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AdairRoblesUrrutia
Apr '21
1

Hey! Can I get some feedback on my Novel's Description? :slight_smile:

Based on the description, please let me know in the comments how interested you are to read this story on a scale from 1-10? And let me know also what I can do to improve the description.

Novel's Title: THE QUARANTINE AND THE SHARDS OF BROKEN GLASS

Novel's Description:

Drama/YA Contemporary/Coming of Age. Two classmates with animosity go through their own stories of emotional, physical and psychological struggle and growth during middle school and high school, which parallel each other through the years.

Then four years after high school, the victims of both of their past actions come back to haunt them when they are forced to be quarantined together at their former middle school for two weeks.

Written In Third Person. Coming Of Age Story.

Similar Stories:

(Some of these stories may be less similar than others, but most have overlapping content and themes.)

It by Stephen King

Stand By Me

The Flowers Of Evil (Aku No Hana) Manga

13 Reasons Why

Catcher in the Rye

Perks Of Being A Wall Flower

#Drama #Comingofage #YAContemporary #Adultthemes #highschool #Teenangst #Puberty #flashbacks #Realistic #Violence #Explicitlanguage

  • created

    Apr '21

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    Apr '21
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Wocalich
Apr '21

1.

First of all, the title isn't interesting, though I know you didn't ask for feedback on it.
Second, this part:

This is not even a sentence. Your first sentence is really important in a description, you need to hook the readers in, not give them a list.

Then you give us a summary, which again, falls flat.

I would like to help you write a better description, but I'd need to know more about your story. Is it okay if I DM you?

MShadowlawn
Apr '21

Firstly, your title looks awkward to me. Maybe it's just the phrasing that's off, but it just sounds almost like a bad google translate result.

"Drama/YA Contemporary/Coming of Age" This makes the whole thing sound more like a bad marketing pitch to a publisher than something I'd actually expect to see on Tapas and want to read. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, "contemporary" is bad enough(as I personally don't look much for contemporary much, and because I believe it'd be harder to write contemporary well, which is a bad mix with a website like Tapas where anyone and their dog can post content), but seeing YA and Contemporary in the same sentence leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

"Two classmates with animosity go through their own stories of emotional, physical and psychological struggle and growth during middle school and high school, which parallel each other through the years."

This suffers the same overarching problem that I think most descriptions that I see here suffer, being that it's too vague to mean anything to me. If I could just give you the shortest-path solution, look at the Amazon description for The Blade Itself; it mentions several different characters who have shitty lives, but actually mentions meaningful details about each of their individual characters that's actually likely to rope the reader into the ring, so to speak. Giving similar, meaningful details to each of the characters in the description would help massively. That last bit ("which parallel each other through the years.") should also be axed, as it should speak for itself and it shouldn't matter to anyone who's merely slightly interested in reading your book.

"Then four years after high school, the victims of both of their past actions come back to haunt them when they are forced to be quarantined together at their former middle school for two weeks." Now, in tandem with the last sentence, this actually isn't all that bad, as it at least starts to get the reader asking fun questions about what the hell those kids were doing earlier in their lives, with the hidden inference that the main characters are serial killers or something. Though, I have to admit that aside from that the sentence doesn't give enough context to not be confusing. Why would they be quarantined in an abandoned school? Like, instead of their houses or a tent made by the CDC?

"Written In Third Person. " Ditch this. Most people don't care about whether the story is written in third or first, so long as it's done well, and having it there tells me you may have the wrong priorities as a writer.
"Coming Of Age Story." I question how the hell this is supposed to be a coming of age story when you've just inferred that our main characters are serial killers who are also dealing with... puberty. Wait, what? On a more serious note, you could fold a note about this into the normal description.

Now for the similar stories list. If I saw that on a physical book at the bookstore, I'd be morbidly curious, to say the least, though I'd also be somewhat off-put. On a site like Tapas, however, I interpret this as a pretty massive red flag. Firstly, it's a pretty broad set of influences, to say the least. Second of all, It's one thing to be loosely inspired by one or two books you like, but another entirely to claim your book is vaguely similar to five other books that people actually know about, that just sounds like you don't know what your book's actually like. Overall, I'd recommend axing it entirely.

Overall evaluation, 3.5/10.