In My Opinion

Grindelwald's Granddaughter by iryn0329

Full title: Grindelwald's granddaughter by iryn0329
Source: Utopian Fanfiction Awards 2024 by TheHappyWriters
Category: Harry Potter fandom
Mature: N (magical violence)
Status: Ongoing
Round 1: 23/40
Round 2: 53/100, did not progress to round 3

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book.

*****

Round 1 total: 23/40

Title: 9/10

I must admit that I had to Google "Grindelwald," because I've never read or watched anything past the original HP series. But even before I did, the name struck me as very HP, and the alliteration of "Gr" "Gr" speaks to me. My only complaint is with capitalization. Since this is a title, "granddaughter" should be capitalized.

Cover: 2/10
The picture is fine. My issue here is that the book title and your name aren't on the cover, which means it's just a picture.

Summary: 7/10
How did you know I love short blurbs? I've had to adapt to all the long blurbs people like to write, but short and sweet speaks to my heart. That being said, I do have a couple of suggestions here to try to enhance your hook. Emphasizing harder-sounding words and sandwiching longer sentences between short, snappy sentences would do that. Something like, "Celina Grindelwald. Grindelwald's granddaughter. She's attending Hogwarts for the first time, but what people see is not what she is. It's the opposite." And you need something else at the end. A question, maybe? Something to get the reader invested in learning the truth about Celina.

First chapter: 5/10
Well. Start this off with a little action, why don't you?

So, of course, this is fast-paced, and it should be, since it's an action scene. But it's too fast-paced. There needs to be more detail, which would also clarify who's saying what and who's doing what. It gets pretty confusing. Every piece of dialogue, including spell incantations, needs to be in quotation marks so the reader can differentiate it from the narrative. And we need more name usage. Right at the start, you call someone "Grindelwald," and in the same sentence, you use the pronoun "her." Who is this person? The reader expects Grindelwald to be Celenia's grandfather based on the book title and the blurb, so just using "Grindelwald" without a first name to identify which Grindelwald is really confusing, especially when paired with the "her" pronoun. And that happens throughout this chapter. We need the names, and if multiple people have the same last name, then we need the first name.

There are some spelling issues with names as well. It's "Azkaban" and "Kingsley."

And there are some tense issues. This chapter is overall written in past tense, but there are times when you slip into present tense. That just adds to the confusion. In the third sentence of that first big paragraph, for example, "is" should be "was."

Perspective. I didn't pinpoint it until reading through a second time, but this is another area of confusion. You start this off with Grindelwald and company flying to Azkaban to instigate a mass prison break with Aurors in hot pursuit, and then you talk about the Auror Ministry being in a panic, not sure where, and then it's back to the dark wizards. That's two perspective changes in a very short period when the reader hasn't even had time to grasp one perspective. And the perspective jumps around a lot, as does location. We're in this part of Azkaban - no, we're in this one - it's Dumbledore's thoughts - no, it's Celina's thoughts.

You know all the characters, and you know your story, but the reader doesn't, so you need to take a step back and think about how this comes across to someone completely unfamiliar with the story. Perspective changes are fine, and fast action is fine, but we need concrete details to hold on to. The names, for one. A note about someone's appearance. The sound of magic spells zinging through the air. You don't want to get so detailed that the flow of action creeps to a halt, but just little things like that can ground the reader in the setting, in the story, so they know what's going on, at least in this little corner of Azkaban. Stick with one perspective for a while before you switch. Later on, when the reader knows the characters and the story, you can make faster changes, but it's just pure chaos to someone who has no idea who to look at or what to follow. And yeah, it's a battle, so it's supposed to be chaotic, but the reader needs some guidance.