PALINGENESIS written by DeathBlade__

i. COVER & TITLE

While I like the colour scheme and theme of your cover, I do find it a little crowded and maybe a bit much to look at. The author's name is pretty difficult to read because it's small, and the title is difficult to read because of the font/darkness. I think there's potential in this cover, but I do believe these issues need to be cleared up before it really draws my attention.

I can't say I like the title. That's because I don't know what it means, and I still don't know what it means after I read the blurb. I do think you can have titles that aren't yet completely related to the story, but I do think it's important that readers at least feel some connection before they start the book.

ii. BLURB

Your blurb lacks an aspect of snappiness. That's for a few reasons: The double hook, the first and last names, and the many tiny paragraphs. The more paragraphs you have, the more likely the reader is going to skip one. It's better to have some, but not tons. The only other problem I have with the blurb is how generalized it seems to be. It's all about manipulation, power, and seemingly some posturing, but I don't actually know any of the events or things that are going to happen. Is there going to be an adventure? A big fight? Someone falling in love? That stuff might be world mentioning. I think it would make your blurb even better than it is.

0 9 / 1 5

i. PUNCTUATION

#1: DASHES

Three types of dashes. One, the hyphen (-). The hyphen is for hyphenated words, shockingly. Words like five-foot-ten or mother-in-law.

Two, the en dash (–). The en dash is just sort of there. It's not used in creative writing unless it's some sort of range, like 80 – 90 degrees, which you probably wouldn't come across if you're writing your story professionally.

Three, the em dash (—). The em dash is longer than the others and really awesome, because we use it a lot in creative writing. We use it in most places where you're using the hyphen—that is, to cut off narration, dialogue, or insert clarification.

#2: COMMAS

The best way to fix up your commas is to focus on the commas before conjunctions. Look at this sentence:

'Their eyes shot up and what they saw made their feet tremble.'

That's two independent clauses. How do you know? Because if you put a period instead of a conjunction, the sentences still make sense—they don't rely on other sentences for clarity. When you've got two independent clauses, you need a comma before the conjunction.

In addition, this rule goes for sentences without conjunctions, too, like this:

'she asked rolling her eyes.'

Now 'rolling her eyes' isn't independent, but it is a new thought, which means you need a comma:

'she asked, rolling her eyes.'

ii. TYPOS

You have a few typos in your book that can take away from the reading experience. Sometimes it's just a spelling error, for example: it's. If you're trying to say 'it is' then you use a single quotation there. If you're trying to say it possesses something, then you don't use the quotation. For example:

'it's echo ringing like a bell.'

Pull that out: 'It is echo ringing like a bell.' That doesn't make sense. Therefore, no quotation. Just 'its echo ringing like a bell.'

You've also got a double 'and' in the first sentence of the first chapter, which isn't a great impression on the readers, no matter how tiny the mistake is. It's worth using text-to-speech or Grammarly (with caution) to fix em up.

iii. DIALOGUE

1. Definitions: There are two ways to indicate which character is talking. There are dialogue tags and there are action tags. To understand dialogue, it's important to know the difference. Dialogue tags are anything that indicates who is talking by describing or detailing how they are speaking (he screamed, she whispered, I asked). Action tags also indicate who is talking, but they only use actions to do so (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.

2. Dialogue tag preceding or following a spoken sentence: In this case, 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."

3. Dialogue tag in the middle of two spoken sentences: In this case, you have two options. You can a) pick a sentence and attach the dialogue tag to that using the above rules, or b) make it all one sentence, therefore ending the dialogue tag with a comma and beginning 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."

4. Dialogue tags following or preceding special punctuation: Whenever you have an exclamation mark, question mark or a noun that must be capitalized, the rules do not change for dialogue tag punctuation.

Examples:

"Hello," I said. OR "Hello?" she asked.

5. Action tags in writing: In this case, 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. OR He grinned. "Hello."

0 9 / 1 5

i. SENTENCE FLUIDITY

There's a fine line between writing that is crisp, advanced and heavy, and writing that is just a bit too much to read. While most of your writing is fine, I find that your tendency to over-detail things cause the flow of the story to be sapped. Take this excerpt:

'A blood curdling scream that travelled with the speed and forced required to break the sound barrier shook the trees rooted to the soil of the Earth.'

I get what you're trying to do here, but there's too much detail, and it's affecting my ability to read this and get the right response from it. The solution here involves two things: punctuation and cutting. For one, you've got to use punctuation to split up these thoughts. Two, you've got to cut some stuff out, because it's still too much. Here's how I'd rewrite it with these things in mind:

'A blood curdling scream travelled with speed and force, shaking the trees down to their roots.'

That's just easier to handle, but truthfully, it's telling us the exact same thing. Something to think about.

ii. PACING

I think you have a timeskip in your chapter, which is not great in my opinion. Timeskips in your first few chapters show you that your story is already skipping things. I don't like that; it's bad for flow.

Personally, I think you run into the story pretty fast. I'd argue we need to know who these characters are before they start talking so heavily about the conflict and what they want. I felt a bit rushed. I wanted to know more about this world and Hayden, but all you were giving me was alpha talk and Hayden's annoyance of her brother. I think slowing it down, taking out the timeskip, and giving us time to know Hayden will smoothen this problem. Really dig into her problems—that way, it won't seem so out of pocket when she gets mad and starts going off.

0 6 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

I think you did a great job characterizing Hayden right off the bat. However, there is something you might want to be careful of: All of Hayden's character traits are always mentioned in conjunction with or are based off of her brother. Now I totally understand that Hayden hates him and much of her life does exist in conjunction with him. But sometimes, we need our characters to shine without the interruption of other characters. So what I'm saying is I don't feel like I really know Hayden, because all I get is how much she despises her brother. I do like her relationship with father and the description of how she sees the pack, but I never really get a chance to see Hayden removed from her brother, which is something I'd recommend adding in near the beginning. We want to view Hayden as her own person—that seems to be a big part of who she is.

Another big problem here is that I don't actually really like Hayden. All her brother did was be a male and wake up late, and she's attacking him. I think we need some more context on Hayden and her life to sympathize with this, otherwise your readers aren't going to like a character that they're supposed to.

ii. SCENES

I'm not getting too much scene info in this book, and I think that's another factor contributing to the rushed pacing. Slow it down, give us time to look around at where we are. Not overdoing it is another thing, so try to add in just a sentence here and there about the setting, the smells, the visuals, the feeling. Things like that.

0 6 / 1 0

i. PLOT

Your plot feels a bit messy to me, and that's again coming from the pacing. I got a little confused with Valerie and had to go back to see what was going on and who she was. It caused me some problems in understanding what was going on. Although I do like this fight for power and the interesting patriarchal society going on here, I need a bit slower of a story to follow it. It seems we're getting a lot of conflicts all at once.

ii. TONE

I like your metaphors and your tone, but I do feel a little weird with your POV. You have Valerie's thoughts in the third chapter, but then you also have Hayden's. I didn't get the sense you were writing in omniscient from the first chapter, but it seems to be what you're doing. If you are, it'll be worth going back and making sure it's clear in the first chapter that this is omniscient. You'll have to jump into the dad's head and into Hayden's brother's head to establish this.

0 6 / 1 0

While I see a pretty great conflict developing, I just think it's happening too fast. Should you slow down the pacing, and work on establishing Hayden and these characters before jumping too much into conflict, I think most of the above mentioned problems should be solved. I like your tone and the bones of the story, which is always awesome!

3 6 / 6 0