Workshop 2:

Questions of Identity & Belongingness / Death & Rebirth

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Halcyon

by ChiaKairi

I loved the title and immediately wondered what kind of emotional journey I was about to embark on. Also, when I saw the story’s graphic to see that the leading characters were JongTae, one of my OTPs. My first read-through of this story was highly enjoyable. It was easy to see your poetic style and tone that became characteristic in your previous entry, Glow.Electricity.Life. I could also see that you took a lot of my suggestions from the first round and utilized them in the second round—which made me happy! You still struggle with comma placement, which was the number one issue I found in the story, but it was nothing that I couldn’t dissect easily enough to keep reading.

Because I offered a review with the intention to help you hone your writing skills, I have mapped out some of the things that stuck out to me. Let’s start by brushing up on some of the basics:

Comma confusion. Though the errors were minimal, there were still a few. The most helpful trick I can offer is to think about how your sentence sounds (it’s helpful to read it aloud) then note where you naturally take a breath. This natural pause is where you want to put your comma. Sometimes a semicolon is a better option than a comma, dashes also, especially if you are having trouble linking fragments or incongruent thoughts together. I recommend you use both of these lovely devices. Where a semicolon indicates a pause between main clauses (longer than a comma), a colon separates two clauses in which the second clause expands or illustrates the first. Spend some time reading aloud in order to understand the importance of these pauses and where you feel they should go.

• For example: “The best kind of people are the ones that come into your life, and make you see the sun where you once saw clouds. The people that believe in you so much, you start to believe in you too. The people that love you, simply for being you. The once in a lifetime kind of people.” -> “The best kind of people are the ones [who] come into your life and make you see the sun where you once saw clouds. The people [who] believe in you so much, you start to believe in you too. The people [who] love you, simply for being you. The once[-]in[-]a[-]lifetime kind of people.” Here, I removed the unnecessary comma and replaced “that” with “who,” since your subject is “people” not “things.”
• You must also remember to use a comma when separating vocatives, parenthetical phrases, and predicates and modifiers. For example: “Sorry dad.” -> “Sorry[,] dad.” “Oh Jonghyun…” -> “Oh[,] Jonghyun…” “Oh my God not again…” -> “Oh[,]my God[,] not again…” “What are you thinking hyung?” -> “What are you thinking[,] hyung?” “Shut up Lee Taemin” -> “Shut up[,] Lee Taemin.” “Taemin all those hours studying math are making you go crazy…” -> “Taemin[,] all those hours studying math are making you go crazy…”
• Semicolons vs. commas: “Jonghyun doesn’t feel sick, he feels… empty. / He’s popular, a lot of people wants to be friend with him. He studies, he eats well, he thinks. Yes, that last point is the problem.”-> “Jonghyun doesn’t feel sick, he feels… empty. / He’s popular[;] a lot of people [want] to be friend[s] with him. He studies, he eats well, he thinks. Yes, that last point is the problem.” “It’s nothing relevant, it’s only a new way to kill some time, something that belongs only to him. Another secret, to cherish in his mind that’s more blank than ever, a thought that no one can see on the outside.” -> “It’s nothing relevant[;] it’s only a new way to kill some time, something that belongs only to him. Another secret[,] to cherish in his mind that’s more blank than ever, a thought that no one can see on the outside.

