crystal clear by Charm1705

Reviewer: samantha-writes

Cover: 2/5
— The cover looks pretty well-made. I like how the fonts and images work together.
— The title font is the only one that doesn't seem to fit, but it's not too bad. That's a Picsart font. I would know because I used to make covers, and they were really bad. This one is good though. (Imagine having skill RIP.)
— The story is a teen fiction/romance story, so the cover is a bit misleading. Sure, the blurb suggests that there are some dark mysteries afoot, but from what I've read—I've read all 7 chapters that you have—nothing of the sort has shown up besides the mention about the crystal.
— Doesn't Eva have dark brown hair? The girl on the cover looks like she's a blonde, so I would change that just so readers aren't confused by who's on the cover.

Title: 4/5
— Is there a reason the title is all in lowercase letters? On the cover, the first letters are capitalized, so I can only assume this was a mistake. Please fix that.
— The "crystal" part applies to the main conflict hinted at in the blurb about the mysterious crystals, so it definitely fits that aspect of the story.
— The title in general sounds like it would be a romance story, which really fits well.
— It's not the most creative title I've ever heard, but it's pretty good. There might be some other stories with the same or a similar title, but it's not too basic, so I like it.

Blurb: 2/5
— The blurb introduces Eva and the unnamed Blaze brothers. You should definitely name both of them, especially because you later name Simon without mentioning his last name, so he seems like a random character just thrown in there for no reason. Otherwise, that's probably all the characters you need to mention.
— The main conflict is mentioned briefly, but it's still unclear. They find a crystal, and it reveals some of the past, including Simon's presumably dark past. And there's a mass murderer? You mention what's going on, but it seems like a lot all at once, to be honest.
— To fix this, the blurb needs to be longer. I suggest 100-200 words in length. The blurb you have now isn't too bad, but it does feel like a lot of information and speculation all at one time.

World: 7/10
— Readers know that some of the characters are in high school and some are in college, and even though I doubt they would he such close friends with an age gap like that, you do make that pretty clear, so that's good.
— I wish I knew the name of the city they live in. That information would be good to know, even if you make up a name. I'd like to know how big the city is too. Maybe it's more like a small town. We have context clues—Simon and Eva go on a train, so perhaps they live in a relatively urban area—but not very many.

Plot: 3/20
— What really is the main conflict? It's mentioned in the blurb, so I assume it's that the group if teens finds a mysterious crystal that's going to reveal someone's past, I assume the Blaze brothers or at least Simon. That's an interesting main conflict, but I've every chapter you've uploaded so far and I've only seen one mention of the crystal in the very last chapter, and even then it isn't too important during that chapter. It's so difficult to judge a story when there isn't a clear main conflict. I can base it off of the blurb, which is lacking as well. Please add the main conflict in sooner than chapter 7.
— The exposition is much too long. This is only because the main conflict has taken so long to be introduced, but I need to make my point here. You introduced enough after like 3 chapters, so the rising action could've even started then. It just feels like most chapters are filler right now.

Characters: 8/10
— Wow, your characters are described well. You give readers plenty of details about each one's appearance. I felt like I could describe each character myself!
— That being said, I had a difficult time keeping track of characters. There were so many introduced right off the bat that I couldn't remember them all. Sure, some were first introduced a few chapters in, but that's still early on. If any of them aren't important to the storyline, I suggest just removing them. I know, that's really difficult to do, but you might need to. Or at least stagger out their introductions if they're not important for a while.
— The characters' personalities are indirectly given, but they could be a bit more distinguishable. Some of theirs are clearer than others, so it's not too bad. Maybe add some more key actions that hint to their traits.

Chapters & Content: 6/10
— I'm not sure how long each chapter is, but they felt like they dragged on. They didn't really contribute to the storyline much because, like I said, the main conflict hasn't been introduced yet, so every chapter felt pointless. Some scenes were a bit romantic or emotional, but none of them felt too important.
— The chapters felt unorganized as a result of the previous statement. They felt like they were going off the rails a bit or that you were just winging it as you wrote, but you need to have some idea how the chapters will be organized before you start writing them.

