MYSTICAL MUTANT by Kikibtsstan

Reviewer: samantha-writes

Cover: 4/5
— I really love the picture of Fiona in the cover! Like seriously, it's such a nice visual and what I imagine Fiona to look like. I do wish she looked more like the description you gave in the story, but I understand that it was probably the most accurate picture you could find. Maybe you can do solve editing magic, though?
— The font is good, but it isn't the most extraordinary. I definitely like the colors, I just wish there was more spice to the font, if that makes sense.
— There could be more effects to the cover. Maybe a border or something, I don't know, just some little adjustments to make it that much more appealing.

Title: 3/5
— I think the title sounds nice, but it's a bit contradictory. The words work together because they both start with the letter M, but "mystical" has positive connotation, whereas "mutant" has negative connotation. It's just weird to put them together, so I suggest picking a different combination of words, words that have similar connotations with one another.
— "Mutant" doesn't really make sense in the context of what Fiona is anyway. She's a hybrid, not a mutant. I understand that you probably wanted a term similar to hybrid that started with an M like "mystical" because "mystical" fits perfectly, but "mutant" doesn't seem like the right one. "Hybrid" seems off too, so I think you need to find another pairing, like I mentioned before.
— I don't see a point in capitalizing it. I've seen other stories on Wattpad that are like this, and I can say that none of them have made sense. There are some that could make sense if it has something to do with the story, but it seems to me that it's only capitalized because it's that way on the cover. You don't need to put it in all caps because it's like that in the cover. Just make it "Mystical Mutant," or change it to whatever you've come up with if you choose to change it like I've suggested.

Blurb: 3/5
— You should cover the backstory of the Elevenas and Glorindians more briefly. Readers don't need to know what they thought of each other besides that they hated each other and went to war until each species was wiped out.
— You should mention, however, that Fiona was born from parents on both sides, a hybrid of the species. And maybe bring up that she changes to her true form at midnight. That's not too important, but I'd mention it.
— Louis seems like an important character, so I think you should mention him in the blurb too.
— There isn't really a main conflict mentioned. She has to "overcome all obstacles" in the human world, but that's too vague. Something specific needs to be the main conflict. Maybe some scientific organization finds out that she exists and is trying to capture her. Maybe Suzy does? I think that would be an interesting plot point, that Suzy finds out and gives her location to that strange organization. And she'd have to hide it from Louis and everyone else. It doesn't have to be that exact conflict, I just came up with that off the top of my head. (Honestly, that isn't the best idea because Suzy would probably out her to all of her friends including Louis, but something like it would be really intriguing.)
— The hooking questions at the end are really good, though!

Characters: 2/10
— There aren't many characters at the beginning, so I found it easy to keep track of who's who while reading. However, there are some random characters thrown in that don't seem important to mention the names of and it's unclear what their relations are to other characters. Mrs. Rita's introduction was good, but Mrs. Zhou's was not. Is the the owner of a hair salon? If so, make that clear. I can imply that Fiona works under her at her job at the salon, but again, that has to be clarified for readers. Even then, I don't think you need to mention her name anyway. You can probably just leave that character as "the salon owner" or "Fiona's boss at the hair salon." Something like that.
— The characters aren't described in enough detail. What does Fiona look like? And Louis? We know he's popular, but as readers, we really only want to know whether or not he's hot! (I'm only half-joking lol!) Readers aren't informed on this, unfortunately. We know what Fiona looks like in her mystical form, but when you say her skin got "paler" and her hair became "shorter," we don't know what that could possibly look like because we don't know what her skin color or hair length was before. These details are important to provide for readers to imagine the characters and really dive into the story. Be sure to add them as soon as possible for every important character. Fiona's can be nonchalant, like her observing herself in the mirror or even describing her appearance before and after changing at midnight. For other characters, you can just formally describe what they look like since it's from Fiona's eyes.
— I like that you mention their grades in school, but how old is Fiona? I imagine the war was maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago, maybe even millions, but that information is never disclosed in the story. Well, I only read the first 6 chapters, but I feel like it should be mentioned by then. Or did she just travel to the human world from her mystical world? How did she travel there, if that's the case? And why leave?Anyway, it's just unclear.
— The characters' personalities are pretty good, I think. Fiona clearly has some social anxiety, and maybe there's some traumatic reason why or that's just the way she is, but I like how you show that with her thoughts. Maybe add a little more detail, like her sweating and hearing her heart pound in her ears, to really depict it. Louis is clearly clingy and a little creepy (obviously), but I do wish his attachment to her was more gradual. Maybe it's because he's fascinated by her, since she supposedly looks weird, but it could be drawn out a little more, in my opinion. That's not a big problem, though, so don't worry about it.

