Rookywriters Book Reviews

Review 50 @Lee_melan

Book - Destiny of Vermilion
Author - Lee_Melan

REVIEW

1. First chapter blues

* Summary / prologue - Summary is not really strong and catchy at first glance.

* Intro to main character - Good intro to main character which is Y/N. (R🍪🍪ky)

* Intro to story - There is no coherent story going on from chapter one through five. I had to read the chapters three times to actually understand what is going on, which most readers won't have the patience to do.

* Intro to genre -Good intro to the genre, fan fiction.

2. Story Settings

* Description - There was little or no description of locations or characters in most of the chapters. Mostly because the chapters started straight up with dialogue. Begin a chapter with location descriptions, you can add the weather conditions, then introduce the mood of the character then the characters. That way things will flow naturally and bring life to your characters.

Starting up with dialogue makes the characters look flat.

* Theme - I don't know exactly what theme is going on, is it on love and vampires...

* Intrigue / Suspense factor - There was probably predictable intriguing scenes. Most times the writer wants to leave certain clues for the readers to find out later, then more clues, then everything gets juggled up.

* Relation to genre - The story got tangled up between teen fiction and fan fiction genre. I think it is more related to teen fiction.

* Time setting - Timing was not observed in the chapters.

* Character development - The characters lack full development. There's need to know their background story, where they're coming from, etc

Also, these characters are pretty much controlled by the writer. Most new writers do this often. We want to really control what the main character thinks, do, act, says... To some extent the character becomes characterless.

Try working on your characters by allowing them to be human at least not toys. Let them reason on their own. For example a writer might have some fantasy about falling in love with BTS, then a character is created to actually fulfill that dream, sometimes it works but at some point it gets complicated and you probably get stuck writing.

Try reducing the load of activities going on around the characters and let them cool off at some point.

3. Story Tone

* Grammar - The use of multiple full stops got too much at some point. Maintain one unless you need to use an ellipsis which is the three dots (...)

There are some grammatical errors in terms of spellings and wrong words which can be corrected while editing.

There was no good paragraphing of the chapters. The sentences and dialogue where all jammed up. Space them out while editing.

Dialogues should have a full stop before the quotation closes not after the quotation.

Example,
"I never asked you to return the favor". (not correct)
"I never asked you to return the favor." (correct)

Also limit the exclamation marks to one! One is enough to pass the message. Triple of it only makes the sentence shabby.

There are a lots of 'I's and 'You's povs going on it all got confusing at some point. I don't know if you feel comfortable writing from third person pov, I would have suggested you try using third person pov for the BTS boys and use first person pov for the Y/N character.

* Dialogue - Dialogue among the characters ate up almost 95% of the chapters, which is too much. This made the story get lost somewhere. Trying telling the story from the authors pov from time to time so that readers can keep up with what's happening.

* Choice of words - Well, choice of words is okay for your story. The diction wasn't great but this can be corrected while editing.

* Chapter flow - Story flowed normal from chapter to chapter.

* Writing voice - There is no strong writing voice heard from the story. Your writing voice is hidden somewhere in between the lines. With more practice it will get stronger.

4. Creativity

* Plot development - Good story plotting.

* Writing style - Writing style is not stable. Maybe because it's coming from different povs.

5. Personal thoughts - You have a good concept of writing and I will suggest you read through your story aloud while you edit and fix up the errors first. Then revamp your characters, if there are characters whose actions will not be needed in a scene don't write about them and force them to make conversations that will not help with the story.

Since it is a BTS fan fiction it is not necessary for the whole crew to always appear in every scene or chapter.

Each chapter should have important scenes that will move the story forward. Not keep readers in unnecessary suspense that seem to prolong through many chapters. It literally gets boring.

The font and color used for the cover is blurry, I would suggest you make a simpler one. BTS pictures are bold enough, just use a clearer font to highlight your name and book title.

* Overall - You get an eight out of ten!

A/N (I moved your book from critique to review. Critiquing your book at this point will probably give you a heart attack. So it's better to get it reviewed first. Thank you)

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