Talk:Never Home Without You/@comment-36906991-20190828021542

I've never written or read a romance story so you'll have to bear with me here XD

I think for the prologue, maybe it could be a little bit longer? Idk if that's just my 700 - 1,400 word prologue bias since that's my standard, but I think that the single paragraph could've been elaborated on some more. Such as, describing the dream in more detail, perhaps? It helps give readers more of an idea of the scenery and to get a vivid image of what's going on during the scene. Also, I do think it would be more readable if you put the dialogue separate from the paragraph, though it is short. There was one notable grammar mistake, brush, when it should be bush if that was what you were referring to.

I feel like during the main chapter itself, there needs to be a bit more detail on the shadow/Peter, as well as more detail on the place that they're at. You could use this to your advantage to make a sense of loneliness in the main character's surroundings, even better since you used first POV, because it can help give your reader the sense that your character is lonely without having to state it. Though this is probably just me and my nitpicks, I feel like Peter should've been described more upon his introduction, so we aren't forced to guess (example: just saying red-haired or fair-skinned gives an idea of what the character looks like). Then again, if this is a fanfiction, then readers should know what a character looks like if they are a canon character.

I know at this point most of my critique seems to be nitpicky on the detail, but I do think that you could use more subtle descriptions to show how characters are feeling, though there is nothing wrong with telling and not showing at times. There just has to be a balance between the two. I also noticed that you seemed to repeat certain things Piper thought, just in different ways: "I didn’t think anyone had ever spoken to me like that. I was special." and "I’d never had anyone look at me like that before. I liked it." stick out in particular. Instead, you could describe more of Piper's emotion or facial expressions about the way Peter treated her- such as describing her eyes as widening (can be a sign of surprise), her face scrunching up in confusion (about they way someone looking at her in that way before), etc. Idk, it's just a nitpick most likely.

I also recommend using other dialogue tags aside from 'asked' when using a question from time to time- occasionally I use 'sighed' or 'snapped' if a character is exhausted, annoyed, etc. In this case, you could use 'whisper' or 'murmur' to describe her tone of voice and get a question through to another character at the same time; sometimes 'asked' works, but other times it's better to look for alternatives. I personally prefer using dialogue tags a bit more in my writing than what you have written, so I won't say that you should use more, just that it should be something kept in mind if the speaker or another character does something in response to that piece of dialogue.

This is just Hollyzel's critique right before 10 pm for them, so it might be a little messy and not related to romance at all but oh well :P The romance part is later on anyways so I'm just focusing on the text more of XD