World: 8/10
— I like how you describe the world in the prologue. It gives a lot of backstory to the mystical world's past, so it's really good. I wish you gave more insight to what life was like in that world because she was 7 years old when she was there, right? I think that's what you wrote. But anyway, she probably could remember some of her life there, so you should add that. I'll mention in the "Chapters" category a way that you can do this.
— I would love to know how Fiona got to the human world. Did she travel to another planet somehow? Maybe she went through some sort of portal? Or maybe hundreds of thousands of years passed and she now has to live among humans? This needs to be made clear because right now, readers are just hearing about her life in the human world but know nothing about how she got there. We want to know that.

Plot: 3/20
— I really couldn't find any clear main conflict. In the blurb, some conflicts were hinted at, but none of them were definite. Like I mentioned in the blurb, you say that Fiona needs to overcome obstacles in the human world, but WHAT obstacles? Or, rather, what specifically does she need to overcome? I said before that you could have her hiding from a scientific organization that wants to research her. Maybe the school is where she is hiding in plain sight, and she has to evade suspicion and attention to keep under their radar. And there could be people, not necessarily Suzy, that are under cover for the organization and trying to find out if Fiona is their target. Seriously, that would be a cool person vs. society conflict.
— The exposition that you have so far does a good job of introducing characters, but the pacing is very strange. I'll get more into that in the "Chapters" category, but it really seems like the exposition is dragging along. That's probably because there isn't a clear main conflict introduced as far as I've read, so again, that needs to be fixed ASAP.
— The concept of Fiona being a mystical creature with the rest of her species being extinct and her having to survive in the human world is super interesting, though. It has lots of potential!

Chapters: 3/10
—I mentioned how I like the amount of world-building the prologue provides, but I want to clarify that I don't exactly love the prologue. It's good, and I do genuinely appreciate the context it gives, but I'd prefer something more attention-grabbing. A scene in which Fiona is hiding away in a cave with her parents, they hear fighting outside, her parents leave, and days later Fiona emerges to find everyone dead. It would be morbid, but I think it would be much more intriguing. You don't have to change it because I don't think it's a problem, I'd just prefer something more interesting. (It doesn't necessarily have to be the scenario I used.)
— I don't really know if I'm going to explain this well, but the pace of the story seems both too fast and painfully slow. I know why it's slow—because there isn't a main conflict so you spend filler time in the exposition—and why it seems fast—because the dialogue is so short and there is hardly any narration, so it just feels like the story is rushing by. It's really weird, and I don't think I've read any stories that are slow-paced but feel fast-paced. It's impressive, I guess, but definitely not a good quality. It ties back into the missing main conflict. Fix the main conflict, and then the pacing will be much smoother. (I made that sound more simple than it is, but you should understand that it'll take a lot of editing and work.)
— You don't need to spend 3 whole chapters explaining Fiona's daily life. It can be tempting to just write about characters to give readers a taste of what they're like, but don't do it. It's not interesting. Readers will get sick of hearing all of Fiona's jobs and the tasks she does at each one because they are irrelevant and don't progress the story. Basically, I'm saying to summarize her daily life and move on from it after the exposition.

