The Great Escape written by Apple_Brooklyn

i. COVER & TITLE

I really like this cover! I like the colour, I like that it's legible, but it is slightly...simple? I mean, it is a great cover, but it doesn't have that--for lack of a better word--crispness that a professionally designed cover has. The last thing that irks me about this cover is the use of the underscore there in the name. I know it's your username, but it's not as professional or 'crisp' as just putting the pen name your write under.

As for your title, I do like it as well, but again, it's a little simple and a little overused. In addition, you don't really allude to it nor explain it at all in the blurb, so we don't really know how it relates. Titles don't always have to make perfect sense right off the bat, but they should at least have some sort of relation to either the cover or blurb to be really effective.

ii. BLURB

While I do like your blurb and do find it to give me a pretty good idea of what I'm going to read, it doesn't really give me enough. I know what the conflict is, but I'm not really sure what's going to happen in the book beyond that conflict--what the solution is. Saying she is plunged into the icy water of death, betrayal and conspiracies is a great metaphor, but it lacks any concrete details--what is actually going to happen in this story? Perhaps it's worth rearranging your blurb so the reader can find out a bit more about the actual plot.

1 0 / 1 5

i. GRAMMAR

semicolons

A semicolon is a useful form of punctuation that separates two independent yet related clauses. Because both clauses must be independent, a semicolon is interchangeable with a period, and it's only preferred over the period in some cases because the sentences are so closely related. However, the semicolon is often used in place of a comma, which is incorrect. For example:

'Ada cried in silence; salty tears stinging the burn on her face.'

The second clause here has a continuous present verb (stinging) which makes it dependent on the clause before it. If you used a past tense verb there (stung) then the semicolon would be correct. However, in the example above, the comma is the only correct form of punctuation to be used there. 

commas

Your commas are pretty good, but occasionally you overuse them. For example:

'She let her nails scrap against the left side of her face, before she poked around the eye patch.'

This is all one thought, all one clause, so there shouldn't be a comma there. 'Before' does not require a comma when it is used as a conjunction.

dashes

Yay! You use the right dash. But you put a space after it. Don't do that. Word, no space, dash, no space, next word.

ii. DIALOGUE

Often, when writers have their dialogue tags down, there is one common mistake they still make, and that's distinguishing between an action tag and a dialogue tag.

A dialogue tag is a sentence that indicates who is speaking by describing the way the dialogue is spoke. For example: she said, he whispered, they shouted.

An action tag is a sentence that indicates who is speaking by describing an action they carry out during or after the dialogue. For example: she laughed, he rolled his eyes, they shrugged.

Sometimes, a verb can be both, such as 'groaned'. In situations like this, it all comes down to the punctuation. If that sentence has the punctuation of a dialogue tag, then it's being said in a groan. If it has the punctuation of an action tag, then it's being said, then the character is groaning. That's why it's important to make sure you differentiate between action tags and dialogue tags. For example:

"Not with shoulders, not with hands and certainly not with the hips," she said the last bit as a joke to lighten the mood.

Now that's not a dialogue tag or an action tag, it's just a sentence--which means you don't use the comma there to end the dialogue. However, this is the same problem you made with the occasional action tag as well, so keep an eye on that.  

1 3 / 1 5

i. PACING

Timeskips are overused in writing in my opinion. That's not to say they aren't useful and they shouldn't be used, but one must be careful where, when and how frequently they are used. My advice is always to clean out your first three chapters completely of timeskips. This is the beginning of the story—everything is important, and everything should flow together. When you use timeskips in your first few chapters, you're telling your reader that your story isn't starting where it should. In all honestly, timeskips take a major hit to the flow of your story, and if they aren't used correctly, they could be a big part of why someone puts down your story.

You have a little scene of two girls and some older woman looking for another girl, and it's barely a few paragraphs before you cut off the scene and use a timeskip. Now I would hate this in any situation, but I especially hate it here, considering the fact that you didn't even need the timeskip in the first place. If you get rid of it and don't edit anything, the story goes on just fine. 

