Quit Bugging Me by sandydragon1

CHAPTER 1 & 2 (Chapter Title)
Fantasy / Kids (Genre)
Humans and nature life in a balance (Themes)
Third Person Limited (consistent)
Suspense level (🌝🌝🌝🌝🌗)
Chapter 3 critique available upon request inline.

---------------- 8.02.2020 -----------

Hi,

Thank you for letting me read your chapter. That world is MASSIVE. I'm very impressed with how original the idea is. And it's not a new idea, it's been done before. But I could not say with certainty it's been done quite like yours.  It's a very interesting concept and I'll be the first to say that you execute it well.

I can see that it's aimed at young readers and as that is not my usual genre, I don't know if I can be of much help to you. The themes featured in your story is interesting and real. But while the character finds herself in a bind, I find myself wondering more about the magic or lore behind these specific abilities of theirs. If this is just the way they are, then that's fine.

There are a lot of things to praise in this story but let's get to what we need in a first chapter:

- clear genre (kids? fantasy?)
- clear time period (that isn't immediately clear but perhaps modern)
- clear MC (Taylor)
- few character introductions (check)
- suspense / tension (yes)
- a life-changing decision / event (in chapter 1, no. In chapter 2, yes)

There are a lot of things to praise in these two chapters that I've read. Your character voice is great. Your situation and humor is also fantastic. Although your grammar wasn't perfect, I doubt anyone would complain about it even once because it was pretty good for the most part.  And with so many things I liked about it, I only have one critique: it played it safe.

I went on to chapter 2 because this big, massive world was so intriguing. But chapter 2 didn't expand on it, rather than showing other magical or fantastical aspects of this world, it stayed right there with that one theme (which is fine) and delivered a familiar story after that. This is not necessarily a terrible thing, because it's easy for a reader to become overwhelmed if we tack on too much, but think of your favorite magical fantasy. Isn't part of the fun finding out 'Wow, what's that do? Cool! And that? What's that do? Wow. And this? What's this one do?" etc.

For a second, I thought maybe they were a group of fairies and that this would be a whole new world unfolding, but after reading chapter 2, it didn't feel like that was the case. There might be  a lot more fantastical things in store in the following chapters, don't get me wrong, but chapter 2 did not tease a that. IMO, without offering up more of this world, then a small secondary plot would punch it up (a small mystery or something of that effect). But this story has a lot of views (10k) which I can see are well earned. It was a crisp, fun, easy read. The chapter lengths were great, and the pacing was awesome. Not finding out what her companion was at the end of chapter 1 had stung but chapter 2 made up for it.

I tip my hat to your talent. As the technical errors were few and without reading more, it's difficult to pinpoint any plot problems, please take my critique lightly. If you like your story as is, then that's the most important thing! I for one wouldn't mind checking out some more of your work and I'll be dropping in now and then to do just that.

If you found this critique useful at all, please consider giving it a shout out. Also, please check out the FIRST DATES chapter in this book. Help the first dates out there. For help formatting and editing, check out the TUTORIAL pages and FREE RESOURCES for more information.

Fairy Tale Retold (LynaForge)