Grammar/Spelling: 12/20
— Your narrative grammar is really good, honestly. I couldn't find any significant errors in the prologue because it was all narrative writing.
— Your dialogue, however, is where the notable issues are. I'll just start with saying that you don't use appropriate punctuation at the end of dialogue. If the spoken sentence would normally end in a period with the speaker tag (phrase indicating the speaker, for example, "she said") at the end, you need to use a comma at the end and before the end quotation mark. So, for example, "'I'm kate smith' a girl introduced" should be changed to, "'I'm Kate Smith,' a girl introduced." (Remember that I'm just using apostrophes instead of quotation marks because I'm quoting dialogue. Don't use apostrophes for dialogue in your story.) As you can see, I added a comma where there would ordinarily be a period if there was no speaker tag. Moreover, and this was most likely a typo because you didn't make this mistake for the other names, you need to capitalize "kate smith." However, when the dialogue would end in a question mark or exclamation point, just leave it as a ? or ! instead of a comma or period and leave the speaker tag lowercase (unless you're starting the speaker tag with a name or "I.") You tend to use correct punctuation with question and exclamation marks, but I just want to clarify so that you don't make errors when trying to make the corrections that I gave you.
— Check out the second sentence in the second paragraph of chapter 1 (not the prologue, but the chapter after). That sentence is messy. There are lots of comma mistakes that you don't make at all throughout the rest of the story, so I just want to point out the mistakes in this sentence alone. The first comma in that sentence, between "it" and "well," is a comma splice—a comma separating two complete sentence without a connective conjunction—which is a grammatical error. Sometimes, authors can get away with using them if it sounds okay, but in this case, it's pretty obvious and doesn't really work well. I recommend that you replace the comma with a period, but you can also add a connective conjunction after the comma or replace the comma with a semicolon. Regardless, I think a period would fit best. This is probably more of a personal decision, but I think you need a comma before "especially." Maybe in some cases, you could go without a comma, but here I think it's best to use one. Finally, when listing off Fiona's responsibilities at the end of the sentence, use a comma before the "and" prior to the final responsibility being listed off. This actually is a common mistake you make, but trust me, you're not alone. Lots of people do this, so it makes sense that you are doing it too, but trust me, you need a comma there. So it should become, "I could pay my rent, feed myself, and go to school."
— (I'm writing too much in this review lol) Make sure you separate paragraphs when there's a new speaker in dialogue. I think sometimes tou just hit the ENTER button once, so make sure you hit it twice to properly separate dialogue paragraphs. However, there doesn't need to be a new paragraph if it's the same speaker starting different sentence. Just put them in the same paragraph and have the speaker tag before, in between, or after the sentences. Otherwise, it's choppy and readers can get confused by who's speaking. (I hope the way I said that made sense. Ask any questions you need, though!)
— Phrases like "he/she/I sighed" are NOT speaker tags. When you end dialogue with a comma, follow up with a speaker that that uses a verb that is actually some form of speaking. A sigh is not speech. Someone can say something "with a sigh," but it isn't speaking. Neither is "gasped," "smiled," "frowned," "walked," etc. Some of these are probably mistakes because you don't use the correct punctuation at the end of dialogue, so as long as you put periods at the end of dialogue before a sentence that ISN'T  a speaker tag, like "he/she/I sighed" and capitalize the first word of that sentence, it'll be grammatically correct. If you want it to be a speaker tag, though, use a comma and leave it uncapitalized (unless, again, you're using a name or "I.")

Writing Style: 2/10
— Okay, remember how I said that the amount of dialogue makes it seem really fast-paced when it's actually too slow? That's because of the crazy amount of dialogue. I'm pretty sure like 75% of each chapter is dialogue. And when it isn't dialogue, every paragraph is like 1 or 2 sentences long, which is extremely short. I understand that may just be your style, but the story feels choppy like that. Make it at least 3 sentences for most of the narrative paragraphs. And reduce the dialogue. (Sorry if I'm sounding demanding, I'm just trying to shorten this review lol.)
— You reuse a lot of words and phrases, so try to expand on your vocabulary. It's hard to have a variety of vocabulary when the characters talk so much because there are only so many variations of "said" and "asked," so again, reducing that dialogue will benefit you. Some of the words you overuse are "sighed," "arced brow," "half-yelled," "smiled," and "walked."
— You can put speaker tags in different places besides just at the end of dialogue. I think that when you fix the paragraph organization, this issue will be partially resolved, but just make sure you remember that speaker tags can come before, in between (when appropriate), and after dialogue, so add some variety for your readers.
— I can't explain why, but I feel like you have a definite audience in my in your writing. I can't pinpoint what audience it would be, maybe people who are in middle or high school who don't really like reading a lot, but it's very definite. I think it's because you use a lot of dialogue, which would probably appeal to people who don't really enjoy reading too much most of the time. That being said, you should still reduce the dialogue and use more narration, but I think the amount of dialogue is a nice style for you and could interest reluctant readers.

Enjoyment: 2/5
— This story could be really interesting, and the romantic tension between Louis and Fiona is really clear, but I just can't get into this story quite yet. There isn't a definite main conflict that interests me, and there are many other qualities that don't make me want to keep reading. It has potential with the concept, but I haven't enjoyed it all that much yet.

Overall: 41/100
There's a ways to go to improve this story. It's certainly not bad, but there's work to do, and you need to be committed to improving it if you want it to be great. The first step is to work on developing a main conflict and plan out how the plot will progress throughout the story. Then, you'll need to do some rewriting. This will take the most time, but I believe in you! Make sure to take my writing criticism into consideration while doing this. I think you have a lot of potential with the concept of this story: a mystical hybrid of two extinct species that had to survive in the human world and keep her true form a secret. However, there's work to do from there, so get to it, and good luck!

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