some grammar slip-ups. Example from your book:

'I was going to ignore him and pray that he eventually got bored and walks away but something in my head reminded me of the words Tracy mentioned today.'

That is incorrect grammar. Here is a possible correction:

'I was going to ignore him and pray that he eventually gets bored and walks away, but something in my head reminds me of the words Tracy mentioned today.'

(Also, this is a subtle tense slip-up as well, which I'll mention later.)

Unfortunately, explaining why your grammar was incorrect here is very difficult for me to do. English was my first language, so I have trouble explaining why the grammar here is wrong. I simply just know. The longer you write, the more apparent these things will come to you as well.

With that being said, although I don't have a rule to explain this, the problem comes from the 'got', which I changed to 'gets'. But I don't have a firm rule to explain that.

iii. DIALOGUE

You are inconsistent with your dialogue tag and action tag punctuation.

A dialogue tag is anything that describes the way something is said (ex. he screamed, she whispered, I asked).

An action tag is anything that implies who is speaking by using an action (ex. he grinned, she raised an eyebrow, I blinked).

Some verbs can be used as both, such as 'he groaned.' If you want to say he said something in a groan, it's a dialogue tag. If you want to say he said something and then he groaned, it's an action tag.

Now, placing these into your writing. Here are the rules:

When you have a dialogue tag following or proceeding a spoken sentence, the beginning of the spoken sentence is always capitalized and if your dialogue tag is after, then you end the spoken sentence with a comma and begin the dialogue tag with a lowercase. If the dialogue tag comes before, then you place a comma after the dialogue tag and begin the spoken sentence with a capital.

Examples:

"Hello," he said.

OR

He said, "Hello."

When you have a dialogue tag in the middle of two spoken sentences, you

a) either pick a sentence and attach the dialogue tag to that using the above rules, or you

b) make it all one sentence and end the dialogue tag with a comma and begin the spoke sentence with a lowercase.

Examples:

"Hello," he said. "It's nice out today."

OR

"Hello." He said, "It's nice out today."

OR

"Hello," he said, "it's nice out today."

Whenever you have an exclamation mark, question mark or a name that must be capitalized, you simply add your mark, capitalize the name and do not change any other punctuation.

Examples:

"Hello," I said.

OR

"Hello?" she asked.

When you are using action tags, you follow the regular rules of writing and end the spoken sentence with a period and begin the action tag with a capital.

Examples:

"Hello." He grinned.

He grinned. "Hello."

If you follow these rules, you shouldn't struggle with the punctuation following or proceeding dialogue.

iv. TYPOS

You have some typos that can be chalked up to a simple mistype. I recommend downloading Grammarly or typing up your chapter on Word to catch more of those. Wattpad often lets some stuff slip by.

0 7 / 1 5

i. TENSE

You have a tense problem. Your story is written in present tense, but you have the occasional slip-up.

Past tense is a story told as though it has already happened. (He asked, She walked to the fridge, They didn't understand why.)

Present tense is a story told as though it is happening. (He asks, She walks to the fridge, They don't understand why.)

Ensure that all your verbs are in present tense to help the flow of your story.

ii. FORMATTING

You have a formatting issue in the number of times you press the enter key after a paragraph. There are two different types of formatting for books.

Almost all published books are written in the indent format, which means every new paragraph starts with an indent, and then there is no space between each paragraph. Here is the hook of my book, written in indent format:

This is definitely the better way to write, in my opinion, which is why all my manuscripts are written like this, as well as almost all published books.

However, Wattpad doesn't allow the indent format--probably for ease of eyes on a screen. Wattpad uses the block format, which includes no indent and a double space between each paragraph. So here is how that same excerpt looks on Wattpad:

Hopefully that helps to visualize the difference. So your story is written in half single-spaced and half double-spaced. Here are your options to fix that.

- You can write your story in indent format on word or google docs and then paste the chapters into Wattpad. It will automatically put it in block format for you. Plus, it's best to have your manuscripts saved elsewhere.

- You can write your story on Wattpad, but you can use a laptop. You are unable to single space your paragraphs when using the desktop version of Wattpad, like I am doing right now to write this review in block format.

- You can continue writing on a phone, but you will have to press the 'enter' or 'return' button twice after every paragraph to get the proper formatting.

iii. PACING

I felt as though you force-explain a lot of things in the first chapter. I understand that there is a lot of information to get across to our readers, but it is better to give us that information slowly and naturally rather than forcing it. I think you could benefit from the concept of 'show, don't tell'. If you want to tell us that a character is poor, don't just tell us. Show us how that character struggles to pay for food or lives paycheck to paycheck. This will make your writing much longer and more detailed.

0 5 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

Your description of Parker is your strongest one, which makes sense. I found you painted him out to be a pretty cool character. There's always room for improvement, but for now, I found that description pretty awesome. That's the only description I came across that was strong, however. Your description of the cashier in the store was pretty superficial, but I get that, because she's a peripheral character. However, adding in just one detail about her could help the readers invision the story.

ii. SCENES

Sometimes your scenes are extremely descriptive and fun, but other times they aren't. That inconsistency also interrupts your flow. You should try to make all your scene descriptions as captivating as when your MC is running after the bus in the first chapter--I found that one pretty good! Just try going through your descriptions and see what kind of senses, like taste, smell, sound you can add in to make it more immersive.

0 7 / 1 0

i. PLOT

Your plot is decently unique for a romance story. I say that because obviously, fantasy and adventure stories are easier to separate from each other because of worldbuilding. But you manage to make your characters unique--like the cherries in the first chapter. I enjoyed seeing that originality woven through your plot, and I bet it would continue to be enjoyable for the

ii. TONE

The tone of your book is not all that original. It is similar to a lot of writers that write romance novels and teenage coming-of-age books. The problem is it does not contain many literary devices such as similes, metaphors, irony, exaggeration or other helpful devices. These literary devices increase the impact of your writing. I would recommend looking into adding more of those when writing. With that being said, because your plot is pretty unique, that transfers over to your tone a lot. So it's not a huge deal, but I'd recommend more metaphors. But we all know I like metaphors perhaps a little too much. So you make up your mind there.

0 7 / 1 0

There are a decent amount of logistic things to clear up in this story, but those things are pretty easy to fix. There are places where your flow and tone could be touched-up, but overall, I see the plot of the book going in a fun, deep direction that would excite me as a reader. All the best in editing (:

3 4 / 6 0