Word Choice

• The “mh” sound… is this like “hm”? It’s confusing.
• “Jonghyun is a sickness, do you know it?” While I love the lyrical effect of this line, I couldn’t help but wonder if you meant, “Jonghyun, it’s a sickness, do you know it?” or “Jonghyn’s got a sickness… do you know it?” Just a syntax choice but not necessarily one that is wrong.
• “One of the guy leaves an arm over his shoulders” -> drapes an arm
• “But he couldn’t sleep anymore so he decided to just go, he’s school uniform was waiting. He feels like a little kid sometimes, thinking at his hairless face and his big eyes.” -> “But he couldn’t sleep anymore so he decided to just go, [his] school uniform was waiting. He feels like a little kid sometimes, [looking] at his hairless face and his big eyes.”
• “Those brown hair, his thin body, his full cheeks and his eyes while he laughs.” -> “[That] brown hair, his thin body, his full cheeks and his eyes while he laughs.”
• “He looks at the kid with narrow eyes while the other blinks a few times, resting his chin on the handrail.” This syntax in confusing. Let’s clean it up like this: “He looks at the kid with narrow eyes [who is blinking quickly and] resting his chin on the handrail.”
• “Adam apple” vs. Adam’s apple
• “Jonghyun slaps a hand on his own face and curses the precise moment when he decided to go to school early that morning.” Syntax is confusing and unnecessarily implied. Revise: “Jonghyun slaps [himself] and curses the precise moment when he decided to go to school early that morning.”
• “…but when he cannot sleep he gets up early and hopes to find him on his way to school.” -> “…but when he cannot sleep[,] he gets up early [in] hopes to find him on [the] way to school.”
• “In a place that you’ll like, trust me” -> “To a place that you’ll like, trust me” or just simply, “A place you’ll like, trust me.”
• “His bag falls near the younger’s one, in the sand.” -> “His bag falls near [the kid’s in the sand].”
• “Then he sees his leaf shaped eyes and his fluffy hair and thinks about how does that must feel under his fingers.” -> “Then he sees his leaf-shaped eyes and his fluffy hair and thinks about how it would feel under his fingers.”
• “…if I do that someday police will find you death under a train…” -> “…if I do that[,] someday police will find you [dead] under a train…”
• “Jonghyun puts a strong arm on his shoulder…” -> “Jonghyun puts a strong arm around his shoulder…” 
• “Are you looking for some kind of attention? You need some affection? Is because of this that you avoid people and you feel so superior?” -> “Are you looking for some kind of attention? You need some affection? Is [it] because of this that you avoid people and you feel so superior?” I really liked these few lines from Taemin. He is able to get right to the crux of the matter; he has the ability to pierce our protagonist's defenses with a blunt tongue. 

Style choice:

• Keep your punctuation inside quotation marks (i.e. “,”/ “.”). The same goes for dashes. For example: “ …on the screen appears ‘Game Over’, then he leaves the back of his head on Jonghyun’s shoulder…” -> “ …on the screen appears ‘Game Over[,]’ then he leans the back of his head on Jonghyun’s shoulder…” “The fear of being rejected, of being considered ‘sick’, it’s something Kim Jonghyun never experienced before.” -> “The fear of being rejected, of being considered ‘sick[,]’ it’s something Kim Jonghyun never experienced before.”
• Make sure the direction of your quotation marks are correct: “ hyung is… Oh my God is ing two in the morning-“ -> “[,] hyung is[—]oh[,] my God[,] [it’s] ing two in the morning[—]”
• When someone is speaking in dialogue, the sentences that describe this character’s mannerisms/expressions/actions go in the same paragraph. For example: “He sighs. / ‘Understood…’ ” -> “He sighs. ‘Understood…’ ” “He puts his hands in his pockets and shows a bright smile. / ‘Sure.’ ” -> “He puts his hands in his pockets and shows a bright smile. ‘Sure.’ ” “Taemin holds the rusty chain of the swing. / ‘Mh, that doesn’t matter… what I wanted to say to you, is…’ he bits on his bottom lip.” -> “Taemin holds the rusty chain of the swing. ‘Mh, that doesn’t matter… what I wanted to say to you, is…’ [H]e bit[e]s on his bottom lip.”
• Make sure you are capitalizing correctly when it comes to dialogue. When there is an action directly following dialogue, the sentence is capitalized. For example: “ ‘… you’re stuck!’ the guy hits him on his head and Jonghyun winces.” -> “ ‘… you’re stuck!’ The guy hits him on his head and Jonghyun winces.” “ ‘You.’ he points his finger.” -> “ ‘You.’ [H]e points his finger.” Conversely, make sure that actions linked by a comma are underscored: “ ‘I like guys.’ He says, suddenly.” -> “ ‘I like guys[,]’ [h]e says[,] suddenly.”
• Use dashes not hyphens when using them for grammatical effect. For example: “ you I’m not the…!” -> “ you, I’m not the—” And make sure your dashes are connecting the words properly by touching both letters: “…he’s goofy –and Jonghyun is sure of this, he saw it- but sometimes he’s also attractive, those full high cheeks are really cute.” -> “…he’s goofy—and Jonghyun is sure of this, he saw it—but sometimes he’s also attractive, those full high cheeks are really cute.”
• “The sun is setting, is a red eye in the clean face of the sky.” I really loved this line. Though I would love it more if it read something like this: “The setting sun is like a red eye in the clean face of the sky.”

