The Boy Next Door written by AkshitaaN

i. COVER & TITLE

I have a few problems with your initial impression. For one, your cover is a tad cluttered, and the font isn't that easy to read. For some reason, I initially thought this was a Star Wards fanfic from the cover. Why? I don't know. It had that vibe. Anyway, I think you should get a new cover that's a bit cleaner. Points to my reading list full of designers. Moving on.

Your title lacks originality, and that's because Wattpad is heavily based on 'boy next door' stories, and they usually aren't very good. By lumping your book in with those, you make your readers think you're one of them. In fact, your title seems like more of a chicklet or romance story that the werewolf story that it becomes. I'd recommend changing your title. Think of important objects, symbolizing phrases, things like that.

ii. BLURB

Main blurb problem? The length. The writing is good, it's intriguing, but it's too long to maintain a reader's attention. It's scary to readers right off the bat. We all have the urge to make our blurbs long, but try to avoid it. Your blurb is less like a summary and more like a chapter. Usually, blurbs are best written in the third person present tense. It's just what proves to be the most successful, but I think we can work with your current tense and POV.

Some tips to shorten your blurb:

Start with a one-liner. This is easier than it looks, and you actually have some good ones already in your blurb.

You have to part with some things you love. You have to. If you want, include a longer blurb in the starting chapters if you just can't fathom getting rid of them entirely.

Make use of longer sentences, lists, and semicolons. Each new sentence requires a subject and filler words. If you take two sentences and make them one, you're immediately shortening them.

Just rewrite it. Over and over. The blurb just needs to be reworked. It's the way it goes.

End with something that connects to the title. This is always a good idea. It gives the reader the feeling of finality. It's the perfect way to establish how good you are at making a story. Also, don't end with a question. Just don't do it. Don't. Questions aren't as final as it seems. They leave things open-ended, and believe it or not, that's not effective with blurbs. We want a story from your blurb, which means we want an ending.

With all that in mind, here's how I've rewritten your blurb:

I don't trust men.

It's nothing personal, really, it's just the fact that they've never given me any reason to--my abusive father and ex-boyfriend both took trust out of the equation. They're part of the reason I ran away from home after my mother's death. I put my whole life on a gamble by doing so, and I don't plan on losing it.

Life in tatters, I can't be blamed for being elated when the incredibly alluring man who lives next door claims I'm his destined mate. Prohesises, wars, rogues, wolves and magic-- one thing leads to another, and in a whirlwind of emotions, dark secrets pour out. And I'm not sure I'm ready to face them.

Reality is hard, but sometimes love is harder.

So I've kept with your first person narrative, but I'm massively shortened and reorganized. I don't think your readers need anything more than this to grasp the story.

0 6 / 1 5

i. PUNCTUATION

You have some problems with commas; they are often out of place. In addition, you have some capitals in the middle of sentences and beginning of sentences that lack a capital. I found you use too many commas more than you avoid them, which creates run-on sentences that are very difficult to read. To combat these, try splitting sentences up after you use two or three commas. 

ii. DIALGOUE

You have dialogue issues that are inconsistent. Here's some rules to get you started:

A dialogue tag is anything that describes the way something is said (ex. he screamed, she whispered, I asked). There are special rules to use these dialogue tags.

An action tag is anything that implies who is speaking by using an action (ex. he grinned, she raised an eyebrow, I blinked). There are no special rules for an action tag--use them like a regular sentence.

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. It simply depends on the context.

Situation 1 Dialgoue tag follows or proceeds dialogue:

"Hello," he said.   OR    He said, "Hello."

For dialogue first, the dialogue ends with a comma, and the dialogue tag begins with a lowercase. For dialogue tag first, the dialogue tag ends with a comma, and the dialogue begins with a capital.

Situation 2 Dialogue tag is followed or proc

eeded by dialogue with special punctuation: (! or ?)

