Critics column - 2

Review - 15

Author: Allusione

Title: My New School

The title seems appropriate. One of your main characters, Jasmine is moving to a new place and starting a new school.

Cover: The cover has recognizable stars which seem suitable for a fanfic story. The composition is reasonably eye-catching and there is a school on the front, too.

Blurb: The blurb has a good amount of information. I might rearrange some of it so the blurb reads clearly and concisely. I’m not sure you need the first paragraph at all for the blurb to make sense.

Overall: 

For the purposes of this review, I read five chapters.

You have a good sense of the teenage voice. All of your female characters seem likable and believable. You have a nice mix of humor and drama in the story as a whole.

The chapters are usually kept short which is good for readers looking for something quick on the go. A couple of your chapters (notably Chapter Three) could have been a bit more developed.

There are some minor word use problems (there vs their, where vs were), typos, capitalization, missing articles and so forth. Some of these might be discovered with a careful edit or having someone you trust to read it over looking for these small mistakes.

There are a number of comma splice errors. This means a comma has been used in a sentence when it needed a full stop or a semi-colon. When joining multiple independent clauses, a comma often isn’t strong enough.

Be careful of addressing the reader. The sentence “You may be wondering why?” breaks the fourth wall (drags the reader into the story and makes them aware that they’re reading something). Most of the time, as a writer, breaking the fourth wall isn’t a good idea.

In the first chapter, the town’s name of Forks is mocked. I wonder whether it would be better to mock it using other utensils rather than animal names? The name and the way it’s mocked don’t seem to go together at the moment.

Sometimes the show versus tell balance isn’t quite right. If someone is sad, showing them crying, showing tears in their eyes, showing slumped shoulders, etc is better than telling the reader the character is sad. Look for places where you can show an emotion rather than telling it.

Chapter Five has a lot of POV shifts within it and each POV is very short. I wonder whether it would be better to have fewer shifts in that chapter and lengthen some of the POVs that you have. When the POV shifts a lot, it doesn’t give the reader very much time to get to know a character or to understand them.

Overall, you have a really interesting idea for a fanfiction here that with some careful editing would pull in more readers. 

By - RElizabethM