“Persona”

By: Fellyciach & Kooku17

Reviewer: St-renaissance.

1-Title: “Persona” sounds interesting, basic, but interesting. The emphasis on the psychological and emotional aspect of the leading character promises a profound inspection of transformation and shifting of personality. Make sure to deliver the proper meaning of the title and maintain a sensible interest in your protagonist’s spiritual or internal journey. The title could also be a reference to the visage displayed by celebrities in order to maintain a certain image. Either way, it’s just plain, could be enhanced using a powerful synopsis.

Rating: 7/10.

2-Discreption: The description is of suitable length and size, it doesn’t bother with harbouring any unnecessary information and focuses on the MCs. It does revolve around two characters, so while the description conjoins said characters, make sure that the narrative and POVs used in your story are distinctive and independent. There are a few syntactic errors in your story, most stem from the fact that you’ve used the third-person POV to narrate the synopsis. Careful with how your words come out to the audience, try to read the description aloud and see how it feels to the ear.

Rating: 8/10.

3-Plot: Okay, the introduction serves a purpose; introducing your character to your readers, letting them know what to expect from this character and how her past had come to to influence her present state and emotions. We begin the story using the third-person POV to narrate the story, IU is centre of attention and she has been through an internal conflict that takes a toll on her mental stability. We haven’t seen a great variety of narratives here; no environmental or historical, we do see a lot of personal (linear) narrative, but unfortunately, nothing descriptive. Though there is no concrete setting of Time and Place, we assume it’s present time and thus, all social and political aspects aren’t all that vital to the construction of your world. When it comes to setting the desired environment, you must take into account how each element directly/indirectly influences your character’s development or relationship with the world around it. For example, does this character live in the city? How do the sleepless nights and bustling streets affect her outlook on metropolitan living? What decade does is this character live in? The 80s? 90s? Does the culture weight impact her point of view of the future?

Try to teach us more about the world you created, describe things to us; the trees, streets, lights, temperature—things such as trends and theories can help make your world more believable. Once you’ve done so, you can start inspecting how each scene (mostly major ones) influences the environment, and vice versa. I’m not sure if mentioning Sulli and Hara’s tragic death just to develop a character is a sensitive move, I think it’d be respectful of you to eliminate that part and refrain from mentioning actual death of people just to prove that your character is sad.

The transition between one POV to another is definitely smooth and professional, it didn’t appear rickety or out of place. Make sure that you maintain that distinction between the point of views throughout the story, otherwise the intersection of views would make it difficult to recognise the proper characteristics. Now let’s talk about the quality of the introduction; it’s not that high, the story gets very boring rather early, it’s already melancholic, try to not linger in the same scenes over and over again. If your exposition is rather sad, then your Rising Action cannot have the same theme and feel; it’ll get tedious and boring. Experiencing different scenes during the introductory phase, will inevitably bring about a lighter (or heavier) side of your characters and will help us observe how your protagonist(s) interact with the environment, characters, and different feelings.

The actual exchange of conversation between the two main characters is quite odd; humans don’t talk like that, the run-on sentences and lack of body/facial language makes them appear robotic and unrealistic. When you narrate conversation, it shouldn’t be other than realistic and believable; storytelling mirrors reality, your conversation should be a reflection of your character’s emotions and thoughts. Do either one of your characters hesitate, stutter, slip, or become victims of impulsive accusations? The fundamental purpose of Dialogue in literature is to deliver a message of plot or character. So, whether it’s intentional or not, readers will always look into every line to try to collect hints and meaning to put together as they go on. However, minimal conversation pieces may not always be meaningful or hint-riddled.

Let’s inspect the quality of narration in your story; we do so based on three criteria: Speech correctness, clearness, and effectiveness.

Speech correctness needs some work, especially around the second chapter; unconventional grammar can obstruct the delivery of meaning and feeling. For example, during the second chapter, there was a sentence that read like so “She was still stay silent” this sentence is an example of occasional grammatical incompetence, it’s also literary inept. When we attempt writing prose, it’s best to avoid alliteration: “...(s)till (s)tay (s)ilent” are all words using the same phonetically consonant, this can be distracting to read outside the realm of poetry. Another example “I sacrificed a lot when I choosed this path” make sure that you go back and edit this chapter, or you can always hire a beta-reader to review this chapter.

Speech clearness is