REVIEW FOR FEARLESS, BY EMILEE

 

Note : These are my opinions and my interpretations of the story. I’m going to be as honest as possible about your story – these distinctions mean nothing about you as a character and are not intended in any way to be personal attacks on the person. Also, please keep in mind that, because there thoughts and interpretations are mine, there may not be things which you agree with, especially you know what you want to write and I have no idea what your intent was – I only know the message as it came across to me. For anyone who is reading this and has not read the story: spoilers. Lastly – for the purposes of this review I will be assuming that any direct connections which may be drawn are intentional (in this case, Baekhyun and “fearless”) and significant to the overlying ideas and thematic structure of the story.

 

Word Count – 2,050

                        I understand this is very, very, long. Wow my reviews are not typically this wordy.
                        If you would like to just skim past any part of it, then I recommend doing so in the
                        character development section, as a lot of it is my interpretation of the characters.

Title – 5/5

Fearless… I love it. It’s succinct and it’s interesting. It’s an allusion, it’s vague (in the rhetorical sense), and it’s a glittering generality (emotionally appealing phrase so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that it carries conviction without supporting information or reason).

The first thing I did after I saw your title was Google search “Baekhyun fearless”; I wanted to know if it was an allusion. I was pleasantly surprised when results came through about his fearless bracelet, and the story which goes along with it. I definitely think that it’s relevant to your story, and I also think that it’s ironic that the story matches Baekhyun, but you chose to have it bear more significance to your female protagonist.

Is it cliché? A little bit – but it matches your story, not only because of your allusion, but also because your story is slightly cliché.  A cliché title is appropriate for a cliché story, not matter how slight both are.

Aesthetic – 3/3

Aesthetic is not something that I normally include when reviewing, because the focus of the review should be on the story and not the appeal. I think that whoever made the poster did a very nice job, not only in picking out the image for the two characters, but also in the subtle things which are embedded into it. The cars – what a twist. The poster had me thinking this would just be a sweet slice of life, but then I saw the cars and it threw me off completely. (I think this trait carries into your writing as well, but more on that later)

Foreward – 5/7

It’s brief, again, and it gives a nice feeling for the main characters. I think that your description of the two mains are ironic, because in my eyes they couldn’t be any more similar, but I definitely see where you were trying to take it, and it was a nice base.

I’ll have to confess though – the blurb filled me with dread for a moment because it sounded realllyyyyy cliché, and I had to trust your note at the end that this wouldn’t be the same as the others (which wasn’t a lie, bless your soul).

Now into the meat:

Plot – 22/25

*keep in mind that the plot in itself will not be assessing the ways you communicate the story; it will be based solely around content

The basics – it’s a cliché. I personally do not like those, not because they’re not interesting, but because everyone uses clichés alllllll  the time. And if everyone uses them all the time, this means that both a variety of good writers and not-so-great writers are being directly compared. However, in this case, I think that worked to your favor because there was something about your story which set apart the overarching plot from the rest. I’m not sure what – the characters, the fluidly, or just the selection of the cliché moments picked – whatever it is, I’m not complaining!

Something else I really appreciate about your story is the fact that it doesn’t drag. On. Foreverrrrrrrr. This is also a factor which makes your cliché plot forgivable. Even though I get a sense of what will be approaching in the near future, I’m pleasantly surprised that it turned out happening a lot sooner than I anticipated. Anticipation is something which usually works against writing, because there’s nothing that a reader wants to read less than an ending which they knew would happen from the start: that means all the time they spent reading was pointless. Would you want to read a news article if you already knew what it was going to say? I didn’t think so.

 

I’m very satisfied knowing that Baekhyun’s history was revealed very quickly, and even more satisfied that Iseul told Baekhyun about hers. I believe these moments were Crucial-with-a-capital-C in terms of character development (which I’ll get into more about later) as well as plot development.

 

As well as not dragging, you do a really good job with varying out the plot speed a little as well. Even though you do not hyperextend the timetable for your story, it does have variations in length and setting, and you were able to find a nice balance between which moments to insinuate as important – Iseul’s house and the scene on the rooftop – as well as know when scenes are acting as a filler.

 

Character Development – 27/30

 

Whooooooooo this section is out of thirty? That’s crazy, I know, I know. Even crazier that I gave almost all points. But I have reason to believe that the mains – intentionally or unintentionally – are a lot more complex than they seem to be, and I made this long because I wanted to talk about the budding relationship between Iseul and Baekhyun a lot.

 

I’d say the high focus on the two main characters is something that sets your story apart from others. In a lot of stories, there are three mains (making a love triangle) or four mains (two main-mains and two sub-mains; even though the description says they’re just the friends of whoever the mains are, that’s a lie). All of your relationship building however, ie. Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s friendship, work to emphasize the fact that Iseul and Baekhyun aren’t close at all (or not yet anyways)  and it makes the characters that much more interesting to watch and follow.

