“Still Waters Run Deep”

By: Drachsoul.

Reviewer: St-renaissance.

1-Title: On broader perspective, titles function as surface-level marketing for your story; readers and reviewers alike will subconsciously form an opinion on your story by simply reading the title. Unique yet, accurate titles give off the best impressions. “Still Waters Run Deep” sounds very interesting for two reasons:

-The length of your story’s title is on the longer side which is bold but effective. Just make sure that the borrowed space has paid off.

-The word “Water/s” in literature usually suggests a journey of fluidity and spiritual or emotional shapeshifting. It plays on the emotional side of characters and hints at gradual transformation of ethics.

Rating: 10/10.

2-Description: The description is mostly efficient; suitable length provides a glimpse into the character’s motive and aim, offers suspense and excitement. However, the phrase “...so she goes as far to transfer to Irene’s school in the Kalos region,” splits the description into two parts instead of having it produced as one coherent paragraph.

I suggest leaving out that part quoted above for a couple of reasons: that phrase overshares insignificant detail which will eventually be covered during the narration. The second reason is that it reflects negatively on the main protagonist by translating her actions as senseless and invasive, mostly considering we haven’t been acquainted with her emotional and psychological range.

Rating: 8/10.

3-Plot: While writing a story, we focus on the seven pillars of plot: Narrative, point of view, settings, introduction, rising action, , and resolution. Before anything, you gotta take it slowly and choose a narrative; will the narrative be controlled by one or more characters? Will the narrative be omniscient or limited?

In the description, you provided information and POV of a certain character but then opened the story with a different character, that doesn’t make any sense. Try to stick to one character, at least during the introductory phase, then feel free to switch things up. Once we choose a particular narrative (omniscient or limited) we try to supply the reader with enough details and information to build proper settings. Time, place, temperature, climate, etc, are all valid elements of creating a concrete image of your fictional world. I’m pointing this out because mentioning names such as Kanto, Alolan or Kalos doesn’t equal the proper construction of Time and Place simply because it’s an already established world. Personally, I’ve never watched Pokemon nor do I have the slightest idea of its lore and quirks, so it would be unfair of me to rate this off of my initial reaction and try to be as objective as possible. But, whether this story is designated towards Pokemon fans or not, you must apply the primary characteristics of story to your work if you’re aiming for success.

There’s definitely a theme here and it’s quite promising; challenge, divergence, redemption. Such themes keep the audience on their toes and are best nurtured using powerful dialogues, strategic characters and a relevant past. I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to illustrate a flexible image of important locations in the story, doing so will make it easier for you to accentuate the fluidity of characters when it comes to travelling. You see, there is a number of elements that evidently influences the character’s emotions and thus, actions. Factors such as: emotional ambiguity, recollection, hesitation, and societal pressure can help you draw a more profound background to your character. So far, the story is progressing very slowly because you do not miss a single detail or event without analysing it; that’s not necessarily useful because it doesn’t nurture the development of your character nor does it help move the plot forward. You don’t have to narrate every step in the protagonist’s journey, if an event doesn’t help you achieve one of the tasks above, then it’s most likely a minor event which you can comfortably leave out.

I’m going to be frank here, I have to be, It’s the only way to be when I review different stories. Your story is not going anywhere and it’s very dull; tedious introduction and overly-detailed narration of basic, and most importantly, uninteresting activities. You don’t have to tell us about how many papers the protagonist stuffed into her backpack, or how many students she saw on her way to class, or how she scanned her ID to get into campus. The narration itself isn’t bad, it’s quite proficient actually, but the actions and details which you relentlessly go over are simply not important or interesting. You’re slowly, but effectively, driving your readers away and boring them one minor event after another. In the first chapter alone, there are 4k words and I assure you, if you were to go back and edit out all unnecessary details, it’d render your chapter digestible and coherent. I just reviewed another story with a similar issues, there were a lot of dialogues that went nowhere, and in your case, it’s the repetitive routine of aimless narration of numbing details. I could point out at least three occasions in which you’ve narrated every time the protagonist reached into her backpack and pulled out some papers. Please, edit out events and dialogues that take your story to nowhere. Why would you think it’s necessary for us to sit back and read through an entire morning routine of a poorly introduced protagonist? That’s a real shame. Go back and edit out those little dizzying events and give us what property builds a character: aims, motive, background information, intellectual capabilities, opinions and feelings. During the first chapter, you could get away with editing out the se