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2/10: Counting a Thousand Sheep

Counting a Thousand Sheep by yamm70

Barret Simpson is cursed.

All his life he's been plagued by delusional nightmares and creatures that no one else can see and when he's labeled a potential psychopath, it's either a rehabilitation center miles away from home, or the mental ward.

Mark Doppler has owned the psychiatric rehabilitation ministry for over 30 years. But that certainly doesn't mean his life is flawless. He and his wife have settled into complacency since the death of their son. A complacency that's destroying everything.

In a matter of days Mark and Barret's lives collide, both in hope of finding a lasting remedy. And Barret must find solace, before he really does spin out of control.

COVER: I actually really like your cover. It's ominous and subtle and cute as heck, but I'd suggest maybe changing the font of your name at the bottom of the cover? It looks great except for that bit, that bit (in my opinion) looks a little tacky and brings your cover down from a solid 7 to a 4.

GRAMMAR: First impression: there are a few errors in the description. There's a comma splice in the very last sentence, I think the first sentence needs a comma before the "and," or to be split into two sentences, and the last sentence of the third paragraph is a fragment. If you want to add something to a sentence, may I suggest the long dash? (i.e. When I finally got home, I found something sitting on my bed—something that I definitely was not expecting. My ex-boyfriend and his dog—a gorgeous cocker spaniel with one green eye and one brown—were comfortably sleeping together, a bouquet of roses held in my ex's arms.) It's called an em dash, and if you're typing on the Wattpad writer, you can use two dashes ( -- ) instead. Word and Google Docs usually change the two dashes into an em dash automatically, though, in case you're using those. It's a handy little punctuation trick that allows for versatility in sentence structure and so many less commas. Just watch out for those sentence fragments.

In the first chapter it looks like you tried to use the em dash? Just remember it's two dashes, not just one, and either have a space before and after or no space before and after. There are a few missing commas here and there. Using while and before in the same sentence to extend it can make it hard to read--an error I make all the time--so just keep that in mind. It's on the border of becoming a run-on. Still in the first paragraph, I see fragments and punctuation issues, but no grammatical errors yet.

When you're writing dialogue, use commas instead of periods at the end of the dialogue if you're going to describe how something was said. (i.e. "I'm not afraid." I tell her when she returns. remove the period; replace with comma: "I'm not afraid," I tell her when she returns.) This only applies to periods, not question marks or exclamation marks.

I would point out the rest but it's a little exhausting. Periods and capitals are key, you know.

The only grammatical issues I can see are fragments and repetitive sentence structure. Repetition like that makes it a bit of a bore to read through. You go from really overly complex sentences to simple ones with no adjectives or descriptiveness.

Chapter four: You're is not the same as your. You're is you are, and your is possessive, meaning something that belongs to you.

CONTENT: It's hard to focus on the content when the punctuation disrupts the flow of nearly every sentence, but I'll try. So the first chapter starts off well, you're describing the issues of the protagonist, and then you introduce another character and give hints towards their relationship. It's kind of funny. I like the subtle humor you introduced in their conversation. Not bad.

The second chapter is not bad either. I like the inner monologue Mark has, although you could have combined the paragraphs a little more so they look more like paragraphs than individual lines. Gosh, Mark is such a pushover. I read through the third chapter in one go, and although the dialogue was a little unrealistic and Holly seems to be way too consumed in her own anger for it to make sense for them to still be together, it's not bad. It's not bad, it's just a little off. The writing style doesn't seem to fit the story, I don't think. You give both protagonists, Mark and Barret, the same thought processes. I guess I just expected a distinction in the writing style, especially since the way you're writing isn't narrating, it's fully from the present tense perspective of the protagonist, so the thoughts and the way the protagonist would phrase his thoughts can in no way be the exact same as a grown man's. It just doesn't make sense to me, but again, this is objective so maybe I'm wrong.

NOTES: I hope I'm not being harsh; I'm simply stating my opinion. Thank you for requesting, sorry it took so long to get to it, and I hope that you found this review at least a little bit helpful.

OVERALL: I'd suggest getting an editor or asking a peer to review your work if you want to fix the mistakes. Capitalization and punctuation can ruin a book a for me, and in this case, I think it has. It was a struggle to read through.

I stopped at the fourth chapter because a) the punctuation killed me, b) there was nothing interesting about how the chapters looked--it was the same structure over and over and the repetitiveness of it made the whole thing tiresome to read--and c) it's just not my thing. I like the idea, I think it has the potential to be amazing, but as it is now, I couldn't make myself read this.

Amazing vision. Not so amazing execution.

RATING: 2/10