Genre(s): Angst, romance, and coming of age / healing

Status: On-going [Fifteen chapters]

Graded or Nongraded: Graded

Focus: Plot and Characterization



Title {5/5} 
Every Frayed Edge relates to the story, especially with Jongdae’s character. We’re taken to a journey of understanding “every frayed edge” that Jongdae has--not so much as picking at these edges, but seeing how these edges came to be and understanding them.

The title definitely gives off an angsty vibe that fits with the concept of the story, and the title is unique in the pool of stories on AFF.

Description and Foreword {6/10} 
The Description is quite long, and I think it gives away too much of the background that it loses intrigue. There’s definitely an information overload, specially in the second to third paragraph. Jongdae’s background is just unpacked in one go, and that doesn’t leave your readers with much room to make their own assumptions or have anticipation for learning about this “mysterious” character. What’s written in the description in the second to third paragraph was also given in the first two paragraphs of the beginning of the story [and repeated over and over again in the story, as explained in Character Development and Writing Style]. I think that the Description would have been okay without the second to third paragraph, especially when the fourth paragraph provides a bit of intrigue on how the main character actually sees this popular guy in school that is different from how everyone else sees him.

The blurb is definitely character-focused, which is all right, but we don’t really get much from it story-wise. From reading it once, I cannot tell what this story is about or what is going to happen, and it doesn’t provide enough intrigue to push readers to click next. Perhaps you can include some hints of the plot or the story. When does it all start? What is a conflict that your characters have to solve in the story?

I’ve also noticed that there was a misspelled word in the Description and a concern with sentence lengths. Take a look at this:

What they don’t see, however, is the lines of red up his arm, the reason he always seems to wear long sleeve shirts and hoodies (they're not noticable at first, but they get more frequent, darker).

The sentence has the misspelled word “noticable”. The correct spelling would be “noticeable”.

Also, the sentence above is length and crams in more than two ideas. The rest of the sentences in the paragraph are lengthy as well. There is no sentence variety in the paragraph, and all of the lengthy sentences just drag the summary. It would be better if some of the sentences are shortened or cut up into shorter sentences to create more variety. For example, instead of having “they're not noticable at first, but they get more frequent, darker” in parenthesis as part of the sentence, you can place it as a separate sentence.

Plot {19/30}
For plot, it wasn’t really clear what the plot is or what direction the story will take. The story just starts out with Anna and Jongdae getting paired for a project in Languages, and....that’s it. The rest is just them getting to know each other. Normally, in a well-thought out, complex plot, readers can tell you the path of development (what happens first, then the next plot point, then the next, and so on), but for this story, after reading it over the course of a few weeks, I cannot point out clearly defined plot or development points. The main character and the popular romantic interest with a past getting paired for project [already overused in stories] is not a plot, but a concept. What is the plot? What happens? There’s a lack of movement in general, except for the twist in Chapter 15 where Anna now has the choice to go back to Canada. I cannot even tell what the main conflict for Anna is because it’s not clear in the plot.

Though I can understand if you want your story to be character-focused, it still needs a solid foundation and plot direction to fully nourish your characters and make it clear to your readers what journey they will take. For example, in Love, Simon, you can point clear plot points like when Martin found out about the e-mails; when when Simon started trying to find Blue by getting close to people; when Martin outs Simon to the whole school, and when Simon came out to his parents; and so on. His main conflict are [from an external sense] the threat of Martin exposing his uality and e-mail correspondence to a guy he likes to the school and [from an internal sense] in being comfortable with his uality and sharing this to his friends and family. What exactly is Anna’s main conflict in the story? What is the healing journey to dealing with this conflict? What significant events will help Anna and/or Jongdae grow and progress as characters? How will Anna change in this story? What events will have an impact on Anna in the story?

Coming of age stories rely on introspection and development. The story takes a journey through battling a challenge or a conflict and learning or becoming more mature from it. The main character develops throughout the story. And sure, other characters grow with them, but your main character is the main character for a reason, and that’s because the focus should be on them. We want to see Anna’s development--her coming of age. In your story, Jongdae takes precedence over Anna’s journey in a way that the story loses the coming-of-age vibe and becomes just another angst-romance story.

