Ohana Reviews

Review ❀ Little Aria

Reviewer: @mmjayoh

Book: Little Aria

Author: @miebimiebai

Title and Cover: The title is pretty and suits the premise of the story. And I love the image you've chosen for the cover. The font of the title is great too! My only suggestion would be to switch up the font/size of the font for the header and author tag. Also, maybe consider switching it up to something like: A romantic novel...

Blurb: I like the information contained in the blurb–it's brief, but still establishes the premise. My only suggestions would be to switch up the flow, so it matches better. For instance, if you said: Angelo Romano is a coldblooded, unobtainable man–the Devil, himself, that would better match the flow of the sentence above!

Then, in the next sentence, I would consider changing 'personality' to 'personalities.' And one last thing, for your final sentence, maybe remove the last part suggesting they fall in love because that's a bit of a spoiler! You could just say: What happens when the two meet unexpectedly? Or if you wanted, you could add something more open-ended such as: Do opposites really attract?, etc.

Plot Overview: The premise of the story is great–a real opposites attract, innocent girl and a bad boy. It's the kind of story that could find real success on Wattpad, I'd just focus on making your story stand out! One way to achieve this is to have a really well-structured story (would suggest reading into story structure online).

The main things I felt your story lacked was character motivation and conflict. Things moved too quickly for our main characters, and it felt too easy! Make your readers work for that pay-off. For instance, when the two first meet, I'd make that interaction more memorable. Did something horribly embarrassing happen or maybe they hated each other at first interaction...whatever it is, make it memorable! And make it clear why the two keep coming back to each other.

Right now, it seemed they hit it off too easily. But it isn't clear why Angelo would be immediately smitten with Aria–especially when his character is supposed to be cold and unapproachable. You've created an interesting dynamic with Angelo being her boss, so I'd play into that more. Maybe something happened and he's going to be in the office more often, so they're forced to be around each other, and their interest grows over time. There's a lot of options to play around with in a forced proximity scenario!

Pacing: Structurally, the pacing felt too quick–they met too soon and immediately were off on a first date. Unless you have a super clear and intentional purpose for this, I'd consider slowing things down a bit.

Also, scene by scene, the pacing felt quick. Stories are composed of three elements: dialogue, action, and narrative. Your story leans heavily on action with some dialogue. I think if you sprinkled in some more narrative elements, the pacing would be slowed down, and your story would be more digestible for your readers.

Style and Flow: The format of your story is unique. There is a lot of spacing, it almost reads like a poem. I understand this format to be helpful on Wattpad because it allows for more inline comments, but it can read as a bit choppy. I'd suggest leaving some sentences grouped together to create larger paragraphs.

Additionally, your writing style is enjoyable to read. Things were concise and to the point, so I breezed right through the chapters. My only suggestion would be to spend a bit more time on descriptions. Specifically, descriptions of the scenes (this is an example of adding narrative elements).

Your writing has a touch of 'white room syndrome' meaning dialogue occurs without any description of the scene, so it's difficult to imagine the story in my head. A good example of this in your writing is in chapter one, where Aria goes to Peter's restaurant. There wasn't any description of the diner, and it could have really added to the scene!

Characters: I love the dynamic of these two characters. The bad boy, good girl trope is such a good one, and universally popular. I think you could get this point across a bit clearer if Angelo was more brooding or cold toward Aria at first.

And for Aria, to me, she seemed a bit dull. I think this was mostly because we didn't get much set-up with her alone as a character to get to know her. I'd love to know more about her as a person before she meets Angelo! Another thing, in chapter five, she describes herself as a sack of potatoes, but then says she has nice eyes and white hair–a totally rare and awesome thing. She doesn't seem bland at all! Let her know she's hot. (;

Grammar/Spelling: There were a few noticeable typos throughout, so I'd give it another proof-read if you care to fix them. Also, there's a habit of random capitalization; I'm not sure if it was intentional or just typos. And a lot of your sentences are missing periods.

In regard to grammar, a major error I noticed was a fluctuation in tenses. Most of your story is written in past tense, so I'd make sure to stick to that throughout. For instance, in chapter one you wrote: I live by myself. To make this past tense, 'live' should be 'lived.' I noticed this throughout, so just keep an eye out for it!

Lastly, I would recommend checking out more resources on how to properly punctuate dialogue. Most of it is fine, but when you write dialogue that ends in a question mark (or exclamation mark) and a dialogue tag (she said, I yelled, a man whispered) then it should follow the following format: "Who is that?" the man asked.

In chapter three you wrote: "What's wrong?" He asked softly... To correct this, simply lowercase the word 'he.'

Final thoughts: It's clear you have a good handle of what types of stories gain popularity on Wattpad. You've imagined a story that could have great success. I'd just work on tweaking it to make it more unique and memorable. My biggest piece of advice is to seek out information online about story structure and loosely construct a plot outline, so you know what direction your story is headed. I enjoyed reading and hope you keep at it! (: