Shivaay written by Shreyansh06

i. COVER & TITLE

I really love this cover! The picture is dark enough to give off mystery but light enough to let us see what's going on. The design and fonts are beautiful! The only thing I have to mention is that the use of the number in your author's name does look unprofessional, and you're probably better to put your real pen name there or whatever name you'd go by if this were a published book. It just looks a bit better.

The title, although it's only the name of your main character, is good enough for me. It's interesting, representative and unique. All my boxes are checked!

ii. BLURB

I really like the shortness of your blurb, and it overall has a lot of good aspects. However, I had some difficulties with the first sentence. Grammatically, it doesn't make any sense, which is really bad for a first sentence or hook. Additionally, you start with the full name of your character, even including the middle name, which is something I always advise against. Your readers need something to hook them in and keep them—throwing words at them that they don't understand and are new to them is not the way to do that.

As for the rest of your blurb, I don't see any real issues. You get to the plot and the point very quickly, and you tell us exactly what's going to happen. Great! I'd only recommend changing your hook.

1 2 / 1 5

i. PUNCTUATION

Sometimes I do have some confusion in your story that comes from the lack of commas. Remember that commas are added in every time you want to connect separate thoughts. That is, when you 'move on' from one idea to the other. For example:

"I am not doing anything and you know love is not my thing."

Not doing anything and knowing love is not his thing are two different ideas, and they need a comma to separate them, otherwise the reader will try to connect them in the middle there and get confused. They'll get it eventually, but it'll slow them down. Correction:

"I am not doing anything, and you know love is not my thing."

ii. THE FOCUS RULE

I've put this in logistics instead of flow because your lack of the focus rule is causing problems with my understanding, not just my ease of reading. The focus rule is a really important part of writing a story, but it's not really talked about enough. Basically, the focus rule is just a cool way of saying that every time you have a new character's thought or dialogue, you need a new paragraph. By doing so, you draw clear lines in the format of your story, and it's easy to tell when things have moved. For example:

Shivaay ignored him and walked off. "Okay, leave it. Are you ready for the summer?" Zakir caught up to him. Shivaay nodded with a small smile.

Frankly, this whole thing is confusing. I don't know who is talking until I read it three or four times—and that is for two reasons. One, you've used an action tag instead of a dialogue tag—which is great, but by not adhering to the focus rule here, the action tag doesn't do it's job properly in telling us what is going on. Here's how it would look with the focus rule applied:

Shivaay ignored him and walked off.

"Okay, leave it. Are you ready for the summer?" Sakir caught up to him.

Shivaay nodded with a small smile.

So here is what it should look like. In addition, remember that every single time a new character talks or thinks, it's a brand-new paragraph each time.

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."

7 / 1 5

i. PACING

I don't really have any problems with your pacing, but I'm a little confused as to why the prologue is a prologue and not just chapter one. Chapter one picks up right where the prologue ended; it's the same POV and all the same plotline.

Prologues are more of a before the story situation. I know a lot of people just want a prologue to have a prologue, but technically speaking, the story should make sense—at least at the start—without the prologue at all. Hopefully the prologue enhances the story or comes into play later on, but if it's just chapter one of your story, you'll probably want to advertise it as so. I know a lot of dumb readers that skip prologues entirely because they think they're useless. No one should ever do that, but unfortunately a lot of readers do. If they skip your prologue, they'll have missed the entire beginning of your story. Therefore, I think you should rename your chapters with no prologue.

ii. TRANSITIONS

The ending of the prologue was a little jarring to me. I didn't really feel like it was the time to end the chapter. In my opinion, each chapter should end with some sort of sentence or cliffhanger that brings the story to a clear close. The best endings are usually ones that summarize—in some way—what has happened. I don't have any big problems with your beginnings, but I'm not sure your endings to chapters are really in the right places.

0 6 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

You're a victim of the good old info-dumping. Right off the bat, in your prologue, you have one paragraph that tells us exactly what Shivaay looks like and is wearing. It comes off as a list, and is usually not the best way to go about introducing a character. If you want us to know what he looks like, tell us one or two things. The truth is, your readers don't really care exactly what he's wearing or exactly what he looks like. Given some guidelines, their imagination will do the rest. That being said, I've always been a fan of longer description, but I think they need to come mixed in with emotional description—the sound of the character's voice, the way they act, walk, talk—not just what they look like. These details are more concrete and vivid.

In addition, starting your entire book off with a list of physical descriptions isn't a great hook. For a quick fix, you could just switch up the description to a later part of the story, and start with the 'he ran his eyes to find the source' paragraph after the hook. However, rewriting that description entirely is probably the way to go.

Another example: when you describe Shivaay's best friend:

'His smile grew and giant dimples formed on his cheeks when he saw one of his best friends with tanned skin, black hair and light brown eyes.'

To me, and to most readers, this is just really unnatural. If you want that to feel even slightly more smooth, you'll want to interact these things with the environment. Like, 'black hair shining in the sunlight' or 'tanned skin glittering with freckles.' By interacting with these physical features and linking them to something else, it'll feel more natural.

ii. SCENES

Like your characters, you don't describe a scene unless it's at the beginning of a chapter or interaction, and then you never touch on it again. This is one cause for info-dumping and a lack of flow in your story. When we enter a new place or scene, we really only need one or two sentences telling us where we are. Then, as the characters interact and the plot goes on, you can add in little details. This not only feels far more natural and smooth, but it also convinces the reader to feel the story just as vividly as a movie. Humans are always looking, watching, depicting—even as other things go on. The more you bring that idea to life, the more real your story will feel.

0 5 / 1 0

i. PLOT

Even from reading the blurb, I think your story is pretty unique. Of course, sometimes fantasy plots with dark magic and such can blur together, so it's important that there is something in your story that sets it apart from others. Often that's a certain character—more cunning or stupid than people could have imagined. Sometimes it's the crafting of a plot twist, but it should always be something. I don't get to comment on your plot in this way yet considering I haven't read the whole thing. But it's something to think about: What sets your story apart from all the other similar ideas out there?

ii. TONE

Your tone has a few difficulties with me as a reader. For one, you use practically no conjunctions even though these are kids talking to each other about summer. They speak extremely formally, which to me doesn't seem right. And second, your writing is very stop-and-go. In other words, it's very choppy. When I applied the focus rule to your writing, it was much easier to see this:

Shivaay ignored him and walked off.

"Okay, leave it. Are you ready for the summer?" Sakir caught up to him.

Shivaay nodded with a small smile.

Do you see how short and snappy those sentences are? There's not much going on in this conversation—and although that's fine, if you like it that way, it's not really something I find easy to read. It's very choppy and almost disconnected to me. By digging a bit deeper into this conversation, by explaining to us why Shivaay is ignoring him or why Sakir gives in so fast, you might eradicate this issue.

0 7 / 1 0

I like the pacing of your story, and a plot that I see as unique so far. I think there are areas for you to open up your characters so we can really relate and love them even more than we do, and I think there a few places for you to clean up confusion. With a few fixes, you could make this a really smooth story!

3 7 / 6 0