Almost 3/4s of the story is just Jongdae being nice to Anna, them working on the project, and Anna noticing how tired Jongdae is. Nothing substantial is happening, specifically for Anna. There were some mentions before of conflicts that Anna faced like her disconnect with Seoul, her tension with her father, and her lack of close friends [because she never really tried].

“Seriously, you have. And I’ve never said it directly, but I really, really appreciate you actually being my friend and showing me around. I’ve hated Seoul because we had to move here, but I guess it’s not so bad after all.” (Chapter 14)

This conflict that she has with disliking Seoul would have been great development for Anna, but it got pushed to the side of the story and was not emphasized in a way that would give Anna space for development. There was the Korean night market trip, but it was glossed over so quickly that readers never actually saw her grow to love Seoul. There were no other instances [like her seeing Seoul or learning more about Korea] that supported this point of development or unpacked Anna’s psychology on why she feels disconnected to the place she lives [like a clear link to her tension with her father or being homesick for her memories in Canada]. We don’t even know why she didn’t like the move from Canada to Korea. She never mentioned friends in Canada or kept in touch with people from there. There was never a mention of a great connection to Canada either. So why does she hate the move so much when she had nothing else going for her in Canada? The story just focused on unpacking Jongdae’s past and Anna trying to help Jondae without giving space to Anna’s growth.

Another point could have been the tension between Anna and her father. It was mentioned in the beginning that Anna and her father is in a tense relationship because of the move, but it wasn’t portrayed as much or effectively in the story. We do see snippets of Anna and her father talking, and though there is a bit of tension from Anna [but usually it’s just her being embarrassed by her father in front of Jongdae], there are essentially no parts where they [and I mean only Anna and her father, without mentioning Jongdae] talk as father and daughter or talk about their current situation. It would have been great to Anna and her father talk at length about the move and Anna’s anger towards the move. This would add to Anna’s character and present the inner conflict clearer.

Also, another point of growth would have been Anna’s lack of friends.Of course, there is Sohee, but even Anna acknowledges that she doesn’t really consider Sohee, in all parts of the definition, a friend. She never mentions any other friends in Korea or even Canada. No online friends either. This could have been a springboard for her growth into finding a group of people she could feel safe and comfortable in. Like from being detached from people and finding it hard to relate to people in a new environment, she could slowly become more open to other people. Perhaps she could also become closer to Sohee. This would have shown a healthy growth for a person.

Lastly, the plot point at Chapter 15 that Anna now gets to choose on whether to stay in Korea or to go back to Canada isn’t as impactful or effective as it should be. It might be because of the lack of focus on Anna’s conflicts and developments in the recent chapters that this new choice or direction is as important or dramatic as it should be. If there were more scenes where Anna has grown fond of Korea, made slight bit of peace or grown more distant with her father, tension in the family, or even made friends other than Jongdae would this choice be more dire or have more at risk. For now, it doesn’t feel like Anna has a lot to lose personally if she chooses to go with what she had always wanted, and that’s what makes this plot point fall flat. Yes, she does have her friendship with Jongdae [one that is only starting], but is that enough of a justified reason for her to be that torn on the matter? [This whole concern that I saw might stem from how Anna’s growth as a character wasn’t as evident as Jongdae’s, as explained in Character Development.]

[There was a lingering thought in my mind about the realism of the story (in respect to Korean culture and Korean school systems), especially since you tagged it as slice-of-life. The Korean school system is most definitely hardcore, so the way that it’s portrayed in the story wasn’t entirely accurate. I mean, Anna skips study hall, which isn’t something that you can do in a Korean school. Neither is being able to even leave school while in study hall. There’s also how they end the school early in the story and they’re just able to just leave school. Normally, Korean schools end at around 6pm (not 4PM like what Chapter 9 suggests), but students prefer to stay late for self-study, clean their classroom, or they go to hagwon until 10 or even 11 PM. Of course, students have the option to skip self-study, but still, school would end pretty late for students. Students also usually do not move between classes. They also stay in one classroom for different subjects instead of moving from classroom to classroom.

