Review for Harry Potter and the New Powers

Harry Potter and the New Powers

(#) Genericrandom5 2008-05-12

Really, what can I say about a story like this? “It’s been done before, better”? “Wow… Harry went to Gringotts and found out he owned teh wurld, omg!”? How about “the plot in five sentences or less: Harry is the heir of Merlin, goes to Gringotts and inherits more money then God, rebels against Dumbledore who has secretly been controlling his life, and is taught/learns that there is no ‘dark’ or ‘light’ magic, only intent” except that I only used one sentence and according to Microsoft Word, there weren’t even any grammatical errors.

So far, your chapters have been incredibly short and terribly cliché. You have a multitude of tiny ridiculous spelling errors that would be by simply reading your own chapter over after letting it sit for a day, for example “elfs”, “arry” and “hosue” in this chapter alone just off the brief glance I gave this chapter. I don’t even have to lie to make you feel better when I say I know that you can do better than this, because all you have to do is apply yourself. “Any idiot can write a masterpiece novel in thirty years.” Accordingly, “Anyone can write a decent story if they take a few months.”

People often say that the only way to improve your writing is to write more, but that’s only half the story. You also have to work to improve what you write. You need to be re-reading everything you write at least once. You should be having someone (or two people if possible) looking over your story and making changes and corrections based on their feedback.

To help with things like spelling, there is a variety of free spell checking programs available on the internet. One of the best in my opinion, functional in all Windows applications including message boards, instant messaging programs, word processors and even web browsers is the program “tinySpell”. It has a free version which shows up as an icon in the your Windows system tray along with the clock and other small icons, and can be found at http://tinyspell.m6.net/ if FicWad removes the address, you can find it be searching for ‘tiny spell’ in Google, it’ll be the first link, or by removing the spaces and going to http : // tinyspell . m6 . net

But here’s the real kicker… before I even started this sentence, my review was almost half as long as your latest chapter. It took me all of maybe eight minutes to write.

7000 and some words isn’t a story, it’s a chapter.

819 words isn’t a chapter, it’s an outline.

I took a moment before I posted this to see if you’d received any decent advice before, and from what I see, it also seems you’ve ignored it as I expected. I’m sure you’ll call this a flame so you can ignore it and keep feeling good about yourself. That’s your choice. I’ll leave you with this last bit of wisdom I try to live my life by.

“Doing something halfassed means you’re probably going to have to do it again. In other words, you wasted your time when you fist did it. If you do things right to begin with, instead of treading over the same path twice, you can go further than before, and in the end, you’ll actually save time.”

Author's response

Well first of all let me thank you for your review. I don't think it's very nice how you assume I'm calling this a flame, as you do give me constructive critisism, even if at times you are a bit rude!
Your first point. It's impossible to write a story without using ideas other people have used, because it's natural that Harry would get upset, and that he would need a powerful person to help him! Really, cliches are only bad if you don't use them properly, and I think my story so far makes sense. I HAVE had my friends looks at it, and I don't think you should be so rude over one or two spelling errors!

Also, maybe the chapters are a bit short, but they tell the story I'm trying to tell, and that's what really matters. As a matter of fact I DO take advice I get in these reviews into account, and I'm offended that again, you just make ASSUMPTIONS. They make an ass out of you and me, you know :) :)!!!!

Any way, thank you for your review, and I like to think that even if it isn't that good, a lot of people's first stories have problems, and it's important to point out the bad as well as be encouraging for the good. I think my story has a lot of good, original points - Harry often speaks parseltoungue, but I though I would add what I call Leonis - the langauge of lions. I also think that my goblins add nice comic relief, but naturally, you aren't willing to admit that!