This is the link to my novel
Novel name : Mafia Brother?
https://dynamic.webnovel.com/book/18928037905605105?utm_source=writerShare&utm_campaign=4315398500

I’m an amateur writer and I don’t know if my book is actually good or what is it lacking. I’m sure there is a lot of things I lack but I didn’t know how to improve it. I hope someone can help me to review my novel and give me feedback and suggestions to improve.

    I read the first chapter. Here are some things I noticed that are just on the technical, not creative, side of writing. Also, these are all my suggestions and not firm rules necessarily:

    1. Do not use all caps and excessive exclamation points to signify volume, yelling or heightened emotion, instead use your non-dialog prose to show this. For example:

    Just about then I heard mom yelled at me to go downstairs, "LILIANE!!! FOR GOD SAKE ...”

    This line is already OK, but if you wanted to emphasize it you could rewrite it something like:

    Just about then I heard my mom’s booming yell echo throughout the house even though she was downstairs, “Liliane! For god’s sake, ...”

    1. Do not use abbreviations like OMG unless your character is actually saying the letters outloud, as in a young girl might. I would go as far as write them phonetically in that case, for example “Ohh Emm Gee” or “O.M.G.” but from the context it seemed like your character would have actually said Oh My God, and you just used an abbreviation. Avoid that.

    2. In America the relationship you describe in the first paragraph would not be called a step-mother but adopted mother, or possibly foster mother if it wasn’t a permanent arrangement. A step-mother is strictly limited to a woman who marries your biological father.

    The rest I would say are a number of grammar and tense issues. You could solve most of these by running your work through a free Grammerly account or even Google docs spell and grammar check.

    Good luck and I hope you continue writing.

      listen_moon I read the first chapter, or tried to. It was difficult because it seemed to be one giant paragraph which hampers readability to a large degree.

      The main thing I noticed was one of the characters, a princess, was named Steve. That made me chuckle out loud. This is a boy’s name in America and Europe (etymology is Greek, StĂ©phanos and is likely popular due to it being the name of a famous martyred Saint in Christian theology.) Is he then a prince? No, because it seemed was described as a girl.

      You could also use work on regular technical aspects of writing, there are missing articles (“King was sitting...” you need an article there “The King was sitting...” unless King is a name), capitalization, grammar and punctuation.

      Another problematical aspect is that the chapter is too short. It is my reasoned belief that you should not publish a chapter if it is much below 2,000 words (that is about 8 pages the way Webnovel’s system counts them.)

      Your descriptive language and metaphor was nice though (colorful butterflies representing the three princesses.)

      I hope you continue to write.

          Of course, I will make sure to not repeat my mistakes. As, for the first thing the princess is named Steve is actually a twist in the story (no more spoilers) and the name of the king is also not revealed due to the plot.

          And ya, I also felt like am writing down paragraphs.

          Point noted of punctuation and grammatical errors.

          And I was also wondering about the length of chapters.

          A sincere thanks for giving your precious time for reviewing my first work.
          Do hope that you will enjoy it further.

            listen_moon Perhaps Steve could be referred to as ‘Steph’? That is a shortening of either Stephan or Stephanie so it is ambiguous which gender the name is from.

            Then again, there are situations in which girls get named male names too.. I’ve just not heard Steve, though, because Steve in itself is a shortening of a name. I knew a girl who grew up with a boy’s name because their parents really wanted a boy, for example, so I guess it isn’t too unusual. It’s just a little jarring. Heh. :)

              Write a Reply...
              Web Novel Novel Ask