That timeskip problem, along with the extremely confusing and jarring prologue, made your pacing not necessarily too fast or slow, but too choppy. To me, in the nicest way possible, the prologue is just messy and should be taken out. It adds nothing to the story, the characters, or the pacing, and all it does is confuse us. Then you have this 'two years later' thing which also messes with your flow. If you're using 'two years later' anywhere in your book, you're wasting an opportunity to replace that disclaimer with a summary of what happened in those two years. 

ii. TRANSITIONS

As stated above, I did have some problems with the choppiness of your story. Sometimes, I found a line to make me go, 'hold on, what?' For example, when Sarah(or maybe Ada? I didn't really grasp what was happening in that scene) is screaming randomly in the first chapter when we first meet her. You write 'she continued screaming' but you never state that she started screaming in the first place--you only said she shouted across the road. Shouting and screaming convey very different messages, so it took me a re-read to understand the scene and who was talking--which you never want your readers to have to do.

Sometimes, mistakes like this come from not enough editing, or even too much. You've got to be careful to make sure everything flows like a story, and everything happens in chronological order (unless you're doing something funky, which I don't believe you were here). If someone else reads your story out loud to you, you'll probably find these mistakes with ease.

0 7 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

I really did find your description of the characters unique and original. However, I feel quite disconnected to your readers, and I feel like I don't know them at all. That's probably because you don't actually let us into their heads much. You seem like you might be writing in omniscient, and a difficult aspect of that is connecting us to the characters. When you're not writing from the perspective of only one character, it can be tough to remember to include the thoughts of all the characters you're writing with. Currently, you seem to want to write limited third person with Ada whenever she'd in the scene, but you also have scenes without her, and they aren't separated by a timeskip, so technically, you're writing in omniscient. Such narration takes effort to master, and perhaps the most important thing to remember is to not step back too much as a narrator. What do these characters think of each other? What do they think about what's going on. As is, your writing is a bit like a movie with characters that can't act. We can see what's going on, we understand the plot and are interested in it, but we have no clue what's going on in the character's heads.

ii. SCENES

Sometimes I found that, although your scene description is beautiful, it was slightly too much. Now, I love description and often include loads of it in my own writing, but I have a few tricks to make that easier on the reader:

Split up your prose with actual information. While you're doing your pretty description thing, include information on the actual characters, the actual plot, or maybe even some backstory on what you're describing. It makes the description feel less like a break from the story and more like a part of it.

Split up your prose with dialogue. This is an old trick, but it works really well. Try to only do a few sentences, then start the action, and include more description as you go on with the dialogue or the action. Again, it'll help with the flow of your story and the maintained attention of your readers.

0 8 / 1 0

i. PLOT

I can't say I'm really...all that sure what your book is about yet. The burb didn't give me much, and neither did the first chapter. I got a bit of world-building and a bit of the dynamic of this mansion, but I don't really know much else. However, I feel I have enough information to keep reading. That being said, it might be worth taking out the occasional back-and-forth jokes between some of the girls in order to make way for a bit more of the actual plot. The second chapter was much better for this, but I didn't find the first chapter to have much actual substance.

ii. TONE

You make the common and yet also dire mistake of failing to stick to one tense. Picking one tense and sticking to it is very important. Unless you have begun a new chapter or timeskip, you must stay in one tense, as it can be very jarring to a reader to be tossed two different types of verbs in the same timeline. In the same paragraph, you used the present tense verbs 'takes' and 'spares', then also used the past tense verbs 'cried', 'laid' and 'stuck'. Later in the story, you seem to get into the groove of using the past tense, which I think your story worked well in. Make sure to get rid of any present tense verbs in your story should you choose to make your story past tense.

0 8 / 1 0

Despite the fact that I've spent the last 2k words heavily--for lack of a better word--trashing this book, it's written very, very well. The narration is easy to read, the logistics are nearly flawless, and the characters are all unique and different from anything I've read. While you have many ways to make this story flow better, become a little more intriguing, you do have the writing gene, and your tone is the one thing that you can't really change, so I have faith that this story will become a lovely one through a bit of touching up.

4 6 / 6 0