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Thu Jun 16, 2016 4:44 am
Rosendorn says...



6/10

I feel like you have too much crammed in here and there, and that last sentence is a little convoluted. You've not introduced the Otherworld, and the fact there was a second world instead of this being a straight up urban fantasy where magic was simply hidden through me for a loop. I would establish the Otherworld sooner, or at least the concept of two worlds, just so it's not out of left field at the end.

--

Kerani’s sole purpose has always been ensuring the survival of her bloodline, through murder and through marriage, until assassinations in the cracks of society threaten to burst into the heart of the empire. With a suitor beckoning for a docile wife, her father demanding a dutiful daughter, and a heart raging for justice of the forgotten, she has a choice— give up her blades and play political games within her own palace, or jump into the heat of battle no matter how far away from home that takes her.

Raised with the heart of a queen, knowing all too well how many will die along every path available, she has sworn to protect her people. But first, she must decide what cost she is willing to pay.
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Mon Apr 17, 2017 9:05 pm
zaminami says...



8/10

This seems a bit of a stereotypical story which makes me not want to read it.

----

Jeanine Dennis is an ordinary girl living in a small city. When she encounters the supernatural, however, she must decide how she will survive: if she can.

Many years later, Dennis is locked up inside of a mental hospital. But is there something inside of the hospital that is so dark that it can be only unlocked by a girl with a dark past?
tartaglia, they/he lesbian.
i also go by skylar and reginald!
First member of the bio trio™.
victim of the writer’s block disease
  





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Tue Apr 18, 2017 9:00 am
Tenyo says...



6/10

I feel like there's more to this story and the pitch doesn't really do it justice. It seems vague and creates a lot of mystery without the original hook. When I first pick the story up and read it, am I going to be reading about a young girl struggling for survival, or a woman in a mental hospital? If I'm going to invest in this novel then what kind of character am I investing in and how is she going to make the story interesting?

Birth rates are dwindling and the human race is in crisis, a tyrannical government forces the people into the impossible choices of obedience or extinction. A terrorist organisation fights against the oppression but their latest band of recruits have defected. One rebellious young fledgling seeks help from the shadows that haunt his dreams, unaware that he may in fact be the key to mankind's own destruction. From the depths comes a warning; all that sleeps must one day wake, and all that lives must one day die.
We were born to be amazing.
  





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Tue Apr 18, 2017 2:08 pm
PrincessInk says...



7.5/10 (Ratings are not my cup of tea)

The story's interesting, but I've seen stuff like "tyrannical government" or a rebellious "youth" and "dreams" so those parts don't really strike me as special. But... the part that he might cause the destruction really catches my eye. And the final warning is an eye-opener for me. Yup, as long as it isn't rated 16+ or 18+, I'm probably going to pick it up.

--

A young artist has been always secretly wondering if any form of art, even graffiti, is magical, but when a plague of graffiti throws her city into panic, she must ask herself if it's really true. Nobody's allowed to go into any building that's vandalized; for all who entered has never returned. What's more, the graffiti is marked with a mysterious symbol of a spiderweb. She and a group of her friends must work together to solve this mystery, if they want to stop the graffiti from spreading to other cities.
always daydreaming, always clumsy
  





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Tue Apr 18, 2017 8:40 pm
Vervain says...



It sounds interesting, but there's really nothing at stake for the main character in this pitch. Ask yourself one question: What does she stand to lose?

Why does she have to investigate this? From the sounds of it, she has no special stake in the graffiti or the buildings it's on. She hasn't lost any friends. She hasn't lost any family. She isn't stuck in there herself.

While you've given us a mystery, that's only half of writing something intriguing. You have to give the character something to lose, something to drive the plot, rather than just "there's weird graffiti and also magic and people are disappearing". Who is disappearing? Why must the MC investigate this? What will she lose if she doesn't solve this mystery?

Once you've answered that question, look at how it affects your plot, and see if you need to give the stakes a little more importance.

- - -

Magical creatures are being slaughtered left and right in the most progressive city in America. While helping clean up the latest massacre, Kat, a closeted witch, finds a pair of baby dragons with their eyes still closed, mewling for their mother -- a mother whose corpse is draped across the interlocked arms of the Coexistence Statue. She enlists her best friend Jay to help her find them a new home, looking for rescuers, buyers, anyone who will keep the babies safe from the growing violence.

Before anything can be finalized, she's betrayed -- thrown to the dogs to save Jay's daughter. With police hounds on her trail for the crime of trafficking magic, Kat's forced to comb the Pacific Northwest rain forest in search of sanctuary that may not exist, for the sake of dragons that may not survive.
stay off the faerie paths
  





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Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:42 pm
queenofscience says...



If this is your book @Lareine....WOW!! It sound s soo facinating. I'd read it. It's deffinitaly a cool concept.
I am the science and science fiction guru.

The mind is beautiful, yet brilliant. You can think, create, and imagine so many things.

Eugenics= scientific racism.
  





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Wed Apr 19, 2017 12:42 am
crossroads says...



@queenofscience: you didn't post your own pitch/blurb to get feedback on!

@Lareine, yours was the last one before that, so here goes:

I agree that the story sounds adorable and I'd like to read it, but I thought the blurb itself read a bit dry. You've got a lot of things happening there, but I miss a sense of voice from your MC. It does a good job telling me what the story is about, and I want to read it because baby dragons!, but I'd say you could do more by saying less and getting more of the MC across.

