Beta Reading- Review of the Blue

Excellent story! I loved the concept- it was very original and captivating. There are some things that could be tweaked and improved, but you have a fantastic story to work from!

Editing, grammar, and flow or structure need some attention. I’ve taken the liberty of making some changes in the grammar in a few places, to show you what I mean.

Punctuation is important. It takes a reader out of the story to be trying to figure out what relevance to a paragraph a sentence has (when the sentence should have been placed as the beginning of a new paragraph when the subject or speaker changed)

This concept is so awesome, but it gets lost in the action. It feels like your characters are sprinting from fight scene to fight scene, with no real character building or intrigue to it. Of all the deaths that happen, I really only cared about one, because that was the only character I had any kind of emotional connection to.

The final battle. Although the lead-up to it was a little lacking, and it felt as though it came out of left field, the whole fight with the reds was fascinating, and well choreographed. I could really see it happening, and really experienced it through the characters.

I had a hard time following the story. It was written very quickly, and jumps from point to point too quickly. There’s very little introduction to new information- it’s all very rushed, as though it was covered in another lesson, but we were out sick that day. It makes for a very frustrating reader experience, because we feel like vital information has been left out, or like we missed it- sometimes this means going back and re-reading, but not feeling like we can find the answer. For myself, when I see something like this happening when I’m reading for pleasure, I’ll put the story away because it takes me completely out of the story with frustration that I feel so confused.

Contradictory information. For instance, in Chapter 2, you say that the supermarket on Main Street was cleared out as you drove past, and yet on your way back it was untouched by looters. This kind of contradicting information happened throughout.

The whole love triangle between Blue, Orange, and Green. I’m not sure what purpose it served- the drama didn’t affect the plot line at all, and felt like filler. And then the admission that Green was gay made his previous actions all the more confusing. I was left feeling very deflated by the whole love triangle.

LOVE the lion, and the kid.

This idea of different coloured eyes meaning different powers is really interesting, and the idea that it has something to do with who they were before the meteor shower was fun to connect in my head as I read. It gives the reader a real sense of ownership over the story.

The idea of calling people only by the colour of their names until the end, when Blue reveals her real name as a way of shedding the apocalyptic way of doing things.

This is an area for improvement. When reading a story, it is imperative that it flow in a logical manner, that the events are connected by threads the reader can easily follow. I did not feel like this was the case in your story. It felt like instead of a thread, there were piles of thread I had to hop over to to pick up the line of the story again. This was very frustrating and made it difficult to stick with the story.

I would definitely recommend some work on formatting and editing for continuity, because it is a good story, and I don’t want that to get lost behind formatting issues.

Great foundation for some really interesting characters.

Blue- A good heroine, if a little static. When a book is written in first person, it’s normal to get a little more feel for who they are as a person- to really empathize with them because we’re living in their heads. I didn’t really get a lot of that with your heroine. It could be because you’re writing a female character, and as a male author that can be a tough job. But we want to connect with her, hear her thoughts, feelings, and indecision. This makes a character arc much easier to detect and get attached to. It felt as though you were so focused on outward actions- “I ran, I jumped, I saw” that you weren’t able to focus on the things we want out of first person writing “I feel, I realized, I thought”

The fact that she was a nurse was awesome. It’s not a profession we often see as the heroine, so it was different to have that profession as the focal point.

Green- Really interesting character. I would’ve liked to see something more dynamic from him, especially as he was a huge secondary character for the majority of the book. He felt very one-sided, as though the only purpose he served was to be there for Blue, and while we as the writer know that she’s the focal point, the characters don’t. To characters, they’re all the main character. Fleshing his character out and offering some places for him to show his personality more will help with this.

Orange- I was a little confused by this character- he didn’t seem to serve a purpose other than to draw up drama with a love triangle, and the love triangle itself didn’t seem to serve a purpose. Orange felt really static and not at all likeable- not even in a “love to hate him” way.

Purple- The “teenager with a lion” offshoot was unexpected. I liked the concept, but it did feel a little out of the blue where it was. Such a memorable character introduced at the last quarter of the book felt a little jarring, like it was an idea you had much later in production and added in haphazardly.

This was one of my favourite parts. Your dialogue flows easily. I could have easily used it as a script between two people. You understood how to have natural, easy conversation in the midst of action. I might have liked to see more variation between speakers- make the language used by different characters sound like there was more than just one writer writing it. How often do you talk to a stranger who uses the same colloquialisms, filler words, affirmations, and general verbs as you?

Many times during the story I felt like events were just plopped down because they would be fun to write- but they didn’t make sense there, or at all in the storyline. The death of Green, the appearance of Purple, when the Reds attacked, all of these are examples. Drawing your storyline out and determining your beginning, middle, end, and important plot points might help with this, as well as asking yourself what bearing every scene has on the overall storyline.

I really liked the action. It was vibrant and well written. The explanations were very well done- I could clearly see what was happening and at what time. Sometimes action can get muddled, but you had it explicitly written down so that it was easy to follow and create an image in my minds eye.