| Reviews for New friends |
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identify chapter 1 . 12/25/2017 Hey, this story is good! I have a few ways you might be able to improve though. (There's a lot, but I hope you take it as constructive criticism and not hate - if I hated it or thought you were bad, would I have spent so long typing this out?) First of all, keep in mind that small details that are given in the books, like parents' names or schedules, aren't that important to your readers. You did get Tom Blue's name right, but it wouldn't have mattered much if you didn't. So don't stress! If you are concerned, you can always google it, fandom wikis usually have all the answers :) Secondly. I would never insert an author's note in the middle of the fic. It breaks up the story and can be an annoyance, especially when it's in bold so you kind of /have/ to look at it. You can always mention it in the main author's notes at the start or end of the chapter and refer back to the section, but I would recommend not putting it in the actual text. Thirdly, a grammar thing, when you have characters talking and the speaker changes, you have to put a paragraph break. Not only is this grammatically required, it also makes the story more spread out and easy for the reader to digest! See this example. Incorrect: "How are you?" "Yeah I'm fine, you?" Correct: "How are you?" "Yeah I'm fine, you?" Fourthly, a suggestion from an experienced fic writer: it's good if your writing isn't just a big block of text. In this story you have broken the chapter into time sections, which is a good start, but it would be cool if you could also spread out the words within those sections. (So rather than having a single paragraph per section, which can be hard for the reader to get through no matter how well written, have it divided into lots of small paragraphs/lines, one per topic). This applies to any story or creative writing you're doing, perhaps not an essay for school but most forms of writing. This review is not (haha) a good example of what I mean, lol. Fifthly, it's cool if you can try to vary sentence structure between sentences, it just seems so beautiful and fluid when you do that (you are already pretty good at this). If you want to try it deliberately, I suggest varying the number of commas in each sentence, and try not to have two sentences next to each other with the same number of commas. I have used this technique in this review. Check it out! Juxtaposing short and long sentences is a great way of making your writing not only fluid, but professional sounding, like a real author. Sixthly (long review haha sorry), and this is purely a fanfiction. net thing, I suggest putting a line between your story and the author's notes at the start and end of the page. Seventh, a fanfiction thing as well, the long summary of what has happened throughout the series is unnecessary in a fanfiction because the readers know. To set the scene and make it clear when the story starts in the Virals timeline (which you have done nicely), you wouldn't need to sum up the first few books. So I would have not described the sickness that made them Viral or even mentioned the adventures of the first few books, maybe just mentioning that Tory's life is getting back to normal after the blue-eyes transformation. I only say this because that part of the story didn't advance the plot much, it was like an intro that went just a little too long. Lastly, never put in your summary that you're bad at summaries haha! If you can't think of anything, here's a hint from a veteran, just write, 'Spoilers for Terminal' and leave it there. Hopefully, the reader's curiosity will be piqued. (It's also good to have a spoiler warning, which you did, so good job). Never apologise for the story you have to tell! We were all beginners once. I'm looking forward to reading where this story will go. You have a lot of potential. P.S. I hope you haven't been put off by my extraordinarily long review with so many things for you to work on, doesn't mean your writing is bad! Your writing may not be 5-star but it has so much potential, so keep writing, use these tips and you will surely succeed. To conclude this essay-length review, I have read much worse, and I have read amazingly awesome stories that struggle with many of the things that I have mentioned here (the commas, always the commas...) so don't lose heart. Keep writing and good luck! - a fan |