Editor Profile: Donna Sirianni
I don't pull punches on reviews. Mine have a tendency to be honest which people may not always like. I judge based on the first five chapters, six if you have a prologue (or posted pages, whichever comes first). I need to be hooked pretty much immediately, otherwise I'm not going to read on.
It's all about first impressions for me. No three strikes you're out. In that vein, I won't keep reading at the behest of the author because it "gets good" later on nor will I read a rewrite after I make a review. Why? For the former, I don't start a story in the middle. I start at page one. It needs to be good there. For the latter, you don't get a second chance at a first impression. I'm not critiquing, just reviewing.
I review based on all aspects of writing (grammar, punctuation, world building, continuity, character building, etc.) and site design. It can be the greatest story in the world but if I have to wear sunglasses and squint at the screen to read it, it's not getting read. I'm not afraid to point out your flaws but I'll make sure to let you know what works as well. I'm not entirely evil.
As for what I like to read, well, taking a look at what I recommend is a good start. I like stories that make me feel for the characters immediately, however that may be. I like stories that have a unique world (doesn't necessarily mean fantasy), realistic people and situations that compel me to move forward. And return to read it again. And perhaps even buy the Lulu version. Good writing equals good reading.
Most Recent Review
Another Place and Time: There’s something missing . . .
Actually, there’s a lot missing. Like depth, for starters. The only positive I’ve been able to garner from this story is that it’s moving forward in a linear fashion, slowly getting from point A to wherever point B may be. Aside from this stylistic bit, I’m having a hard time picking up anything else that was redeeming about the work.
It reads like stage direction. Every time the scene changed the reader is told so with a line indicating whose living room or which restaurant or wherever the story might be is taking place instead of letting the scenery speak for itself. That got annoying very quickly. As did the as-you-know-Bob info-splurges. And the mechanical movements of the characters. And constant tense shifts.
There is absolutely no depth to any of the characters, their actions, their thought processes, nothing. The story head hops from one character to the next, not bothering to actually stay for a moment on any one of them and portray what they’re thinking or how they’re feeling. Instead that’s left to incredibly redundant telling, as often as triplicate in some places, that reinforces that this is exactly what’s going on, leaving the reader to interpret nothing. There’s no trust there. Because of that, I couldn’t care less what any of them were doing, where they were going, why they were speaking in such stilted dialogue and why they all sounded like the same character when it was relatively obvious they weren’t. Out of the dozen or so characters, the reader isn’t privy to even one person’s inner workings. Not even that. After five installments I just couldn’t give a fig about any of them let alone be bothered to keep all of them straight. They having absolutely no individuality (in multiple senses of the word) plays a heavy role in that.
All I saw when I read this story was a bunch of cardboard cutouts being jerked around in front of a backdrop colored in crayon. I had no idea where the story was going, why I should care about the characters’ asinine conversations that seemed to be going nowhere except to the info-dump and why I should even attempt to read to the end. All that was missing were camera directions and lighting cues and there’d be a script but with less substance.
I start reading a story expecting, at the very least, a lake. All I got here was a nearly dry puddle.
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