Notable Things I Love:

• “He used to be able to do everything while thinking, he could keep it all inside without showing anything. While he studies, while he eats, no one notices his thinking.”
• Title tie-in: “He didn’t want to understand how another man from the past used to see the world, he was already quite busy trying to understand how Jonghyun sees the world.” This was the signature line that made me think of the context in terms of a true halcyon experience, and how irrelevant the past really was for Jonghyun’s future once he accepted himself as he is.
• “There’s a world inside Jonghyun and sometimes his heart just beats too fast.”
• “He’s a spoiled kid, and he’s also noisy and annoying, he looks like a grasshopper jumping around, he also has the same body, with long and skinny legs. After ten minutes of talking to him Jonghyun’s brain is burning, so he thanks the bell that announces the beginning of the lesson.” I love this first meeting of Taemin and the way he is described. I also love that it takes awhile to learn his name. 
• “Silence makes him uncomfortable lately. It obliges him to think, it’s the place when he cannot avoid the memories.”
• “He looks at the swings, a breath of wind plays with the newborn grass. The weather is good, it almost feels like spring.” This image is nicely succinct and very descriptive. Also, it reminds me of a very young Taemin playing on the swing on Yunhanam many years back. Pairs nicely with the latter line, “It’s windy. / It’s almost spring. / Almost.” 
• “Everyone always tries to reach him and break his silence, but that kid just stares at him without saying a word. He feels weird and for a moment the thoughts aren’t so noisy.” / “You’re weird[,] hyung.” The fact that Taemin is immune to the false perception that others have of Jonghyun comes through in his weirdness. It is their mutual weirdness that ultimately draws them together.
• “…he stands up and Jonghyun’s annoyed because he notices Taemin is taller.” Well, I couldn't resist... this cracked me up. XD
• “Jonhyun’s mood is good, the weather is good too.” Mood/temperament/outlook correlated with seasons/weather: this is a nice touch, one I appreciated lyrically. It really adds to the poetic effect of your tale. Just be mindful of the spelling of your protagonist’s name! 
• “He thinks madness isn’t something you read on a face, not instantly anyway. Madness is something you hatch inside, something you’re not aware of. Maybe you born with it, then something bad happens at some point in your life and then the earthquake breaks the surface and madness comes up on your face for everyone to see. Jonghyun thinks there are a lot of weird people around, those people have the seed of madness inside them and he’s potentially one of those. He wants to be prepared, when the earthquake will come.”
• “The hand over your mouth is something you have to learn sooner or later. And don’t swear.” / “I’ve learned from you!” I really liked this. Their conversations are so refreshing real and free of sentiment. I really like the way they talk to one another and act like your average teenaged boy. It's belieavable, it's endearing. It makes me ship them in this story. I was really glad to see some JongTae from you after your previous MinKey/2min tale. The fact that Jonghyun follows Tae like a ‘doggy’ allows connoations of a sweet, loyal, lost dog in need of affection and love. All very effective, paired later with the claim that “Jonghyun follows him, attracted like a magnet.”
• “Jonghyun prefers the blank page. / He’s scared of dirtying it with something wrong. He’s scared of filling that page.... Jonghyun hesitates. He really wants to open his mind to him, he really wants to trust him. But it’s like when he faces the essay. The blank page is safer. It doesn’t matter anyway, he already knows that he’ll never find the right words again.” I love that though Taemin is a ‘total mess’ he is still ‘able to read [Jonghyun's] mind like a book,’ no matter how blank he thinks it is. 
•  “It’s annoying not to know! Maybe we’re thinking the same things, do you understand?” Yes! I love this line from Taemin. Finally, we get a strong sense of mutual attraction in verbal form. Jonghyun is still too dense/scared/sceptical to see it.
• “He thinks about Taemin. His world, what does it look like? He wants to see things how Taemin sees them, he wants to understand. That could be fun. / Exploring each other. / For the first time, Jonghyun doesn’t think about himself. He thinks that maybe trying Taemin’s lips would feel good. / If only he could shut off his brain just for a moment…” Ahhhhhh~~ this line did stuff to me. I loved this part. 
