Astania Reviews

Kae | Charades

TITLE: Charades

AUTHOR: 

GENRE: Teen Fiction

CHAPTERS I'VE READ: Two

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This review details my opinion. At the end of the day, this is your story, and you know it better than anyone. My opinion is merely that, and it is subjective. I perceived it a certain way and you do not have to agree, since it mostly comes down to my preferences.

Plot

This plot starts out with a good pace in mind. It begins right after Ahira starts going to school again after skipping a good period of time. We get introduced to her normal way of life and then meet her romantic interest, Silas.

As a writer of teen fiction, I appreciated this pace because oftentimes, it's easy to get lost in the minutiae with this genre. So I liked that you were able to clearly state our main character, her arc, and her love interest. It's immediately clear. However, I think the plot is hindered by the speed at which it progresses. I can see the general places it wants to go, because when Ahira mentioning her father offhandedly to the Principal, it sets up the idea that her family is either not supportive or downright abusive, and we also see her putting on her makeup in the bathroom, suggesting both something about her character (she likes doing her makeup), and something about the story (she has to do her makeup in the bathroom, probably because of her home situation). These scenes, in my opinion, are good bones to the story that I believe you've built, and they should be focused on some more. A challenge with this particular genre is finding this balance between fleshing out a realistic idea and not needing to describe as one would likely do in fantasy, however, I think the scenes in your story need to be brought forward. What I mean by this is that the details are lost in the writing that doesn't describe specifically, losing our immersion, and I become more focused on the grammar and tense spellings than the story. I can see what the story is here, and I think using free correction software such as Grammarly would help you greatly. In terms of scene writing, I suggest you read some stories in your target genre and try to emulate those scenes in your style as practice. Using sensory details and being specific helps immerse a reader so that we can picture the scenes and follow along. Part of the reason I felt the plot moved quickly was because the scenes don't linger long enough for me to gather a solid picture, leading to the feeling that the story is progressing quicker than it should, before I've gotten a sense for where the scene takes place.

What I'm explaining here is to show us through descriptive language what the school looks like, what the outside world is like, and such details will help not only set the scene, but tell us about the characters and the world.

Characters

Since Ahira is the main character, I will say that just like in my plot section, I think it's great that there's an established arc here: a girl who has secrets keeps exposing other people's secrets as a sort of catharsis, or as a form of protection. Like the plot section, too, I would suggest bringing forward more details on Ahira to explain who she is, what she wants, and why she's like this. This last point is the most important one, yet is simultaneously the hardest to pin down, but it will benefit the story greatly once a reader knows this. I would suggest detailing more of Ahira's thoughts, as right now, the narration conveys the world through her eyes, but I don't feel as though her voice comes through with the words that narration uses. This is to say that a character who loves makeup might say the sky looks like the palette of colour from an eyeshadow they just bought, and a character that doesn't would look at that same sky differently. Right now, I do get a sense of some parts of her personality and I liked that she seems to be the kind of person who does whatever she wants, without care for what people think, but I would have liked to see a lot more.