starlight
Story by aki-nakahara
Reviewed by eleutheromaniac

Title 
The title has a nice connection to the story, but I don’t think that it’s something that really catches the attention of potential readers. I’ll talk about this more in the next section of the review, but I think that if the symbolic importance of starlight was more heavily emphasized within the story, the title would've been more even more effective.

Description/Foreword
There isn’t really much to go off of in this description/foreword, but it was enough to pull me in. In all honesty, I prefer stories with shorter descriptions, but those stories always run the risk of not establishing a proper connection between description and actual storyline. I’m happy to say that this wasn’t the case in your story: the allusion to the importance of starlight was subtle enough to not be overbearing and was clearly connected to the story. The quote from MLK was also a nice touch.

My only issue is that the starlight imagery within the story is kind of vague; starlight is only mentioned in two sentences and the story itself is super short. Since it’s not really emphasized within the story itself, I think that it would have been nice if you included a scene in the description/foreword to assert the importance of the symbol and what it means to the two main characters. Readers never really get an explanation about why seeing Chanyeol under the stars is so different from seeing Chanyeol in a normal setting, so a few sentences about this would have helped to really establish the setting of your story.

Plot
My biggest complaint with the story was how short the whole thing was. There isn’t any sort of or resolution to the story, leaving me with the feeling that it’s incomplete. I felt as though the entire story was leading up to something, but the reader never gets to really find out what that something is. This was a true shame since there were so many elements of the story that really piqued my interest! I’ll talk about this more in the next section of the review, but Sehun and Kyungsoo’s characters both seemed so mysterious and I was curious about the way they were described. Baekhyun’s and the role of Chanyeol’s parents within the act was also something that I believed to be unique to your story, so I was kind of disappointed when you didn’t go into further depth with this concept.

Overall, this one-shot felt like the exposition and rising action of something much bigger, so I’m a little bummed that it’s been marked as a standalone piece.
 

Characterization
Interestingly enough, I found the side characters of this story to be more interesting than the main characters. In my opinion, both Baekhyun and Chanyeol felt kind of flat, especially in comparison to Sehun and Kyungsoo.

Baekhyun seemed like the stock character of the individual who has unrequited feelings for his best friend: he’s willing to do anything and everything for Chanyeol, puts the other’s needs in front of his own, and continues to smile even though he’s miserable on the inside. There was potential to develop his character further in response to his , but that detail of his life just gets glazed over. Finding out that Baekhyun is from an abused household because his mother abandoned him was also interesting, but since it lacked any sort of development, it seemed like more of an extraneous detail than anything else. In all honesty, these two details about Baekhyun’s life just accentuate his pitiful nature, assisting in his portrayal as a weak character. Though you can never go wrong with further elaboration, it’s also important to remember that there’s a good side and a bad side to every character, and that the good in a person’s life typically isn’t encompassed by a single individual for the entirety of their existence.

Chanyeol’s character was as equally underdeveloped as Baekhyun’s—if not moreso. He’s the stereotypical guy that is unaware that his best friend is in love with him: he’s innocently oblivious, jokes about returning the other’s feelings, and Baekhyun looks at him as though he’s the embodiment of the sun. I was hoping that with the revelation that Chanyeol’s parents were directly involved with Baekhyun’s , we would be able to see a different side of Chanyeol’s character. However, he doesn’t even try to console Baekhyun after the crime and Baekhyun seems to be perfectly okay with it. While the good and bad of Chanyeol’s personality are super clear, his lack of action and his portrayal make him feel unrealistic since he doesn’t do anything that would allow him to break out of the stock character outline.

I mentioned it before, but I’ll say it again: Sehun and Kyungsoo were suggested to have bigger stories than they were given, and I was genuinely curious about what their tales had to offer. Though neither are in the story for long periods of time, they each received incredibly worded indirect characterization. The paragraph about Sehun’s personal demons and his status as a “druggy” and the line about how “broken people find broken people” in reference to Kyungsoo led me to develop a lot of questions about their characters that were never fully answered within the story. While I absolutely loved the idea of their characters and wanted to know more, remember to be selective with your descriptions in the future: don’t open the door to more questions if you’re not planning on answering them.

Another example of this in the story was Yixing’s character. He was mentioned very briefly since he was there for Baekhyun after the when Chanyeol wasn’t. However, we never find out more about him and he could have easily been replaced by Sehun or Kyungsoo, who both received more development than he did. Cameos can be nice and all, but remember to prioritize the wholeness of the story before something like that.

Grammar
In the foreword of your story, you mentioned that English isn’t your first language, but if you hadn’t mentioned this, I would never have guessed! For the most part, your grammar was super on point, so kudos to you!

The mistakes that I noticed throughout the story were pretty minor. The biggest thing would be the occasional diction issues, but again, the mistakes weren’t all that obvious at all.

"... or when they were detained for spray painting on Mr. Cho's house."

The word "on" isn't necessary in this sentence.

“... Chanyeol will never let go the time when Baekhyun had accidentally stated…”

The underlined section should be corrected to “never let go of the time.”

“The copper-haired can’t explain the warmth that spreads through him…”

“Copper-haired” is an adjective, so you’re missing a noun. If you said “copper-haired boy,” then the sentence would be fine.

Some of the descriptions confused me as I didn’t understand what it was that you were trying to say. Examples of this are the bits about the cake “standing up” and this line: “As Baekhyun feels his heart drop to his stomach and his ice chill…”

Writing Style
I always tell people that if they don’t really understand the laws of the English language, then it’s safer to just stick to grammatical conventions rather than attempting to implement more complex writing techniques into their writing. This is exactly what you did, so I definitely have to commend you on that! Since it seems as though you’ve got your grammar down, I think that it’s safe for you to start experimenting with the creation of your own writing style.

A writing style is something unique to each individual author, so I can’t really coach you on how to do that. I can, however, provide some sources for you to read up on that can assist in your experimentation.

I noticed a lot of repetitive sentence structures within your story, so perhaps that’s where you can start. I think that the reason why your sentences are structured similarly is because you rely on the same punctuation over and over again (mostly commas and periods). Here’s a great guide to more sophisticated punctuation that can help to make your sentences more complex. By intertwining simple sentences with complex ones, the words of your story will flow better.

Once you’re comfortable with complex sentence structure, you can try experimenting with rhetorical strategies. Here’s a general list of a few of them and here’s another; it looks kind of intimidating, but trust me when I say that they’re a lot of fun to play with once you understand them!

Personal Enjoyment
I was really interested in what was going on, but even though a lot of interesting ideas were brought up, none of them were explored as much as I would have liked. However, if you choose to continue this as a multi-chaptered story, this is definitely something that I could see myself following as a reader.

Reviewer’s Comments:It’s very obvious to me that you show a lot of potential as a writer. You have so many great ideas just waiting to be explored, and I’m excited to think about all you can offer to the world of fiction! Keep practicing with different types of writing styles until you find one that really works for you, and you’ll be an even better writer than you are now.

(Also, if you decide to continue this story, please let me know because I would totally continue reading.)

The permanent copy of your review can be found here: x