@Alex_Af
H & V: Fate
Before reading the story: Title doesn’t attract much attention to me. It is a tad bland. The cover art, however, is really unique! I love the way it is textured, and I think it looks really great all in all.
For English not being your first language, I think you did an astonishing job. I almost don’t believe you. It was really great English!
I really like how you implemented a cc aspect to your story. I understand why not all features were available. Story telling purposes of course! In the future I recommend using a writer-made template, some of which you can find on the forums. The templates that Episode provides are NOT updated and do not contain all character features.
Some I recommend can be found here and here! You of course can make your own, but codes like these take hours.
In the beginning of the story, I wouldn’t have explained as much as you did about how choices would impact the overall reading experience. This is because it can strongly influence the reader’s choices as opposed to them making the choices naturally. I would also recommend not to change the color of the choices, depending on whether they were the bad one or the good one. I really like having major choices implemented in stories, but I did not like the way you implemented them.
As for the plot, some of the pieces seemed out of place and quite confusing. You were presenting the mc as a very poor girl, without a solid education, and yet she had been accepted on a television show and had been able to meet up with an important icon for an interview. These things don’t quite add up and though I see that you are trying to show how she is striving for success, it didn’t quite make too much sense to me.
I really have liked your directing so far. It looks really great, and I haven’t caught any mistakes. Since you are quite talented with the whole directing scheme of things, I would highly recommend adding more backround characters. In all of your scenes, there were no other characters present. It would make it a lot more pleasing and realistic if you would take the time to add some more characters. There are even templates in the writing portal that Episode provides!
I thought it was really cool how you implemented a mini game into your story. There are a few things you could’ve done to make it the slightest bit better. Instead of sending the reader back to the beginning of the game if he/she had not stolen the phone at the right time, you instead could’ve had a consequence. I find repeating to be quite tedious. To make it more likely that the reader would snatch the phone at the right time, you could’ve used some social cues using actions. Maybe having Branna dropping something would show the reader that it was the proper time to steal the phone.
Very great cliffhangers as well. Kudos!
Back to the plot…
If the mc was such a talented journalist, wouldn’t she have a job associated with journalism instead of having her work at a bakery/cafe? I think it would’ve been much better if you had put her in a small company associated with journalism. She could’ve had a hard time getting recognized through the company and that’s why she would have wanted to be on fate.
All of this stuff just doesn’t add up, and there is so much more I can add to why it doesn’t make sense.
Besides that, I found the story very interesting and unique. Definitely something I haven’t seen much before, which really impresses me.
Overall, I really enjoyed reviewing your story. The main area for improvement would have to be making sure all aspects link up in some way, maybe by even explaining it a bit more. I think you did a really good job with the coding, which can be very confusing to writers who are new to Episode.
I am quite interested to see what happens, so I probably will be finishing your story! I think it’s a great start, and quite an impressive first story.
Remember to follow me on Episode! My profile is Author Clare. 