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Title: The Hippie Username: brigxtsid3 Chapter reviewed: 1 and 2
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Hi! Okay, I swear I have written this review for a month. I am not sure how this hadn’t reached you. Jeez. I am so sorry for the long wait!
Anyway, I’ll start with your cover.
Cover
I have a mixed feeling about it. It’s not bad, but it's simply a Pinterest image with a slab of title written on it. Try to give you cover a bit more attention.
Title
Nothing in your blurb indicates a ‘hippie' in any way. Perhaps it’s her peculiar fashion? You said she’s from Australia. From where? Fremantle or something? Perhaps I should read further to understand it?
Blurb
This means like all bad boy stories out there. It’s not bad, it’s actually good. But it’s not original or unique. Just… Wattpad kinda story. But again, it’s... good.
I always suggested writers against writing the excerpt from the story in the blurb, especially simply dialogues. Most of the time, it simply fills up space but has no weight. I am sorry to say that yours is like that too. I see no use for the excerpt to be there, because nothing is actually interesting in the dialogues you shared.
Chapters
I combined both chapters in this one review because 1) both are very short, and 2) there’s no plot development YET.
So, you started the story the way thousands of Wattpad teen fiction start. A new day at school. Is it a bad thing? Nope. Not at all. The hurdle for such a chapter is originality. Which is VERY hard to achieve with such an introduction. The potential for it to be boring seems endless.
I want to mention about character and plot development. Both have slim development going on none. We have no idea who the character is other than her name and where she comes from, and maybe that she was homeschooled. You simply start the story, having this witty and sarcastic character acts ‘cool’ and rude to the receptionist(?) and that’s that.
In the next scene, suddenly she assumes the people she sees as Mr. and Miss Popular, then you write a bully-victim scene, where she doesn’t allow herself to be bullied and she kind of insults the two of them, for no obvious reasons. Then the chapter ends up just like that. Hanging in the middle of a sentence.
Then this is character development flaw #1. After her confidence surge at the end of chapter 1, she suddenly has some kind of anxiety attack in chapter 2 when the students from the other hall(?) comes out and walks around her. I just don’t see the correlation between her narration to her sudden ‘fear’.
Ok so this is basically the story so far.
May I ask you what you actually want to write? Who is this character of yours? What is the motivation for the story? What’s the objective of the story? You should have an objective, and you should have an intro for it. Let us know what or who we are reading about. I just didn’t know what I just read, tbh.
Writing-wise, your writing is actually good, grammar wise. What you need to focus on is how ‘immature’ the writing is. I know the character is a high schooler, so she tends to be immature. But you should keep the writing professional by expounding on the development of the MC, instead of her simply talking about how high her IQ is, or how much she doesn’t care about having purple hair and hasn’t tucked in her shirt.
Your writing could improve a lot of you don’t describe your character too. Well, of course, you should describe your characters, but considering this is the 1st pov, it’s very jarring to read ‘my blue gaze' or ‘my colourful self'.
She seems very 1-D. We only know what you/she tells us. But I don’t know what her personality is like. Maybe she’s witty and full of sarcasm, but that’s all there is to it to get characterization. I suggest you build up your character. Character/plot development is not written as the story progress unless you’re full of experience and/or ideas. They are built before you start writing. Think back and find out who the MC is and what the story is about.
I don’t have much to say as the chapters are very short.
Your writing isn’t bad at all. It’s really not. It’s better than half of teen fiction on here. You just need to tackle the technicalities and get more exposure to fiction writing. Read and write constantly. It will help you a lot.
