Your Writing Was the True Weakness of This Book

Here's a particularly harsh and extensive rejection sent in by an LROD Mouse:

Let me start by congratulation the author on the fortitude to pursue his or her dream. Almost everyone has a book within them, but it is a rare few who follow through. Now, let’s talk about the book.

In a nutshell, I thought it was very weak. Let me be more specific.

Story line/plot

It had a fairly decent story line/plot, but was poorly developed. For starters, it was disjointed and frequently hard to follow. Critical parts of the story line were introduced and explained away in a couple of sentences. There were some components that, if properly developed, could have been interesting. I found it amazing that despite the simplicity of the book, I still had a hard time understand parts of it.

Writing style

This was the true weakness of this book. By page 25, the author wore me out with “cute”. I think his writing skills were so weak, that he/she felt a need for the attempt at clever analogies and adjectives, some of which were clichest at best.

Character development

This is an easy part of my critique as there was no character development. The characters desperately needed background and expansion. A strong writer would have expanded the book by at least 50 pages worth of character development. There was not one person in the book that I felt I knew really well.

Where to go from here? 

With a lot of work, he can expand and clarify the plot; same goes for character development. It is the writing style that will be tough to change. I suspect the author likes his or her style a lot and would be reluctant to even try and change it.

I could have filled ten pages with criticisms and suggestions, but I figure this critique tells you enough of what I feel about the book. Again, I admire anyone who takes on the challenge of writing a book, but I’m afraid at this point, your author has no chance of getting it published.