Dreamland Review Archive

Secrets (T)

Secrets

Ellastar36

Initial Impression: (cover, title & blurb)

Wow! This cover is really well done. It draws me in and makes me feel satisfied. However, it lacks colour. I think this is still a wonderful cover without adding anything, but I think colour may enhance it. Maybe the eye could have a coloured iris? Just a thought. Try to be creative with it, because black and white covers don't excel in the Wattpad world. In addition to this, it doesn't give off a mystery/dystopian vibe. Maybe adding some sort of texture to include that would be beneficial? Readers like to know what they're getting from the cover.

The title is generic, unfortunately, and quite common. But it does fit with the story. It just doesn't hold the spark of originality that a title should. It also doesn't really give off a mystery/dystopian vibe. I can't think of anything other possible titles, but I think you should make an effort to brainstorm a little.

I'm really impressed with your blurb! It's short, snappy, and it gets right to the point. I really don't have much to critique, and there weren't enough awkward sentences for me to consider re-writing it for you. The only thing I'll suggest is taking out the 'secrets-thrill-mystery' at the end of the blurb. That's pretty obvious in the blurb, and I found myself wondering if it was part of the blurb or not. I don't see a reason for it to be there, other than disrupting the flow a bit.

11/15

Logistics: (grammar, spelling & dialogue)

Your grammar is uncomplicated and clear; it works well for your style. I don't find any persistent issues pertaining to grammar.

However, you have a lot of typos. One thing I noticed that I think may be a formatting error is the extra spaces between the end of dialogue and whatever comes next. Be careful while copy/pasting from other systems. I also found a lack of spaces a few times as well. Most of these mistakes appeared to be typos rather than actual content errors. Try reading your stories through a few times to catch these.

You have problems with dialogue. Here's the dialogue tag spiel:

Ugh. The annoying dialogue tags. It took me millions of years to learn these. But here is my best explanation that seems to offer the least confusion:

- A dialogue tag is anything that describes the way something is said (ex. he screamed, she whispered, I asked).

- An action tag is anything that implies who is speaking by using an action (ex. 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.

Now, placing these into your writing. Here are the rules:

When you have a dialogue tag following or proceeding a spoken sentence, 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."