Book: Digiangic high Game one:Moral coding
Author: 0valeyes
Reviewer: Sadie twoshortnails
Chapters read: 6 (tutorial level to Level one stage four)
Cover:
I’m not sure what to say about your ‘cover’, as it is one of the least cover-like covers I have ever seen. I respect your desire to hand draw your cover, but the presentation that I’m seeing is feeble, unprofessional and just bad in general. I would understand if you wanted to show your art skills, but the cover I’m seeing definitely isn’t the most flattering display of anyone’s art skills.
I rarely say this, but I think you should change the whole cover and start all over again. You can use a Canva template and edit the text for all I care, that would probably be better than the hand drawn version. Create a Canva account and start experimenting with the ‘eBook’ designs to find one that you like, then upload it as your cover — it’s really easy and will look much better than your current cover.
Your current cover has uneven colouring that looks terrible, and the text is all over the place, making it hard for the reader to see. Not to mention, the picture you’ve taken cuts off the edges and also shows black, which is obviously not part of the cover. No offence, but it looks like a six year old drew it.
Seriously, make a cover online: you will get neater and more pleasing results. If you cannot do this, or you don’t have access to such websites (which I doubt), you can try and apply for a graphic shop. But I would like to see you try to create your own cover. Online!
Overall, I highly suggest redoing the whole cover as the current cover is, frankly, dismal and unattractive, repulsing the reader.
Title:
Your title, as published, is ‘Digiangic high Game one:Moral coding’, but the title you put in the review form is different. I’ll go with the published title.
Firstly, you need to correctly punctuate the title. ‘high’ should have a capital letter, as should ‘one’, and ‘coding’. There should be a space between the colon and ‘Moral’. If you correct the title correctly, it should look something like this:
‘Digiangic High Game One: Moral Coding’
Your title is also long, which I don’t really like. The name, ‘Digiangic’ isn’t exactly memorable either, so I suggest taking away ‘Digiangic High’, so the title looks like this:
‘Game One: Moral Coding’
This is much more simple, and readers might refer to the book simply as ‘Moral Coding’, which sounds quite interesting.
Overall, the idea is there, but you need to correctly punctuate and simplify the title, so it is easier to remember and sounds more interesting.
Blurb/Description:
A recurring problem with your writing is the lack of regard to capitalisation. In the blurb, ‘Digital’, should not be capitalised, and ‘Teenage’ doesn’t need to be capitalised either. But because ‘Digiageic high’ is a proper noun, both words should be capitalised. As a reviewer, grammar issues frustrate me, because I am not here to edit your book, like an editor, I am here to review it.
Therefore, I am not going to note all the grammatical errors in your blurb, because there are a lot, and it’s more than likely that you won’t bother to change it anyway. Get an editor if you can’t be bothered to proofread or take English class!
I’m unclear as to what the characters are, from the blurb. I can identify Roy Rom, which is a confusing and unmemorable name… and Oliver WordPress, but I don’t understand if ‘Terrence silicon son’ is a character, reference or place. You absolutely need to clear, and correct grammar will help with clarity, and get readers to understand what is going on.
Overall, the content is okay, but you really need to tidy up on grammar to make the blurb readable and not confusing.
Characters:
In the first paragraph of the chapter ‘level one’, we get a massive load of information about Roy Rom that is poorly presented. Firstly, the paragraph needs to be divided into at least three parts because of how much information is in it. Secondly, I don’t like how you just dumped Roy’s information, like a fact.
When trying to develop characters, their behaviour, attitude, place in society (etc) should be gradually leaked through hints, speech or just spread out in the story. The way you have explained Roy makes the reader think that you either don’t have confidence in your ability to express his character in a harder way, or you are perhaps lazy and your writing will be low quality.
This also happens with other characters. You, as the writer, need to develop their character slower so the reader enjoys the characters more.
Finally, be careful to capitalise the characters’ names, as I spotted several times where they weren’t capitalised.
Plot/Storyline:
From the chapter’s I’ve read, I haven’t gained much knowledge about the plot. This is not ideal, considering I have read six chapters and I should be quite into the plot by now.
I can understand that there are little ‘dramatic’ moments in each chapter, so the characters progress in the game, but I do not understand the whole idea of the game itself — which is definitely not okay.
You need to explain clearly what the aim of the game is, and if you already have done so, it obviously wasn’t clear enough as I didn’t see it. Once you have explained the purpose of the game, then I’m sure readers will enjoy the drama in every chapter, such as the grenades and explosives. I quite like the idea of different ‘stages’ and ‘levels’, and I think a book about gaming is quite a unique concept that I haven’t seen much before.
Keep working and try and fill in gaps that the reader might not understand,
Grammar:
“Grammar is to a writer what anatomy is to a sculptor, or the scales to a musician. You may loathe it, it may bore you, but nothing will replace it, and once mastered, it will support you like a rock.”
Your story isn’t flawless, and that’s okay. What’s more important is helping you to mend these flaws until your story is as close to perfect as anything gets.
So, firstly, I would like you to go through your story and separate everything into paragraphs. A new speaker needs to have a new paragraph, that is a grammar rule! And I highly suggest splitting paragraphs that have a lot of information.
The second important thing is capitalisation. You seem to forget to capitalise names, proper nouns, and the beginning word of each sentence quite often, which is incorrect and makes your writing look messy. If you split your work into paragraphs, it will be easier for you to spot where you need to capitalise words.
And the final major issue in your writing is the mistakes with punctuation. I suggest that you revise punctuation rules as you seem to have forgotten them. There needs to be a space between a colon and the word after, and full stops…!
Generally, your grammar is quite far from perfect. I suggest proofreading, and if that doesn’t work, then getting an editor (as I’ve already mentioned, I am not here to edit your book, just to review it), or Grammarly if you’d prefer. No, I’m not sponsored by Grammarly but I sometimes feel I am because it genuinely works well enough, and will quickly upgrade your grammar!
Good luck with improving your grammar, and don’t forget, grammar is necessary.
Summary:
To sum up, I’ll make a few points of things you should aim to do!
Improve your grammar (Grammarly, editor, proofread)
Try and develop characters over time, rather than dumping information
Experiment with creating a cover online (Canva is a easy, go-to website)
Try out the edited title I created, or at the very least correctly punctuate your. title
But you did so many great things with your writing as well!
I like the concept of gaming
I like the idea of characters gaining points for what they do in each chapter
The blurb’s content is good
I like the title, Moral Coding. A unique and interesting idea
I hope you appreciate my feedback and use it to benefit your writing.