 

Like I said, your introduction to the characters in the foreward scared me, because I dreaded the “WE’RE OH SO RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND THEREFORE FIND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND ANY SIMILARITY WHAT SO EVER REGARDING ANY ASPECT OF LIFE. EVER” relationship that characters have, and then something bad happens, and oh you weren’t so bad afterall, and oh wow now that I think about it I really like you, let’s date, WHOOPS mom and dad we’re married! That was a mouthful, but you get the gist?

 

The two most fundamentals which make your characters interesting

1. They’re the same, but they are so very different
2. Nobody knows Iseul.

 

Now, you established them as very different in the foreward, but I still refuse to believe that they are. Why? They do everything humanly possible to reflect their inner thoughts as little as possible in their façade. They try to mind read, but utterly fail each time. This similarity makes it almost impossible for them to get along, and yet it’s the exact reason they are able to confide in each other once the cat is out of the bag.

 

Baekhyun, as we know, is weak. And what Iseul doesn’t know about this “idiotic” character is that he’s doing it in attempts to get attention – Baekhyun is hopelessly in need of love. This is why I say he’s wearing a façade, and also why I think it makes sense that Iseul is so grumbly, but the perfect person to care. Iseul, as we know her, is the opposite of Baekhyun. She think’s Baekhyun is the most stupid human being out there, but she cares. Iseul needs someone who is a mess, and Baekhyun is the biggest mess anyone can be.I think this dynamic is beautifully spelled out, and I really want to commend you on a job well done in really developing the characters.

 

Something else which makes them the same but different : they both try to read others and they both think they know what’s going on all the time to all the people. And, to some extent, they both think they’re suffering the most. It’s so interesting that they are exactly the same, but because they’re the same and therefore know exactly how to lie to throw someone off the trail, its interesting to see them caught up in what they do to each other, and also interpret that the other person is different from how they actually are – but in the exact same way. This constant idea of same but different pops up – though I’m not sure if I explained it very well, because its complicated – and the irony kills me (in the good context, trust me).

 

One last thing I would like to mention about character depth is in Iseul – nobody else knows about her struggles. The fact that she “slips” (ie telling Chanyeol that there are better ways to handle a loss) is great, and it adds on to the dynamic between her and Baekhyun. What really saves it thought, and gives it power almost, it that fact that it’s all the right things to say if you’re someone who has been through the same thing, but all the WRONG things to say if you are in the positon of .. oh Ive never lost my parents but yea I feel you – ya feel?

 

Sorry that was reallllllllllly long winded – I need to work on being as brief as you – but it just emphasizes how much I am in love with the characters, and as a reader, I’m excited for what is up-coming.

 

The only thing that slightly impacted overall enjoyment is Iseul’s habit of scrutiny, but that’s more stylistic… let’s jump into that now!

 

 Style – 20/25

 

One thing I noticed that was odd – or not odd, but unique – that you do it; you keep things vague, but you discreetly create fences around a singular pathway that the reader is supposed to follow. For instance, fearless – that symbol, that title, the allusion – in itself is vague. But the story, the way that Iseul’s motives are employed – these all hint that there is a takeaway that WE ARE “SUPPOSED” to be getting from your writing. It makes the reader feels obligated to believe whatever you want them to believe about the characters and the plot, leaving little room for interpretation.  Now I’m not saying this is bad at all – it is completely stylistic. If you were an orchestra conductor, you’d be one very adamant about your ways: bows this way, plucking on the quarter beat of the third count. Just demanding overall. To form a foundation, I think this is a the best way to go. But later on, as the players of the orchestra come to know each other better and come to understand the way you, the conductor, likes the music played, it’s not a bad idea to have their little rings of individuality. So once in a while, maybe put in something that is vague, and put in something that doesn’t have a concrete reason. So far we have been substantially in Iseul’s constructed mindset, and nothing escapes her scrutiny. It’d be nice to have a little bit of relief from her explaining herself and her thought process all the time.

 

Other than this, you have nice syntax, sentence structure, and vocabulary. It helps the fluidity of your writing and the progression of the plot. Sometimes there are slight grammar slips, but they are typically minor.

 

One other thing when writing, however, would be audience. I believe somewhere in your writing, you used “painfuller” rather than “more painful”. Although “painfuller” is considered a word by some people – by some because there have been “better”, more standardized ways to say the same thing – it’s not  considered a word by most. And although this was stylistic on your part – I’m assuming this, anyways – it’s always better to stick to the words that more people know and accept as standard. Because most people are not willing to challenge any writing or look up the word and see if its grammatically correct, but instead will just assume it is wrong, it hurts ethos to use words as such.

 

Enjoyed? – 4/5

Like I mentioned, some parts of the way it was written overall could have been improved. Even with your special twists, there were times when I thought of how much more beautiful and how much more spark this would have had if it had not been a cliché. However, I enjoyed reading the story overall – I have found an attachment to the characters.

 

Side note as a future reader – please update soon!

 

Overall Score – 86/100