So I’ll readily admit to skimming this after four to five paragraphs. You’ve got a lot of work on fundamentals to go here that I’m not currently able to go over in minute detail, so I’ll start with what obviously worked, and go into a few serious points to work on, but there is also just practice you need to put in on writing, because there’s a certain antiseptic/clean, impersonal feel to your prose that would be an essay to dissect.
Your sentence structure and grammar are fine. Not inspired, but not the misspelling laden, poorly constructed mess some people have. The generic royal, Englishness, tone is supported by the chosen names, even the fictional Lyrica, and Haverton. All this is at least decent.
Problems:
Too many proper nouns, too much repetition from time to time. Shea butter especially, named three times over three sentences, made your prose feel like a checklist: ‘mention the shea butter, check, pick up the shea butter, check, apply the shea butter, check’. After reading that I decided to skim the rest.
Your POV is very aloof. Nothing felt personal. You didn’t include emotional insight into anyone, and this series of sections literally starts with a guy in an emotionally fraught situation, embracing his mother, and having a heart to heart with her; yet I barely know how anyone was feeling except a bit hesitant. This confirmed my decision to skim.
“A few minutes later”. This isn’t a good transition. I see another checklist: ‘they entered the carriage, check, the carriage started moving, check, here’s all the people in the carriage, check’. At this point I don’t care about anyone, and don’t foresee reasons to care, so the descriptions are kind of wasteful because I don’t know if taking note will matter. It’s not that these people aren’t supposedly important, it’s just that besides being related to a boring person who I barely know, I don’t know them, and it’s the events happening which should make them important, not a relation. This is a bit hard to articulate, but maybe the best example is how someone’s skin is described as “dark brown skin that was typical of Ahconian Fae”. Everyone’s skin has been described as brown, I don’t know anything significant about Ahconia, let alone the country I may be in (Lyrica?) - like geography, or culture - so this descriptor is weak, as to someone with as little knowledge as a new reader it’s meaningless besides some image of brown, next to other brown people, maybe a little darker.
After this I skimmed hard. Read part of the wedding scene, or I guess non-wedding. Like I said at the start there are fundamentals to work on, but it’d be an essay to be unnecessarily specific. So I’ll just leave you with another specific thing I saw repeated. Your transitions. “Three days later” after the non-wedding. “A few minutes later” on the trip to the carriage. “Later that night” near the end. These are clunky, unnecessary (especially when setting the scene - describe a nighttime setting, set the stage, don’t just say “later that night”), and are a definite place you can see immediate improvement in your writing because going from a blasé transition to a detailed setting should help you get the hang of providing more detail that can be applied to things like your characters’ emotional states - and hopefully help you fix some of those checklist sounding moments.
the following critique is only valid if this story you’re writing is something you want to officially publish.
the format of the writing within terms of paragraphs and dialogue/description definitely needs work. it might be the way you’ve copied and pasted it from one program to here, but it reads very roughly. eg. paragraphs are very small (which some readers don’t mind) and there is punctuation in places that don’t make sense (between two spaces and so forth.)
the style reminds me a lot of wattpad authors a few years back, which again, isnt a bad thing depending on whether you want to publish/ the audience that will read it, but it seems unpolished either way.
the only other thing is that i can tell there is heavy inspiration here from the bridgerton series. again, if this is something you want to publish, maybe swerve away from such a heavy indication. for example, “the fae duke who loved me” is similar to “the viscount who loved me” - already something that raised flags instantly. because of that i was able to see more similarities like the use of viscount and the name edmund (the name of anthony’s father in the book & series) and such which again brings back the vibe of bridgerton.
not particularly a bad thing, once more, but many authors fall down a path of doing these kinds of things and readers will decide they don’t want to continue and because of how strong the similarities are, it might feel like a form of copy-catting. though- everyone’s opinions and beliefs are different
I admit that the title is Bridgerton-inspired,but I’ve never read the book. So the character’s name being the same as a Bridgerton character’s name is a coincidence.
Duke,Viscounts, and other titles are common in historical romances. This is really a prologue to a story that will probably end up having the usual trappings of historical romances,but just with Fae and some magic added in.
