Essie's Critiques

Fifth Dimension | HarryAllen73

BLURB:

Peculiarly dyslexic Peter Carlssin is not ecstatic to find out he is not a human. As he struggles to find his place in this new definition of 'world', chaos breaks. From a new-comer, he becomes the most wanted person in all dimensions. And his only hope to prove his innocence is an ancient artifact.

What is it? Where is it? How to find it? He doesn't know. But this twisted reality is more than just different.

Soon he finds himself in the midst of a long predicted war. And his fate has already been decided.

Which side is he fighting on?

***

YOUR COVER: (5/10) Your cover suits your genre, and I felt that the color scheme used can bring in readers of the genre for your story—sci fi and action/adventure. However, the title isn't easily the largest text on your cover, and the font/placing of your title could be more appropriate to fit your story/genre. I suggest looking for new covers that better represent your story and draw in more readers.

YOUR TITLE: (7/10) It's hard to tell whether your title is relevant to your story, so it's up to you to decide whether it appropriately represents your story and genre. I got the general concept and mood of the story from your title, so if you feel that it portrays your story, you can keep it as it is. I also suggest keeping your mind open to other possibilities for titles that are equally (or more) memorable and interesting.

YOUR BLURB: (4/5) I appreciated that your blurb was free of any grammatical errors. I took off a point because there were some parts where your blurb felt awkward and forced. It should flow smoothly, but particularly in the second half, you've separated paragraphs where it isn't so necessary to do so, and I always recommend minimizing the questions used in a blurb with a maximum of two. How can you phrase your blurb in an interesting way to state the triggering action/dilemma, obstacles, overarching conflict, and include those involved in a short, concise way?

YOUR HOOK: (4/5) You started off with an exchange between the mother and son through a letter, and I immediately got a sense of the relationship between the two. I also appreciated that I couldn't spot grammatical errors right off the bat, and I got a sense of the protagonist's life/world and of those around him. There was an awkward spot in the first part of the hook. While unnecessary, I suggest combining the first two sentences to look like this: "I am all well and perfectly fine, thank you."

YOUR GRAMMAR: (6/10) You struggled with your punctuation and capitalization with dialogues. If your dialogue is accompanied with a dialogue tag (he said, she yelled, they shouted, describing the way someone says something), the dialogue tag is a continuation of the dialogue sentence. For example, it doesn't make sense for the clause, "She said," to be a sentence by itself. Therefore, it's part of the dialogue sentence. The dialogue should end in a comma to indicate that the sentence isn't complete, and the start of a dialogue tag is not capitalized, as it's not the start of a new sentence. The opposite goes for action tags. If your dialogue is accompanied by an action tag (she grinned/he sighed/they walked away, basically an action), the action should not be part of the dialogue sentence. The dialogue doesn't help the action tag make sense; the action tag should be a sentence by itself. Therefore, the dialogue should end in a period to signify the end of the sentence, and the start of the action tag should always be capitalized, as it's the start of a new sentence. Of course, the punctuation may vary. Exclamation marks and question marks can end a dialogue regardless of the tag accompanying it, as long as if it's a dialogue tag, the dialogue never ends in a period, and for an action tag, it never ends in a comma.