Heya Daen, I'm back. Going to quickly run through this, but to address your comment on the last review, I like that you're planning conflict for later chapters, but I was specifically addressing Chapter Five in the lack of satisfactory conflict resolution--which was I said you could either cut the chapter at the point of the two characters kissing, or you could find a separate conflict to keep the chapter interesting. Think of each chapter as having a purpose, and each time the reader reads it they need to know exactly why they're reading it, or at least FEEL like the author is setting something up instead of wandering aimlessly through the story.
“You know I’m a designer,” she scolded me. “Did you really think you were going to have a clothing crisis?”
...Did this come out of left field? Or did I miss this entirely? I did not remember anything about Ana being a designer. Maybe I missed something. It's probably because Ana is a little one-note, anyway, so whatever.
“Nice to know you like your dress,” she laughed. “Now go find your boyfriend so I can get to work on it, and also think about going brunette, like chocolate-colored.”
Firstly--how many days are there before the Grammy's again? Because I somehow doubt Ana can assemble a decent dress out of scratch at the last minute. However, I might be wrong. I'm not well-versed in dress assembly, because I haven't had the opportunity to wear a dress before.
Secondly--Ana, don't tell Lauren what to do, let the woman live.
Thirdly--I figured something out about your prose that I don't think I'm fond of. There isn't a lot of variety in it. It's a lot of "she said, he said, she smiled, she laughed," that sort of thing. Most of the time I prefer the minimalist style of writing, mind you, but there's a difference between being minimalist and being boring. Hemingway gets away with being minimalist because there's intention behind his minimalism; it makes his voice sound snappier, straightforward, understandable to the layman. His writing is down-to-earth, and it fits his down-to-earth characters and stories. Contrast that with Fitzgerald's most famous work, the Great Gatsby, which isn't about salt of the earth types, and thus requires a completely different style of writing.
So where does this put your writing? Well, it depends on where you want to take it. But as it stands, even if you don't want to change the diction used, you could probably use a shakeup of sentence structure. Start with a verb or an adjective rather than a subject, a setting rather than a character, an inconsequential detail rather than the big picture. Have three word sentences, five word sentences, a longer sentence, a fragment maybe. Read the story aloud, try to pick out the places where you start feeling bored hearing yourself talk, keep the flow. Regardless of what style you want to use to convey the feel of the story, style should not be an excuse for boring your readers.
Anyway, some resources if you're interested in learning more about this point:
https://noeleditorial.com/blog/variety- ... e-of-prose
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/573/01/
https://writing.stackexchange.com/quest ... y-in-prose
I hugged her quickly, the comment about my hair color not even registering. “Thank you best friendddddd.”
Okay, so I don't call my best friend 'best friend.' I don't call anybody 'best friend' really, not to them personally. I describe them as my best friend to other people, and maybe if I'm being annoying I'll call them "the bestiest besty friendy in the whole while world," but I wouldn't say "Thank you, best friend." Maybe it's an American thing? An Australian thing? A British thing? I wouldn't know, but it doesn't sound natural.
“It’s not like we’ve done anything that was illegal! We were waiting for you to turn 18,” he sighed.
“But you were 21 and we told everyone that I was 19 while it was well-known that Cailin was 16. They’re going to assume we did stuff.”
His fist and my pillow collided, and I took his hand and kissed it softly. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay,” I soothed him. “I either talk Ana out of wanting me to dye my hair brown, or we wait a little while.”
I don't know how I feel about this. I really don't. I mean, like, I'm not one to judge age differences or anything, I don't automatically assume the worst out of a five-year age difference in dating, but there's usually a good reason why 18 is generally considered the most mature age to date, and that's because the emotional maturity of a 16-year old is pretty different than that of an 18-year old. So yeah, please don't fault me for thinking the fact that they dated under questionable circumstances is suspect, even if they didn't do anything icky in the meantime.
Personally, I'm starting to think this relationship is showing shades of...toxicity. Maybe it's just me, but the unbounded devotion from Asher, the age difference, the fact that Lauren ran away, it's uh--it does not bode well. And I'd be fine with it if it was evidently screwed up, but right now it's written as being Ideal, which it. Well. It isn't, I'm sorry, I can't press this enough. It's not Ideal. The only thing that's making me say it's not Abusive is the fact that Asher is still nice? He doesn't force his will on the protagonist, is what I mean, and that's good.
Regardless of how this will build into proper 'drama' I'll reserve my thoughts, but I don't favor how it's being built. We'll see when it pays off, but regardless a good payoff probably won't erase iffy buildup, so I'll take note until the end.
“Lauren come on. It’s literally just hair, you can change it back anytime,” she pressed, and I felt like I was grabbing for reasons that didn’t exist.
Maybe put a comma between 'Lauren' and 'come.' You'll be surprised what kind of difference a comma does, especially when your readers are basically vocally reading the work in their mind.
“I think she looks better as a blonde,” Asher muttered, before looking around to see if anyone had heard him and blushing when he realized that we all did.
Lots of people blush in these chapters. Crack open a thesaurus while editing, you could probably find a synonym for blush.
(Also, side note, why does it matter if Asher thinks that Lauren looks better blonde? The emotional significance of it wasn't pressed enough, I think.)
Anyway, those were my thoughts. I'm going to move on to the next chapter now.
--Elliot.
Points: 19607
Reviews: 383
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