Astania Reviews

Azia | The Mechanical Muse

TITLE: The Mechanical Muse

AUTHOR: FranklinBarnes

Review

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that everything in the review represents my opinion on what could make the story stand out more to who I think is your target audience. However, you know your story and your audience best, so no matter what is written here, please stay true to yourself!

Thank you for applying for my review shop! Since I've read your previous draft, you have the unique perspective of someone who kind of knows what your story is about in full (provided you didn't change drastically in your new expanded version). Overall, I thought your story is well-written and has a unique theme. It tackles the recent and contentious issue of AI and its morality, and there is a power fantasy aspect to the story that can be quite appealing.

However, the main character is extremely unlikeable and the story does not end hopeful. These factors together tell me that your story might not be the cup of tea for the mainstream Wattpad reader (or the mainstream reader in general, from my limited reading experience), but I doubt you're trying to cater to the mainstream market anyway. I'm going to try my best to help you find the niche market for this book and fit your story package to them.

Looking at your cover, descriptions, and tags, it seems that you are trying to drive home the theme of a Faustian bargain. A search on Wattpad (and other search engines) will show you that searching "Faust", "Faustian" or even "devil" would give you results with a very different aesthetic of what your book has. Therefore, while I appreciate the theme you are going for, I don't think it necessarily fits the vibe of the book. I'd suggest leaning into your other theme of Artificial Intelligence instead to draw in sci-fi dystopian readers. These readers are also less likely to demand a happy ending and a perfect, likable character.

Cover: Instead of having a painting of a devil (I think that's what your cover is), I suggest going for a 'Black Mirror'-esque aesthetic for your cover for the Artificial Intelligence/dystopian lean. Maybe an unassuming man's face, with a crack down the middle, or a man behind a mask, 'V for Vendetta'-style. Just some ideas that can highlight (1) your theme of technology going too far, and (2) a male main character (a rare phenomenon and can be a selling point).

Description: What you want in your description is to grab as many readers' attention as possible and as quickly as possible. Therefore, I'd advise against having the terms "Faustian bargain" or "Faust myth" in them. Paraphrasing into "making a bargain with the devil" should give a similar meaning without feeling too alienating.

If you must leave these terms on though, I suggest adding an explanation of what it means right below your logline. I've seen people add a dictionary-esque explanation of their book theme in the description, and it looks quite aesthetic. And educational too!

Tags: You only have 17 total tags used, which means you're not fully using the tools available to you to make your book as visible as possible! Some of your tag choices are also not ideal. For example, you have "Faust" as a tag, which has less than 300 stories tagged in total. You also have "piano" as a tag, and while it has a lot of stories tagged with it (>1k in total), I don't think your story really appeals to someone who wants to read about a pianist.

I suggest adding tags to expand on your "technology" tag, like "dystopian", "sci-fi", "science", "artificialintelligence", "AI", etc. You could also add a few tags about your target audience, such as "newadult" or "youngadult".

Chapter One: You only have less than a second to grab the reader's attention in your first chapter, so your very first sentence is absolutely crucial. And congrats — your first sentence is beautifully hard-hitting! However, it leads directly to a long, chunky paragraph that's difficult to read quickly.

To make it stand out and have it grab the reader's attention immediately, I think you should isolate the very first sentence. After all, "Lying is a part of human nature, as natural as breathing or walking: not the sort of dark lies that ruin lives, but small ones that grease the wheels of the world," is one heck of a first sentence. Having just that sentence be people's first impression of your book will be a great hook, in my opinion.

I understand that long paragraphs seem to be your writing style, but I do want to try to convince you to break up some of your paragraphs. I'm a huge fan of selective sentence isolation (I believe it drives engagement up on Wattpad too, where a particularly awesome sentence can get all the in-line comments). Just by reading through your first chapter, here are some sentences I think should be stand-alone paragraphs:

In a way, lying is polite, if it helps everyone. —> This is such an epic line that deserves its own paragraph.

"Show me your profile. I dare you," I retorted. —> Stand-alone dialogue sentences will make the entire dialogue much easier to read.

"The deed is done," —> This dialogue is followed by the longest sentence I've ever read (hyperbole). I suggest breaking the tag that comes next into two and moving the new second line into a new paragraph.

For example:

"The deed is done," Valdez declared, turning his phone to show me a picture of myself—or rather, what looked like a picture of myself, but it was nothing like myself.

[New Paragraph] Lounging on a satin couch...

Finally, the chapter ends with a great ending paragraph and a clear hook of a college student who cannot wait to find out his roommate's trick of getting a girlfriend. Overall, great job, and anybody who reads this far should be hooked to keep reading.

And that's the end of your review! Good luck with the rest of your writing journey, and I hope these notes are helpful.

Ending note: As per my rules, please share the review in your message board, tagging me (AziaElga). Thank you!