• “He’s scared of that damn essay, he fears everything will flow out this time and he really doesn’t want that to happen. He wants to keep it inside him, because the humiliation and fear belong only to him, nothing must be shown.”
• “Jonghyun gets nervous thinking about Taemin.” One of my favorite lines in the whole story. Says everything without having to say much. 
• “He rams on the poor page like a mad man, the window is open but he’s sweating…. The words are all there, ordered…. He thinks is the madness that comes, and he didn’t even notice. / He doesn’t even know what the he wrote. / He reads, then throws the paper away in a rush of anger. He feels bad so picks it up again…. / He cries for a minute.” A very cathartic scene that allows for the transitional ephiphany, followed up by the claim: “Those things he wrote the other night weren’t for Taemin, but for himself. He wished he could read them to his father but he never will, they’re gone for good.” 
• “ ‘You’re mad, hyung.’ / Jonghyun smiles. / ‘I knew it.’ / He crumples the paper and throws it away.” The fact that Taemin is so unsurprised the entire time shows that he's known all along and is waiting for Jonghyun to accept things that he has no problem accepting because he shares the same secrets. It isn't necessary for us to know the details about Jonghyun's previous crush or what fully entailed between him and his father. The contents of this letter are so private that even after being disclosed to the most important person in the story, are still thrown away. Because the act of writing them down was more important the tangible form, we see that it effectively brings JongTae together even though they are both unsurprised by the contents. I was confused, however: does he read it over the phone? It's not specifically stated, but either way, I really liked this scene.
• “He thought about accepting himself. / He thought that maybe he was thinking too much.” Love this insight into Jonghyun. He's a narotic character but you can't help but feel for him. Whatever happened before his halcyon was upset was obviously life-altering to the point that he was unable to even see himself in a healthy way.
• “Jonghyun pushes him and Taemin is so thin that almost falls, so the other grabs his uniform and keeps him in place without even looking.” Little subtle things like Taemin being so thin that he nearly falls under Jonghyun's weight... that is y to me. 
• “ ‘I still think I’m disgusting you know? I think about you in a disgusting way sometimes, I know it.’ / ‘You’re not disgusting you’re just weird.’ ” This line was both amusing and y. I really enjoyed it, especially Taemin's characteristic reply. You refrain nicely from an incongruous sense of sensuality by keeping things balanced and realistic for two highschool boys just coming into ual awareness. 
•  “ ‘You know, I spent all that time thinking because there was a thought that kept on running away from me, a thought that I couldn’t reach. It was what I needed to fill the blank page, do you understand? I was scared of finding it.’ / ‘What was that thought hyung?’ / They stop in the middle of the roof, Taemin brushes away a bang of hair from his eyes and Jonghyun follows the movement. / ‘It doesn’t matter anymore now. That thought… I found it.’ / Jonghyun ventures out of the boundaries of his world and enters into Taemin’s one, tasting his lips with his eyes closed.” Ah, okay, I love that the thought really is never explained but totally implied. This follows your poetic sense of story-telling well; you don't show us everything, you allow poetic sensiblity to fill in the gaps. I also like that he tastes Taemin's lips with his eyes closed because it brings about a feeling of peace and acceptance, and an utter void of nervousness. This small act of eye-closing suggests to me that he has fully accepted the things in the letter, the things in the past, the things that happened to upset his halcyon: those past days of peace and happiness that he has fortunately seemed to recover in his meeting of Lee Taemin. 
•  So I really love this story!! I am so happy to see how much you have improved. Thank you for submitting it! <3

Good Job!!

[...judging is still in progress...]

*Again, the purpose and goal of this workshop is to be helpful, one writer to another. I don't grade by points, simply give you the advice I have received myself along the years. You may take anything I have to say with a grain of salt; it is your story and your emerging talents, so be confident and continue to write the stories that are inside you—be the master of your own domain, regardless of what anyone else has to say. In the meantime, I hope I was of some help.