✨ Blind Critique 2024 ✨

2. Story Number Two

Hello Writer Number Two, here is your feedback for Blind Critique

This is an interesting scene. It's not very common to come across a Hydra in a Wattpad book, so well done for using your imagination. I would love to have seen a bit more varied description. I feel some of the sentences told a lot more than they showed. I'm interested in knowing where this story is set so as to which time frame are we talking here. Is it modern times, is it set in the past? The swearing whereas it doesn't bother me, I feel that there are stronger words out there that are not swear words that could be used here.

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I like how you get right into the action! This isn't something wrong, but I don't like the raid leader lol; i don't think he's meant to be liked in this scene? I might want to see a tiny bit more emotion or action from the raid leader. I am a little confused about the woman's role and we only get a snippet, but that's about the only thing that kinda throws me off. Still a great scene!

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A dramatic scene and shows the personality of the characters within it. I liked how the woman's disappointment/offence was shown through 'she wilted' and her small 'oh, okay' (though if this is a fantasy, 'okay' gives off quite a modern vibe which, depending on the overall feel of your fantasy, might be fine, might not). The raid leader's strong and abrasive character was shown well.

A point of line-edit critique would be to watch out for those action tags around the dialogue. These should occur after a full stop rather than a comma. E..g:
...You don't count." He pointed at her with his own knife. "Just stand there..."

"Excuse me." She smiled. "I don't have..." (people have argued over whether you can use 'smiled' as a dialogue tag or not, but I'd err on the side of caution here and use it as action)

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I love your opening, but ' a human sized....blue blood' is a very long sentence and because of that, its a bit confusing to grasp the entire thing. I was caught between ' oh its a human- sized hammer (a massive hammer) in its head? or its a human sized hammer dent' lol. Maybe replace the 'would be' with 'should be' to make it clearer too. 'Hit the hard.. blue blood' could be a different sentence altogether to give more of a kick.

I've never seen anyone describe someone by 'hair to toe' its always 'head to toe' so it surprised me, but since there is no clothing on the hair (unless there is a hijab or turban) you could use 'head to toe'.

Apart from this , I like how you've brought out the personality of the girl and the raid leader with just a few words. I think you naturally have the talent for writing dialogue, which is very useful, because most people tend to show and not tell. I like your writing style though, and how you show the little bit of their personality between dialogue. It gives a lot in a little and that's good writing. ;D

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2.

I like the overall scene, the one word "last" cluing me in to the fact that the Hydra actually has several heads, and that its scales are valuable.
I didn't like some of the sentence structure/choice of words, some of which deliver ambiguous images in my mind: the human-sized hammer - I can't tell whether you mean it's the size of what a human would normally wield or if the hammer is as big as a human. The first paragraph is packing too much info into just one sentence, and the phrasing of a dent where the brain would be is awkward and needs at least to be followed by a comma. I would suggest breaking that sentence into two sentences and rephrasing. I also got muddled with the baggy clothing and read the sentence that followed as the woman having dropped her clothing (bags) altogether.

Suggestions of improvements: dropped the bags [from] her shoulder. The woman speech tags are action beats and should be separated from the dialogue as complete sentences (e.g Excuse me[.] S]he smiled.) Ditto for the raid leaders first utterance: separate with period, not comma.

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What a great way to start the book. You jump straight into the action and I could picture everything you wrote. You really pulled me in and I wanted to keep reading so badly. Who is this woman and why doesn't she have a knife which then begs the question why doesn't she count.

Somethings Id suggest which is tiny which would be change hair to head. It's the only think I noticed that really pulled me out its not something major so you don't need to change it. I would however make sure that your paragraph are more separated I know wattpad messes it up but separating them with an empty line makes the text not seem as long.

Great start to the story and it really is making me what to look this up and read the rest.

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So a bunch of a-holes that just managed to kill a monster are pushing a young woman around because they think she's beneath them? Yeah, I immediately get pissed at them - perhaps this is the desired reaction, because that woman will be the main character (she is tge only character in the scene that actually gets somewhat of a description). But I feel like I have seen this trope quite often already.

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I'm really intrigued by what is going on here, and what might happen next. I will say that it does start off very suddenly, like I was thrown into the middle of a scene with no context. While I'm all for starting off with an action sequence and that's a great way to start a story and hook readers, the beginning does still need to feel like a beginning.

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I like how we begin with action in this scene. It gives us so much information from just those few paragraphs to grasp the characters, what is happening, and the relationships. To improve, you could use language and vocabulary describing what is happening, the tone of voice, etc. At the moment, the language is simple and bland, whereas published works often use language devices. You could develop what you have written by adding personification, metaphors, similes, etc. to a great beginning scene. This would improve the overall composition of the writing.

I'm really intrigued by what is going on here, and what might happen next. I will say that it does start off very suddenly, like I was thrown into the middle of a scene with no context. While I'm all for starting off with an action sequence and that's a great way to start a story and hook readers, the beginning does still need to feel like a beginning.

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This is pretty good. Not a lot here to critique effectively, though the first paragraph is a bit too dense. At a minimum, it needs a comma after "...brain would be."

I always appreciate dialog, telling the story through the characters who are living it, and the portion you've selected does the job well.