Grammar/Spelling: 2/20
— This is my strongest category when it comes to critiques, so I can say confidently that there is a lot of work to be done here. To be perfectly honest, I struggled sometimes to find sentences with correct grammar, a consistent tense, or without any typos. So I'm going to go over the main mistakes you make when it comes to grammar. Keep in mind that I won't hit all the issues, but I'll do my best because you're mistakes are fairly consistent, which means it's easier to fix.
— Don't. Use. Commas. To. Separate. Complete. Sentences. Without. A. Coordinating. Conjunction. If you do, it's called a comma splice, and it's not a good mistake to make in writing. Authors can occasionally get away with writing these ON OCCASION, but your story uses comma splices in almost every single paragraph. Example: "I walked through the passage of the haunted house, it was a fundraiser event set up in my school." To fix this, add a connective conjunction (for/and/nor/but/or/yet/so) after the comma or replace the comma with a either a period or a semicolon. Depending on the sentences, some of these options will work better than others, but that will take time and research from your part to determine because I'm not going to try to explain that in a 2000-word-long review.
— Along with comma splices, you have numerous run-on sentences, which are complete sentences that are mashed together without any punctuation between them. There aren't many examples of this, but I saw it occasionally.
— What's the deal with the dashes and hyphens? You didn't use them at first, but suddenly you started using them more and more, and they are consistently being used improperly. Hyphens (-) are used for hyphenated words like "good-looking," "mother-in-law," "twenty-two," and "co-operation." En-dashes (–) are used to indicate a range of numbers, a period of time, a score, or distance. Em-dashes (—) are used to add in additional information, indicate a change in thought, or show a pause in a sentence. Most of the time, you use hyphens when you should be using em-dashes. You also use two hyphens next to each (--) other instead of an em-dash (—), which is fine to me because wattpad sometimes replaces em-dashes with singular hyphens. Just make sure to use them correctly now, and don't put spaces around them. I forgot to mention that lol.
— Make sure to use a comma before a connective conjunction (for/and/nor/but/or/yet/so) when the sentences around the conjunction are both complete. Adding this comma will make the sentence a compound sentence. This is the same sentence I suggested to resolve the comma splice issue.
— If dialogue would normally end with a period, don't just take out the punctuation altogether. Replace the original period with a comma. For question and exclamation marks, however, leave them as is.
— Speaker tags (sentences that indicate the speaker before, in between, or after dialogue, for example, "she said") should not be capitalized unless they're at the beginning of the sentence. "'hello' A deep voice said," should become, "'Hello,' a deep voice said." (Note: I used apostrophes because I was quoting dialogue. Please don't replace quotation marks with apostrophes like I just did.)
— Please. Consistently. Capitalize. The. Beginning. Of. Each. Sentence. And. Proper. Nouns. Such. As. Names. It's very aggravating to read over names and the first words of sentences that are lowercased because it's a careless error that could be fixed if you just went through and proofread the chapter. Please fix this.

Writing Style: 6/10
— The constant narrating being directed to the audience was a bit much. It wasn't too bad, but it was irregular and at times would be a lot.
— There needs to be more variety in your vocabulary usage. I'm not a good example of this in my reviews, but that's because I'm just trying to critique a story. In your writing, you need to have some variety in your vocabulary. For your story, you need less variety than for others because it's a teen fiction story, meaning the target audience is teens and the vocabulary doesn't need to be too scholarly or extraordinary. Regardless, you need more variety than you currently have. Definitely look into replacing words like "asked" and "said" because they're the biggest problems right now.
— Try to have more variety with your speaker tag placement. Don't just place it at the end of dialogue. Have some before the dialogue and some in between it.
— I love your detailed descriptions. You really give into the scenes and explore each little detail for readers. It's pretty amazing.
— You've probably heard experienced writers advise new writers to "show, don't tell" in your writing. I'm going to advise something similar to you. Show the readers the emotions in each scene. Especially at the beginning in the haunted house, I wanted to know if Eva was panicking or calm and collected. If she's freaking out, describe how her heart is beating quickly and her palms are sweating. You do this already a bit, but you could do it more. I want to feel the emotions that the characters are feeling. Give it to the readers!

Enjoyment: 1/5
— Some of the scenes were momentarily engaging, which could appeal to people with shorter attention spans, but there was no main conflict to really hook me in.
— Every chapter felt more like a chore to read than a delight. And sometimes I felt as if my brain was melting with the grammatical errors. That's just because I'm a grammar freak, but it's important to mention because that's likely the biggest issue.

Overall: 41/100
The story both feels like it hasn't started yet. The main conflict isn't there, the exposition feels like it's gone on for forever, and every chapter is like a filler chapter. The grammar needs tons of work, and it really seems like there wasn't much effort put in to make the chapters good in quality. There's a lot to be done, but with some adjustments with the plot and content and some grammar fixes that I mentioned, I'll be willing to revisit the story and give it another shot. Not to review it again but to simply enjoy it and maybe give some pointers here and there. Good luck writing and editing!

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