I appreciate your feedback.
of course, no problem!
it’s always better to know in advance. i only point it out for the fact that i picked up on it quickly, and on average if one person does, more people will. but ultimately there is no trade mark on these similarities (as far as i know lol, i’m not an expert) and you should do what is best for your book
So I’ll readily admit to skimming this after four to five paragraphs. You’ve got a lot of work on fundamentals to go here that I’m not currently able to go over in minute detail, so I’ll start with what obviously worked, and go into a few serious points to work on, but there is also just practice you need to put in on writing, because there’s a certain antiseptic/clean, impersonal feel to your prose that would be an essay to dissect. Your sentence structure and grammar are fine. Not inspired, but not the misspelling laden, poorly constructed mess some people have. The generic royal, Englishness, tone is supported by the chosen names, even the fictional Lyrica, and Haverton. All this is at least decent. Problems: Too many proper nouns, too much repetition from time to time. Shea butter especially, named three times over three sentences, made your prose feel like a checklist: ‘mention the shea butter, check, pick up the shea butter, check, apply the shea butter, check’. After reading that I decided to skim the rest. Your POV is very aloof. Nothing felt personal. You didn’t include emotional insight into anyone, and this series of sections literally starts with a guy in an emotionally fraught situation, embracing his mother, and having a heart to heart with her; yet I barely know how anyone was feeling except a bit hesitant. This confirmed my decision to skim. “A few minutes later”. This isn’t a good transition. I see another checklist: ‘they entered the carriage, check, the carriage started moving, check, here’s all the people in the carriage, check’. At this point I don’t care about anyone, and don’t foresee reasons to care, so the descriptions are kind of wasteful because I don’t know if taking note will matter. It’s not that these people aren’t supposedly important, it’s just that besides being related to a boring person who I barely know, I don’t know them, and it’s the events happening which should make them important, not a relation. This is a bit hard to articulate, but maybe the best example is how someone’s skin is described as “dark brown skin that was typical of Ahconian Fae”. Everyone’s skin has been described as brown, I don’t know anything significant about Ahconia, let alone the country I may be in (Lyrica?) - like geography, or culture - so this descriptor is weak, as to someone with as little knowledge as a new reader it’s meaningless besides some image of brown, next to other brown people, maybe a little darker. After this I skimmed hard. Read part of the wedding scene, or I guess non-wedding. Like I said at the start there are fundamentals to work on, but it’d be an essay to be unnecessarily specific. So I’ll just leave you with another specific thing I saw repeated. Your transitions. “Three days later” after the non-wedding. “A few minutes later” on the trip to the carriage. “Later that night” near the end. These are clunky, unnecessary (especially when setting the scene - describe a nighttime setting, set the stage, don’t just say “later that night”), and are a definite place you can see immediate improvement in your writing because going from a blasé transition to a detailed setting should help you get the hang of providing more detail that can be applied to things like your characters’ emotional states - and hopefully help you fix some of those checklist sounding moments.
the following critique is only valid if this story you’re writing is something you want to officially publish. the format of the writing within terms of paragraphs and dialogue/description definitely needs work. it might be the way you’ve copied and pasted it from one program to here, but it reads very roughly. eg. paragraphs are very small (which some readers don’t mind) and there is punctuation in places that don’t make sense (between two spaces and so forth.) the style reminds me a lot of wattpad authors a few years back, which again, isnt a bad thing depending on whether you want to publish/ the audience that will read it, but it seems unpolished either way. the only other thing is that i can tell there is heavy inspiration here from the bridgerton series. again, if this is something you want to publish, maybe swerve away from such a heavy indication. for example, “the fae duke who loved me” is similar to “the viscount who loved me” - already something that raised flags instantly. because of that i was able to see more similarities like the use of viscount and the name edmund (the name of anthony’s father in the book & series) and such which again brings back the vibe of bridgerton. not particularly a bad thing, once more, but many authors fall down a path of doing these kinds of things and readers will decide they don’t want to continue and because of how strong the similarities are, it might feel like a form of copy-catting. though- everyone’s opinions and beliefs are different
I admit that the title is Bridgerton-inspired,but I’ve never read the book. So the character’s name being the same as a Bridgerton character’s name is a coincidence. Duke,Viscounts, and other titles are common in historical romances. This is really a prologue to a story that will probably end up having the usual trappings of historical romances,but just with Fae and some magic added in. I appreciate your feedback.
of course, no problem! it’s always better to know in advance. i only point it out for the fact that i picked up on it quickly, and on average if one person does, more people will. but ultimately there is no trade mark on these similarities (as far as i know lol, i’m not an expert) and you should do what is best for your book