Reviews for Harry Potter and The Doppelganger
DemetriLover28 chapter 3 . 3/22
Great story. Can’t wait for more chapters.
CalculusNova chapter 2 . 3/15
Hmm, allow me to give you appropriate criticism for your story. First, I've set a little criteria on my part for how I will present the criticism. I won't be criticizing the storyline, plot, character personality or behavior, etc. as this is more a subjective element to the story and each person has their own tasts, but I will criticize how the storyline is written according to its grammar, punctuation and sentence structure so you can use the criticism to improve your writing.

The first thing I notice, especially early on, is over-presentation of material. This can also be known as "info dump". In the very beginning scene when Merope was sent into this alternate timeline/future, Zach presents a lot of information without a natural cause to present it. By this, I mean he goes from "You are in the future, though not really the future, an alternate time line, you are about to die, so let me turn you into a vampire, by the way, I am the Vampires King".

While these may be true facts about the story, the issue is they are presented in a literarily uninteresting manner. It's hard to relate to characters if they are just thrown in your face without a cohesive backstory.

Another aspect similar to "info dumping" is over-detailing and inconsistent detailing. For example, you give an elaborate (though, a little too much) detail when describing Ebony's apparel (and later Merope's), but give very little description of Tom when introducing him, or any other character. It's inconsistent simply because you do not elaborately describe every character in the same way, but also over-detailing, because what force in the story calls on knowing about the sequins on Ebony's shirt? Is Harry fixated on the sequins? Do the sequins play an important role later on in the story. There is a different between describing a character enough so we can differentiate them from other characters (and if they play a greater role, then they will be described as their role is important), but describing characteristics about them that do not matter, the reader does not need to know about. Do you know about the literary device Chekhov's Gun? It's the idea that if you put a gun (or anything) in a story, you better expect that item will be used at some point in the story, otherwise, it is pointless unnecessary information. So, be careful of that in the future.

Now, as for your punctuation, grammar, and spelling. It's not terrible, but there are mistakes littered throughout the first two chapters. Some of the most noticeable ones are writing "has" instead of "as", this one you've done a LOT. You've also written words that look similar to the word you want, though, typed a little differently, and mean something completely different. For example, you wrote "this chances everything" instead of "this CHANGES everything"... quite a few more, but it's difficult to find them unless I comb line-by-line. For this type of error, I highly recommend doing a line by line editing of your writing. Yes, it is a lot more work, but the quality of writing will be much better.

Now, as for the biggest problem I found in your story is the sentence structuring. The first major problem (and this is not just an opinion, but an objective issue) is that you are having multiple people speaking in the same paragraph. In writing a novel, short story, or anything similar when people are actually speaking in the story, EVERY time a different character speaks, they MUST be in their own paragraph. Even if a paragraph ends up as one line, you make a new paragraph when a new person speaks.

As for other sentence structuring issues, though less problematic, more apparent in the first chapter, not so much the second, is word order and usage. This is also tied to your continual misuse of past tense, present tense, present continuous tense, etc.

Here, I took this one passage in your first chapter as an example:

It was a hot day, very hot day. Sighing has the heat beamed on him 'wish it was cooler...' walking and walking he finally came to the detention he was heading to, the local library. Walking over to the front doors, he opened them and walked in. passing the main desk, the woman behind Ms. Zena Willa smiled at him "Hello Harry back again I see"

I am going to edit it using mostly the same language you did.

I was a hot day, a very hot day. Harry sighed as the heat beamed down on him. 'I wish it was cooler,' he thought to himself as he continued walking toward his destination, the local library. Now at the front doors of the library, he opened them and walked inside. Walking passed the main desk, Ms. Zena Willa, the librarian, smiled at him, "Hello, Harry, back again, I see?

I chose this passage because it really stuck out to me the most. I avoided changing too much about this one passage, enough for clarity, but not too much to make it something entirely different. What you wrote made it very unclear who the subject in the passage is. It's obviously Harry, but from a literary standpoint, it could be anyone, or a vacuous no one. There were a few typing errors, misspellings, missing commas. And I also included who Ms. Zena Willa is, the librarian, so clearly defines her role in the story. You could write receptionist... or whatever, it's just very important to write people in a way that a person can relate to them, even if they are a one-off character we may never see again.

Now, I know you've just recently updated the story after about 2 years when you first started it so I will take a look at your third chapter and see how much you have improved from when you first started.
Gurgaraneth chapter 3 . 3/5
Love it
irongale chapter 2 . 12/5/2018
Great so far, keep going
Gurgaraneth chapter 2 . 11/22/2018
Love it
Ooh albus what ever plans u have for tom wont work
Gurgaraneth chapter 1 . 11/21/2018
Love it
Laurie24 chapter 1 . 11/21/2018
Loving this so far can't wait for more!