The Healing Touch written by 123poseidon

i. COVER & TITLE

I do like your cover, and I do think it's better than many on Wattpad. However, it doesn't hold that spark of creativity or a professional touch that really draws the eye. I'm not a fan of the way the author's name is hard to see, and the fonts are a little generic. I would recommend working with a designer to dream up a new cover that's even better than what you currently have.

As for your title, I don't have any problems with it. It's interesting, relates perfectly to the story, and works well with the blurb.

ii. BLURB

I have a few problems with your blurb. For one, it's not in the present tense—I would argue that almost all blurbs should be in present tense. It gives the blurb a sense of intrigue and an it's-happening-right-now feeling. In addition, you zoom out of the story and view it as more of an outsider than somebody right there in the story. I would recommend keeping the generality of what you have, but trying to get rid of those two things I mentioned above. Lastly, there's nothing in the blurb that really intrigues me. It's all so generic that I have no real plotline to grasp. Yes, she'll meet new people and go through struggles, but perhaps it's worth defining those struggles or the kind of people she'll meet to give us more insight as to what this story will be about. At this point, I don't find the blurb adequately representing the excitement of your story.

0 8 / 1 5

i. PUNCTUATION

#1: THE DASH (:

I know I use the dash too much. I know that. But I do think you use it too little. In fact, there are places where you have grammatically incorrect sentences that would be correct if you implemented the dash. Here's an example:

'I rushed myself through the busy pouring traffic of the city, avoiding hitting, and getting hit equally, by animate as well as inanimate objects.'

That's a fun sentence, but it's grammatically exhausting because you've used so many commas. Here's how that would be written if you used the dash to separate that interruptive clause there:

'I rushed myself through the busy pouring traffic of the city, avoiding hitting—and getting hit equally—by animate as well as inanimate objects.'

It's just...better. It sounds cleaner, it feels better, and I would recommend taking this route when you have too many clauses and you have a clause that 'interrupts' the rest of the sentence.

#2: COMMAS

Commas help to separate thoughts in your writing, and they make things smoother and easier to understand. As a general rule, you don't want to place a comma in the middle of something we call a clause—something that has the do-er of the sentence (the subject) and what they are doing (the verb).

'I texted them, as I was standing in front of the ER department.'

Here, you, first of all, have a little bit of a tense problem that we'll talk about later, but for now, let's focus on the comma. You've separated a clause here: she's texting them at the same time as she is standing in front of the ER department, so everything needs to be together there, without the comma. Now if you meant this in a way that meant she texted them because she was standing in front of the ER department, then you'd keep that comma. Just a few things to look out for there in your writing. Otherwise, your grammar is easy-to-follow with minimal mistakes that disrupt understanding.

ii. DIALOGUE

Your dialogue tags are not always wrong, but they're a little inconsistent. Here are the rules that should clear up any inconsistencies you currently have:

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."

iii. FORMATTING

Something to watch out for—you don't always have double spacing between your paragraphs. Keep in mind that if you're not using indent format—like most published books have—then you have to fully commit to block format, which means every time you press 'enter' you need to press it twice so you get a full line of white between every new paragraph.

0 9 / 1 5

i. PACING

I think your pacing is just perfect. I don't see it rushing, but I don't see it lagging too much, either. I like how sometimes the action speeds up, and then often we get a moment to breathe after. I think you've done a great job of keeping this story going along at an awesome pace that is easy to manage.

ii. TRANSITIONS

The hook of your first chapter was just excellent! I loved the big sweep into the story that was done smoothly and easily. You move along from scene to scene quite well, and you usually end a chapter in a way that is excellent. As I'll touch on soon, I think you should've ended the first chapter with the line 'anyways, that was a good start' and not continue on with the rest that you had. That was the only time I felt your transition was jarring, and I'll explain why shortly. Either way, the endings you had always wrapped up the story in a way that was final, but also exciting enough to make me want more.

0 9 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

When you described Oliva's teammates, you did an excellent job of making them memorable. You had tiny, one-liners that set them apart from each other. However, since you did all five of them at once, no amount of excellent description would help us to remember them; they should just be split apart a bit more. Try talking about two, then another two, then the last one. That'll get them more into our head and make sure they stick there.

Now about Oliva—you did an excellent job of making her out to be a busy yet ambitious young woman who is as narcissistic as she is excited. You did all of that so well, so I didn't like how at the end of the first chapter, you had her introduce herself. To be completely honest—we don't need to know that information! I would argue we don't need to know most of it at all, but if you do want to tell the audience that she's five-foot-three, try doing it a bit later in the story, when it comes naturally—like she has trouble reaching something on the top shelf, and we as the reader realize that she's short. In addition, you didn't need to describe her feelings about the medical profession, because we totally already saw that shown naturally in her rush to work and her annoyance over the whole ordeal. It was merely redundant and came off very tell-y.

That being said, I absolutely loved the ER chief's entrance and subsequent description. It was quick, short, but it left a huge impact on who he was. The mentions of 'predatory' and his 'hawk-like' eyes were very well done!

ii. SCENES

I do like how you've described the ER, but I think it was too much. I really do like longer descriptions in general, but they become ineffective when they are written as a 'list' or a 'lecture' and not a story. You describe a lot of things about the ER, but we don't get any insight on what Olivia's thoughts about these things. It's a lot of information, and yet it hasn't moved along our characters or our plotline whatsoever. If you're not going to make a story-like description that goes into detail on what Oliva is thinking, then try toning it down to one or two sentences about the way the room looks and perhaps adding in more detail throughout the scene when it becomes natural.

0 6 / 1 0

i. PLOT

Medical dramas are everywhere on TV, but you don't see as many written plotlines. I, preparing to apply to medicine myself, have watched and read nearly every single medical or medical-related plotline on the planet. Because of that, I don't see the originality of your plot, but that's not necessarily a horrible thing. People like simplicity and repetition of something that they already like. If that weren't true, there wouldn't be seventeen seasons of Grey's Anatomy, and they wouldn't all have been watched and experienced success.

I don't think you need to worry about your plot. I think it's wholesome, exciting, and well-done. It's not that original, but I don't think it needs to be. I like Olivia's character, and I root for her. That's all you need.

ii. TONE

All right, let's get to what I would argue is the most disruptive problem of your writing—the tense you writing in. I'm sure you're familiar with the past and present tense, but here's a quick reminder:

The past tense talks about things that have happened already. The verb determines the tense, and verbs with an -ed ending fit into the past tense. Example from your writing: I glanced to my side.

The present tense talks about things that are currently happening. Again, the verbs determine your tense. Most commonly, verbs with an -s ending set the present tense. Example from your writing: I guess they would be my teammates. (Notice here how 'would' fits into the past tense, but 'guess' fits into the present? That's bad!)

You flip-flop a lot between these tenses, which is really disruptive to a reader. Luckily, this is a simple, easy fix. You're mostly in past tense, so just make sure all your verbs stay that way. For example, the sentence above would become: I guessed they would be my teammates.

Despite this problem, your tone is very straightforward, and that—although it doesn't exactly make it unique—does make it nice and easy to follow, which a lot of readers appreciate.

0 8 / 1 0

I love how easily followed this story is, and it's almost comforting in a way. Your writing style is so easy to read, but occasionally you've sacrificed simplicity for clarity in the areas of commas and tense. Those are easy fixes, and touching them up will help build this already lovely story.

4 0 / 6 0