"Hello!" he said.   OR     He said, "Hello!"

For preceding dialogue, the dialogue ends with the special punctuation, and the dialogue tag begins with a lowercase. For following dialogue, the situation 1 rules apply.

Situation 3 Dialogue is followed or proceeded by a dialogue tag with a capitalized noun:

"Hello," Tari said.   OR    Tari said, "Hello."

Capitliazed nouns do not change the punctuation. Just insert the name instead of the lowercase dialogue tag.

iii. FORMATTING

Remember that for every new speaker, new subject or new idea, you need a brand-new paragraph. In addition, try not to announce flashbacks with a headline like "a few years ago" it can make your story seem a little unprofessional. Hopefully, readers should be able to figure those out. 

iv. SPELLING

I think one big thing you could do to improve your story is to go through it one or twice with a program like Grammarly or Word spellcheck. You've got some mistakes that you probably didn't mean to make, and they take away from the overall feeling of your book. Just a couple read-throughs should take care of this problem.

0 7 / 1 5

i. PACING

I think your pacing is too fast. I find that I'm receiving a lot of information all at once, which could be because of the next point I'll make. I think you need to slow things down and try to dig a little deeper into the feelings and implications of what your characters are doing. Try to show us things rather than tell us things, and that should gradually slow your pacing down. Do you need that first flashback, or do you think there's another way to get that information across to the reader? This will make your chapters and overall book longer, but it is always worth it to make your story feel less forced.

ii. INFO-DUMPING

You info-dump in the first chapter. Now, you can get away with info-dumping in the first chapter in my opinion, as long as you spread it out over thousands of words. The thing is, you do it in so few words it leaves your readers confused and overwhelmed. Remember: your readers don't need to know everything about the characters in the first chapter. Introduce backstories, emotions and relationships as you go instead of trying to do it all at once. Have peripheral characters ask questions and have the reader question something before they get the answer told to them.

0 5 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

You don't have a lot of character descriptions. Some writers and readers prefer that, I would say the majority want to know how a character looks. To avoid just dumping this information on them, here's some tips:

Spread out your descriptions. They should be over pages. I've had descriptions that are spread out over thousands of words. They should be mixed with emotional description and dialogue and other things. Describe them in a way that is a story.

Mix two physical descriptions with one emotional description. This is the easiest, most straightforward rule I can provide. For every description of colour or physical appears, mix it with some description about their voice, their emotions or other things like that.

ii. SCENES

I think you do scene descriptions pretty well, but try not to describe everything at once-- try to do the really important things, and then move on to the less important stuff as the story progresses. Try to focus on things like taste, smell, sound, ect--they add greatly to the plot and the overall feel of your writing.

0 5 / 1 0

i. PLOT

Is your plot unique? No, I wouldn't say so--not for Wattpad. However, these kinds of books are the ones that excel on Wattpad in general--if you were to clean up some commas and flow issues. I wouldn't worry about changing your plot, but try to think about every little way you can put a spin on something we've seen before. How do you make this story stand out from other ones? How can you make this romance differ from what we see all the time. As always, I am reluctant to judge plot harshly without reading the whole book, but from what I see, you lack a little bit of originality that could be improved upon with deeper character connections to the reader--which would probably get fixed naturally with pacing.

ii. TONE

I like your easy tone, and I find your story a relaxing read. However, I'm extremely picky when it comes to grammar, so that's the reason I find your tone a little hard to get through. But as for what I think others will think of it--I think it's fun; I think this is a read people will enjoy for the most part. There's always the option to add in more literary devices (I'm a big advocate of metaphors) in order to separate your tone from others even more.

0 7 / 1 0

I think this story has some places to improve, but it has good bones. Try to look into some grammar rules, fix up those dialogue tags, and look for places in your story where you can show us what's happening rather than tell us. Overall, this is an interesting, relaxing read that I can see being binge-worthy to a lot of readers.

3 0 / 6 0