Rookywriters Book Reviews

No. 17 A Royal Revolt

Introduction

Book title and Author – A Royal Revolt by nat_graces
Genre – historical fiction

¤ First impression – Summary... when Adrianne's father has plans to marry one of the richest women in the kingdom of calipson, Adrianne and her sisters are pulled out of their humble village and whisked to the nobility, the first class village.

There is more telling in this sentence than actual summarizing of the story.

¤ Weakness – Sentences are short and fast paced for a historical ficton.

¤ Improvement – Fill up sentences with full description of locations, characters and actions.

Adjust or rewrite the book summary and give a summary of your book. Summary should be the sum of the beginning, middle and end of your story.

Learn to show characters actions in a scene. Don't just say, 'Anne went to the village to get some cake' let me see how she did it. Did she walk to the village, take a horse to the village, take a train to the village, did she see the blue skies, was it a rainy day, or a sunny day or a gloomy day, what was she wearing that day? When she got to the shop who sold her the cake, a boy, man, woman? What kind of cake did she buy?

Organize this info and construct a well developed scene for your characters.

You can say, 'Esme went to the bathroom to ease herself'.

This is telling. You don't need to show the processes she took to go ease herself. That will be unnecessary since we all know that.

Study the difference.

¤ Strength – Good story telling. Good story idea. Good diction.

Body

¤ Opening – Beginning a historical fiction with 'Man, I really need to use the powder room...' will throw off readers at first read.

Historical fiction has its own share of world build. There is need to know what kingdom we are reading about, location of the kingdom, villages, the peoples culture, enviromental influences and all that before even introducing a character into the picture.

When all this is put in place, it gives us an idea of Adrianne and her family daily routine, how their household is run with or without their mother, her father's contribution to the family, his thoughts towards his daughters, his relationship with women etc

Before finally breaking the news of his marriage with his lover.

Then the rest is history, I guess.

¤ Conflict – From the summary, there is no strong conflict going on in the story. The rebels that kidnapped Anne kind of lost their mission and cause somewhere and the story is now more of some love adventures between Anne and Daniel.

¤ Plot – The plotting of the story has the sequence of a teen fiction, except there is a form of historical royalty involved.

¤ Setting – There is need to be careful in describing the settings of the story so you don't mix up modern facilities with old ones. In chapter five, somewhere says

As I leave, I turn off her light...

Its not the light I am thinking. A bulb, candlelight? What kind of 'light' is that?

The next paragraph says,

I spend the rest of the week exploring the village. I figure if I'm going to be working at the palace then I need to know my surroundings. And my father needs to apply for a job. My father walks with me and we visit the bakery and try scones which are nowhere near as good as his, but it reminds me of home.

This paragraph says a lot about your writing style. If this story wasn't a historical fiction I wouldn't bother going deep to point some stuffs Out. Okay, first sentence, I spend the rest of the week exploring the village.

The word explore calls for attention. What did she see? How is the village setting? What are the obvious differences between her old poor village and the new one? Explore it more.

Also mind the English, I figure if I'm going... the word figure... I don't think it was used in those days, try using synonyms of the word.

Somewhere in chapter seven says, I literally started the job today!

For the word 'literally' I don't know if it literally existed in the past. But do some research anyways.

¤ Characterization – Anne and her people seem to be lacking in terms of background information, because their info was supposed to come first in maybe the first two chapters or three, before any other story. Her character traits are spilled here and there and basially I can't really say who Anne really is as a character in the first few chapters.

Also there is little or no description of what the characters look like. From the royals and nobility to the third villagers... Their hair color, eye color, skin shade, mode of dressing, height, body weight, etc

And choose one name between Adrianne and Anne and maintain it. If her father call her Anne, let it just be the father, but one of the names should be maintained.

¤ Dialogue – Dialogue between characters is not distinct. Each character suppose to have his or her tone of voice, facial expressions that suits them. The other female characters all sound like Anne in some ways.

¤ Point of view – The story is written from Anne's point of view. But it seems to me the book was plotted from @nat_graces point of view. How come? Do you know?

Maybe because @nat_graces fantasizes about getting married to a prince from the 15th century. I don't know either but let Anne's voice be heard. Let her speak, its her story not yours. We live in 2019, Anne lives in like the 1600s or something, so do some researches on history and build up her character firmly.

¤ Show versus tell – Basically, the story so far is more of telling than showing.

¤ Format of the text – There were short sentences, and short paragraphs with incomplete thoughts.

¤ Grammar and spelling – Grammar, spelling and punctuation was on point. Majority of your sentences though had some words italicized randomly.

I'm about to yell, fine, just let my sister go when another voice enters the vicinity.

This is not a teen fiction,where a random Jake kidnaps some pretty Anne and begging her to go on a date... Anne was kidnapped by some group of men who by the way, we need to know more of who they are and exactly what they are doing – so Anne is about to yell at them.

Her thoughts don't need to be italicized since it's her pov. Express it fully.

¤ Style – Writing style is still kind of enclosed and protected. You don't want to write so much or too little. There is no definite style yet. As a writer, your writing style and writing voice are like thunder and lightning that people see and hear while reading your book. If both are enclosed and hidden then its not fun anymore. Explore your writing, give it all your best and sweat. Its better you write so much and then cut down the excesses when edit.

Conclusion

Comments – I know being a newbie writer is quite challenging but these challenges help build our writing. You have a beautiful story idea. I would suggest you read other books close to your genre, learn and note how stories are made and how characters are brought to life. I will suggest you check out The Factory girl by @Spruce_Goose. It has a female lead character and set some time in history.

The book cover is catchy for your story.

I enjoyed reading your book.

Thanks for letting me evaluate your book.

Any comments or questions about any confusion just PM me or hit the comments.