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Does your work stand out in an overly-crowde...
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Username: @draphy / Title: The Wings of Storm
Log line: Tahro Akagi, a boy who lives in two worlds, must fix the butterfly effect he caused in order to save his friends from a witch's storm.
Genre: Portal fantasy adventure.
Feedback level: Submission level
PG – Your logline is fine, but your summary hints at a much more complex world, so now I'm intrigued. I move on to Ch. 1. And...deep sigh...it's a prologue. I'm really tempted to skip it (see notes above), but I look anyway. And while I love the illustration, even after having read your Ch. 1, I'm not sure what the point of it is. I mean it sets the tone of the story nicely and is a bit of a framing device, but it's largely irrelevant to a reader, coming into this story cold. If you feel it's critical to keep it, though (as evidenced by your plea for folks to not skip it), why not just have it as an intro-section to your first chapter with a graphical separator? I mean, I wouldn't make that change now because you'd lose your comments; but it's something to think about for future works. As far as your opening, it's fine for Wattpad. But I don't see anything, at a submission-level, that compels me to read more. This feels like this might be a cool, illustrated middle grade book. But I wouldn't know without diving much deeper in. It does look like you have a lot of engagement on the story, so I think you're doing just fine!
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Username: @Word_Sailor / Title: Past, Secrets and the Player
Logline: Ally, the new 'shy' girl joins Mountain Bird. And she has been made a challenge for the school's 'player'. But she has her own 'secrets' and 'past' that brings her here. (It's seems cliche, but I PROMISE it isn't ;)
Genre: Young Adult
Feedback level: Submission level
PG – Regarding your logline, my first question is, "What is Mountain Bird"? I'm assuming it's a school, but you shouldn't force an agent or editor to have to make that same assumption. As far as 'secrets" and 'past', those are really vague terms. Many stories of this nature have secrets and characters dealing with pasts. How is yours different? You can elaborate on that aspect of your story without giving everything away, so I would practice doing that. The story summary has the same issues. Now on to your Ch. 1, which is sweet, but while there's discomfort and a bit of awkwardness between the two main characters, there's no real tension or highly dramatic conflict here to make this a story ready for submission (which is the level of feedback you asked for.) It opens like a ton of other Wattpad "Player" stories, and I think that's fine for Wattpad. But if you—as the author—have to promise that your story is not cliché, then it means that you don't have the skills yet to show me that it's not cliché, and that's what I'm after. And by the way, cliché is fine, if you create vivid characters or infuse your writing with a strong writer's voice. Look at "She's With Me". It's a very cliché story with intriguing characters and told with flair. Cliché is not inherently bad. 😉
