Username – annabellereedwriting

Cover:

Not at a professional level. The color scheme makes seeing anything difficult, and your name at the bottom is far too long. A professional, or semi-professional, cover would typically have a name on it, not your Wattpad username.

Blurb:

Flow is a significant concern here. The points you're trying to make jump all over the place with no connectivity. You also use the word intensives when you should've said incentives.

First Chapter:

From the very beginning you tell me things that should be shown. Make your readers feel like they're at a birthday party. Don't just say it. I mean, it's a party, an easy thing to give details about. How is everyone acting? Is the room filled with the smell of cake and cookies, or is it Vodka and cigarettes? At one point you specifically state that sounds flood the room. Tell people what those sounds are so they can imagine them and feel like they're in the room. You want readers to connect like that. Another example? How is John's wife delicate? You don't say something like that if it can be avoided. You show her acting delicate and let your readers see it, let them figure it out for themselves.

Another concern to note is word redundancy. You do it at different points, but one example is the word cake. You say it six times in a short period of time. Find a way to increase your vocabulary or readers will feel the wording is too simple.

I'd say your biggest concern is P.O.V. There are numerous writing styles, but you're not in any specific one. You float around in everyone's perspective like a drunken camera man filming a movie. You're in John's head, directly detailing his thoughts, (which means this is not omniscient writing) then you're telling us what the neighbors are thinking and how the wife feels. You have to figure out what P.O.V. you want to be in and stay there. There are writing styles that allow you access to multiple perspectives, but a high level writer knows not to jump around without meaning and purpose, and definitely not sentence to sentence. Take this critique and do what every writer needs to do at some point in their progression, study. Go and learn about all the different writing styles and the guidelines within them. You got this.