Intro:

Lit Pills was written by s00gifted. This story is a sequel to the book named No Pills, and it follows characters Silver, Mia, and Charlie throughout a chaotic period of their lives as they attempt to escape the life they thought they left behind, leaving emotional turmoil and conflict in their wake.

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Detailed Feedback

What Worked:

I like to start with the small things, and then work my way up, so let's start small and build!

To begin, I think it's only fair to start with that opening line. Wow, what an opening—that was certainly not what I was expecting. Confessing to the crime right away, especially in such a cheerful way? Not at all what I was thinking was gonna happen. And to top it all off, you do it in a way that also gives us new information about the character: she loves ice cream. One of my personal favorite ways to open stories is to start with something that immediately tells you something clear about the main character, and this opening does just that. It may not seem like a big deal, but character introductions are extremely important. The audience's first impression of your character can set up how they're going to feel later on, and I appreciated that you gave Mia such a memorable opening that not only immediately jumped into something interesting (the murder), but also established something she loves, giving the audience a massive hint at her personality already. The entire opening chapter is a good look into who Mia and Charlie are.

This is another small thing, but small things are really, really important, in my opinion. I love the chapter names. It's rare I see many books where I absolutely love the chapter names, but here, you give such a strong attention to detail to them, and I love that! I particularly like the chapter names Silver Leaves and Muscled Ice Cream. Silver Leaves packs a double-meaning since it can be interpreted as Silver as a character leaving, or the interesting imagery of literal silver leaves. It's a pretty interpretation that gives the title lots of flavor. The Muscled Ice Cream chapter title is just so fun and stands out in the chapter list. I wasn't even at that chapter yet when I was looking through the chapter list, and I smiled when I saw it since it felt refreshing and fun. There are plenty of titles that stand out to me in this, like "My Apologies To The Donkey," "Don't fear death" (I love how the "fear death" isn't capitalized), "The Word and A Million Ship Names," and more. All of them are really cool, and I enjoyed that you put such an emphasis on the chapter titles to make them stand out. It is a small thing, but it makes readers want to keep reading since they become curious to know what could possibly be in a chapter titled "Muscled Ice Cream." I mean, come on. Does that not make you curious? It made me curious, that's for sure.

But let's move away from the small things and focus on the core story elements now. One of the things that stood out most to me was the theming. I didn't read the first book, which I think is important to make clear, but I don't need to read the first book to understand themes and emotions. I love how you made the emotional weight and tone of the story clear right off the bat, and maintained that tone throughout the rest of the narrative. It feels so engaging from the very start, with small details like "I take a step forward. She takes two." I love those lines that give so much more weight to the words while also not being too in our faces, giving us space to figure out the meanings of these lines on our own. It's clear you have a solid story idea here, and you execute it very well. It made me think every step of the way, and I always enjoy a thought-provoking narrative. I also liked how "language" was brought up many times throughout the story. It was like a running joke, but it also grounded the reader. This line about language happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the book (end of what's published so far), and I appreciated the consistency. I like it when there's a line or two repeated throughout books. It helps readers process information, giving them a break to chuckle and remember what was said in the past. It's a great consistency that added to the emotional weight of the narrative.

Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the characters. I'd say Mia is my personal favorite character, though I like Charlie too, with his "I'm fine" attitude and how he puts others above himself. Like in the Impostor's Exorcism chapter (yet another awesome title), he leaves a note for Mia saying he's fine and she should take care of herself. I love how consistent his character traits are, and also the way he interacts with Mia. Mia is my personal favorite since I love her personality, and I loved it from as early as chapter 1 with her ice cream line being the opening line. Speaking of, I like how you open many of your chapters. That same chapter I mentioned before has an interesting opening, to say the least. But that's just a small aside. Moving back into the characters, I like how they all stay consistent, and I like how they interact with one another. Pamela's impact on the narrative was shocking, to say the least, like what was revealed in the chapter "All Those Years And More, Old Man" (yet another cool chapter name). I like how you revealed what she did, and also how all the characters react to the information. I overall like the characters and think they were my favorite part of the narrative, though Mia was the highlight for me as my favorite character.

All in all, Lit Pills does a great job immersing the reader in its narrative. Despite being a sequel for a book I never read, I found myself following along pretty well, and everything was explained in a way that made sense to me. I overall think this is an intriguing story with heavy emotional weight that will catch the attention of readers, so good job!

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What Didn't Work:

There are some minor dialogue errors, like when you're continuing dialogue using a comma. When using a comma to conjoin two pieces of dialogue, the first letter of the second part is lowercase. This is because it is part of the same dialogue and not a new piece. It's a continuation, so it gets treated as such. Unless it is a proper noun, it should be lowercase. For example, from chapter 2:

"Oh, that," she sighs, "It's the usual."

What I'm suggesting: "Oh, that," she sighs, "it's the usual."