There was also the part where Anna and Jongdae talked about going to someone else’s house to work on a project and they were both confused on whether or not it was a Western thing. I live in Asia, and going to another person’s house for a project is a normal thing for students to do. Koreans (from what my past students have told me) also sometimes do group study sessions at home.

Lastly, there was the part in Chapter 12 where Jongdae has a picture of him with a carved pumpkin, Halloween isn’t widely celebrated in Korea (or Asian countries, actually) like it is in Western countries like America. It’s only in the recent years that people are starting to dress up on this holiday, but pumpkin carving isn’t a tradition that the country could wholly copy because the large orange pumpkins that America has is not part of the agriculture here in the Asian regions, so finding that kind of pumpkin is hard and carving a pumpkin years ago was unheard of. (Honestly, at that part, I wished a Korean traditional holiday or other event was showed, to show the difference in cultures.)

This point is in brackets because quite obviously, this is a work of fiction and I don’t think your focus is showing Korean high schools accurately. I also didn’t want this point to be perceived as something that warrants a decrease in scores, but more of an observation. I’ve never really raised this before for other school-centered stories. However, since a thing that the story shows is culture shock and a difference between Western and Asian cultures (as experienced by someone of mixed race like Anna), I thought it was still necessary to point out and raise in the review because, as I’ve pointed out about, some points depict a more Western culture and school system. Accurately showing a difference in culture would help in making your slice of life story more true to life and drive home the idea of how Anna had to adjust to these changes in culture.]

Characterization {10/15}
Overall, your characters have clear personality traits, but Anna’s development in comparison to Jongdae’s is not balanced. It seems that the focus is more on the development of their relationship that the characters weren’t given much justice in the story. Let’s break it down!

Anna is stubborn, petty, an overthinker, prideful, extremely cautious, a bit dramatic at times, stands her ground, and straightforward. Though I can clearly list her characteristics, it doesn’t feel like we really know who Anna really is. This can be because of a few factors: (1) focus of the story is on Jongdae, (2) development not effectively shown, (3) motivations/goals not communicated, and (4) characteristics are spoonfed,

So, firstly, as I’ve mentioned in Plot, the story generally revolves around Jongdae. Coming-of-age stories focus on the main character and their progression as they grow into adulthood. There are also cases wherein the people that the protagonist come into contact grow with them as well, but the focus is usually on the main character. With Anna, we don’t see much of her. Her thoughts revolve around Jongdae, the scenes [whether it’s a small filler scene or a conflict popping up] revolve around Jongdae, the conflicts presented are largely Jongdae’s, her whole character revolves around Jongdae.

It’s like Anna wouldn’t exist if Jongdae wasn’t there. Every thought and action that she has in the span of all fifteen chapters is about this one dude who has his own life. Anna even thinks about Jongdae’s problems more than her own. She doesn’t have character aside from revolving around Jongdae, which for a coming of age story and being the main character of the story, to me, is really bad. It might feel like she’s just a vessel with the role of disconnected narrator and a voice to communicate these unfortunate experiences that Jongdae has/had ed upon her rather than her being there as a character, as person.

She has not expressed a desire for anything else. I don’t know her character outside of being there to observe Jongdae or revolve around Jongdae. She doesn’t have any hobbies, she doesn’t deal with her conflicts, she doesn’t show any passion for anything else outside books [which was only mentioned once and never shown again]. It’s like she was only made to just show readers what a complex character Jongdae is [which misses the mark still because it’s just full of assumptions that she’s made]. However, she’s the main character of the story. It doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t have any friends after being in Korea for two years. Did she have none from Canada? Does she not have anything else in her life apart from Jongdae? When we do focus on her, it’s just purely mundane or skipped over quickly.

I feel like you have to give Anna more justice--to make her a separate character, a whole person complete with her own goals, her own conflicts, her own hobbies, her own insecurities, her own life outside of Jongdae. She should have more presence in the story and take her space as the main character. She has to grow from her own hardships [not Jongdae’s] so that we, the readers, can understand her more, relate to her more, connect with her, and root for her as a character as she goes through her high school experience and her experience as someone who recently moved to a new country and is still trying to figure out her place there.

This connects to the next factor: her development was not effectively shown. Again, as I’ve pointed out in Plot, there were lots of ways wherein we could see her grow. For example, perhaps she could have