I'm really bad with ratings >.< 6.5/10? It's much less bad than it's good, but it could be made much better still.

I'm also bad at explaining my novels in anything shorter than the novels themselves (lol), and sort of came up with this on the spot, but I wanted to try and make it into something almost short enough for a Twitter pitch:
(enspoilered for maybe not-so-pretty content)

Spoiler! :
Reiner’s spent his whole life working to get a Councilman’s mask seared forever onto his face — until he’s given one final test, and realises getting his little brother away from the Palace of Justice is more important than the Order he’d sworn to obey.
• previously ChildOfNowhere
- they/them -
literary fantasy with a fairytale flavour
  





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Wed Apr 19, 2017 1:36 am
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Megrim says...



Reiner’s spent his whole life working to get a Councilman’s mask seared forever onto his face — until he’s given one final test, and realises getting his little brother away from the Palace of Justice is more important than the Order he’d sworn to obey.


Yo dawg, you can do way better than that. You're missing all the good stuff! (i.e. conflict)

Lesse, out of the blue I might give it 4/10 for vagueness and low stakes. Knowing the actual story I think it gets more like a 2/10 for missed opportunities :P Forget the mask and throw out all those proper nouns. Go for the meat--Reiner is a top-tier anti-magic-sniffer-outer-executioner-guy, and he's ruthless, and he's just about to get his dream of being ordained as one of the super-most-ruthless-even-of-THEM, but oh no! His little brother is dabbling in the very magic he's executing people left and right for. And it's shaking the foundation of everything he believes and understands to be true. And suddenly he needs to turn his back on EVERYTHING and his lifelong dreams so he can save his little brother's life because of all that stuff.

Only, say it better.
  





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Thu May 11, 2017 12:51 am
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Vervain says...



Fair warning, @ChildofNowhere I know NOTHING about your story proper so I'm reviewing this pitch from total blindness :P

Right off the bat: I like it! I really really really do! It introduces the character (+ his goals), some intriguing parts of the world (Councilmen? masks seared onto faces? Palace of Justice?), and a sense of stakes for the character (whatever's going on with his brother).

My issue with it? Same as Meg said, it's vague -- but it's too specific, too.

It's vague on the conflict -- what's going on with Reiner's brother? What are the stakes? What is forcing him away from his chosen path? This is dangerous, because conflict is what a story is (usually) built on, so you want to give us a decent idea of what it is before we delve into it.

Meanwhile, it's too specific on the details of the world. While they're intriguing -- Palaces of Justice and all -- we don't need to dive head-first into the world to understand the basic conflict of "bad thing is happening, MC needs to stop bad thing from happening" and whatnot. I would keep the details about the Councilman's mask, because that's a good hook into the worldbuilding aspect of the idea, but other parts of the world (the Palace of Justice, the mention of an Order) could afford to be sacrificed for the sake of introducing more of the stakes.

Numbers? Oh man I couldn't even put numbers on this. I don't even know. Make up an ancient numerical system and assign them yourself because this is SO GOOD but could use SUCH IMPROVEMENT at the same time.

- - -
stay off the faerie paths
  





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Sat Jul 07, 2018 10:39 pm
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Vervain says...



BUMPING THIS THREAD WITH A NEW PITCH!

- - -

In the ancient kingdom of Marat, echoes of magic burst through the earth like great shimmering mountains. Three principalities stitched together by three Princes, each kept in balance by the White Raven, it is at a tenuous peace at the best of times.

The White Raven herself is a mystical figurehead of neutrality who speaks to the beasts of the air, and her honor guard—derisively called the Crows—enforce her law to keep everyone in check and make sure no one exerts undue force or power.

But she is growing old, and no one can live forever. Shortly after she takes three apprentices, one from each principality, she is killed—and all the signs point towards one of the princes doing it. The apprentices must band together to seek answers, facing lies, betrayal, and civil war on the horizon if one of them does not ascend to the position soon.
stay off the faerie paths
  





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Fri Jul 13, 2018 7:38 pm
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BluesClues says...



Oh, right, @Lareine, I remember giving you feedback on this pitch in a WFP at some point! bc I didn't feel up to doing it here and didn't have a pitch to offer. BUT NOW. I present to you: my feedback, which for all I know is a repeat of my previous feedback, and Pitch 2 3 4 5 20.0.

No x/10 rating for you bc I don't even have a baseline to get me started with that, so here's my overall thoughts instead.

The pitch flows nicely and introduces a lot of unique and interesting aspects of the story, like who the White Raven is. There's also clear conflict and clear stakes lol something I struggle with what

However (it's all coming back to me, I do recall mentioning this exact point on WFP), I don't know who the main character is! I assume it's going to be one of the apprentices - or all three - but there's no one for me to connect to in this pitch except the White Raven (who is then m u r d e r e d). So while there's an interesting story and some strong conflict to hook me, there's no character for me to care about.

- - - -


Edna Fisher is 83 and still kicking, but the nursing home staff treats her like a child - so when a wizard tells her she's the Chosen One, she leaps at the chance to leave. Her mission: to defeat Redway, a sorcerer determined to exterminate the Knights. Eager to save the organization in whose service her son died thirty years ago, Edna sets off. But as she crosses paths with the Knights more and more frequently in her search for Redway, she realizes that her son's death may not have been as straightforward - and the Knights' armor not as shining - as they appear.
  








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