Since the "It's the usual" part is connected using a comma, it should be lowercase as it is considered part of the same dialogue, not new dialogue. If it were new dialogue, like you used a period/full stop, then it would be capitalized. So like this: "Oh, that," she sighs. "It's the usual." The comma is what makes it lowercase. And also, just to be clear, if you're starting dialogue using a comma, that's fine. This is just for when you're continuing it using a comma. So doing something like this: I turn around and say, "Hi." is fine, it's just when you have a second piece of dialogue you're connecting that it needs to be lowercase because it is not new dialogue at that point. This gets better later in the story, so it's not a big deal, but still something worth mentioning.

In general, there are some editing errors where some typos and grammar errors slip through, making some sentences a little confusing. Two examples from chapter 2 being "I do same" instead of "I do the same," and spelling he'll as he"ll. These two examples aren't big deals or anything to panic over, but I would suggest doing closer proofreading for chapters to help eliminate these editing errors. Your grammar and spelling is overall good, so I don't think you need any grammar checkers or anything like that, though if you'd like suggestions for helping with these types of errors, I would suggest using TTS, or text-to-speech generators. You can Google them and a million will pop up. You can pull up a TTS generator and copy paste the text in there, and then it'll read your text back to you. Hearing it is a lot more effective than reading it in your mind, so you can also read the text out loud if TTS doesn't appeal to you. I personally use TTS and it's helped me to catch SPAG errors, so that's why I recommend it if you've never tried it before!

The last thing I'll cover here is a mix of a grammar suggestion and a creative suggestion. It has to do with dialogue tags and being careful not to use actions as tags. What I mean by that is like the example I gave in the first section: you used "sighs" as a dialogue tag. Sighs is an action, not a proper tag. The reason is because they're called dialogue tags, not people tags, so by saying something like "she sighs," you're almost implying the words are sighing, not the person. Words can be said, asked, whispered, etc., but sighing is an action that relates to people, not words. There are other tags that were a bit strange, in my opinion. For example, in the most recent chapter, there's the tag Monet perks. I found that to be a little odd as I've never seen that used as a tag before, and it sounded a little awkward for the same reason I listed above: perking up is an action, so it can't really describe words.

I'll make a few suggestions, starting with the 50-30 advice for dialogue. You only have to focus on the second part, but I'll mention the full thing anyway. So the 50-30 advice refers to how often you tag dialogue and what the tags are. This advice says that of your dialogue, 50% or less should have tags, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. Like I said, you only have to pay attention to the 30% part since you don't overuse tags, I just wrote the whole thing out for your reference.

So this is done because if I were to ask you what the important part of dialogue is, what would you answer with? The dialogue. That's why said or asked are the preferred tags: they don't call attention to themselves and focus on what matters most, being the dialogue. When you overuse too many of the different tags, not only is that even more telling over showing (dialogue tags are inherently telling over showing), you're also calling attention to the tags more than the dialogue. I paused when I saw "perks" used as a tag as it felt odd to me, so instead of focusing on the dialogue, I was focusing on the tag. See why that can be detrimental? That's why many authors recommend downsizing on those types of tags. You can do this by not using as many tags (though you already don't use a lot, like I said, which is good), using more actions to introduce who's speaking (which is, again, something you do well and do a lot of), and/or relying on the back-and-forth speech pattern readers are used to (another thing you do). So when it comes to that, you have it down. All of that is to say consider removing some of those different tags and/or switching them to less attention-grabbing tags. While I'd recommend said/asked, other tags, like whispered and yelled, tend to have less attention-grabbing tendencies as well.

That's not to say never use tags that aren't said/asked. I myself use tags like whispered and shouted from time to time. The point is more to consider downsizing on those different tags, if that makes sense.

As for using actions as tags, there are two easy solutions for that. Instead of saying "she sighs" as the tag, consider these two alternatives depending on your preference and the context of the scene:

She sighs. "Dialogue."

"Dialogue," she says with a sigh.

Those are two ways to still include the action while also making it more natural and not implying the words are sighing. That was a little lengthy, I apologize for that, but I hope those suggestions all make sense!

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Summary:

- Cool, eye-catching opening

- Awesome chapter titles

- Strong themes

- Entertaining, well-written characters

- Capitalization in dialogue

- Some editing errors

- Consider tweaking the dialogue tags

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Overall:

Lit Pills is a thought-provoking, theme and character-driven narrative that will make you think. It starts with a hooking opening line that will leave you shocked and intrigued to read more, and you won't regret it. Packed with memorable characters, Lit Pills does an excellent job bringing emotion to all its scenes. If you're someone who likes powerful themes and interesting characters, then this is the perfect book for you.

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Thank you for submitting your book. If you have any questions or would like any additional reviews when the shop reopens, please let me know.

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I'm going to start leaving this new note at the end of all reviews since Wattpad removed pms.

If you would like to keep in contact with me and ask me for more feedback on your work, I have a Discord server for all readers, writers, and friends. I'll leave a link in the inline comment here for anyone who would like to join.