Dreamland Review Archive

Starling Starlight (Yin)

Starling Starlight

Author: @anvillgottlieb

Chapters reviewed: 1-3

Cover:
I love everything about it! Period.

Title:
Again, I really love it. It gives a insightful kind of vibe, as in we know that the stories will be a motivation/insightful stories, and not just written for fun.

Blurb:
Another insightful blurb. You know what your stories will tell, and how it will be presented.

Chapter 1:

Where should I start? Hhmm. The idea. Sometimes, ideas and creativity precede techniques. I love this story. A lot! You really thought a lot to plot this, and it shows, especially with the picture of the newspaper. That's smart. The narration is beautiful and meaningful. I especially love the simile about the car window, how she relates to it, how her view of life is like looking through a car's window. She sees everything, but she can't explore her life because of her father. That's brilliant!

For the technique, let me separate it into several points:

1. POV

You write the story in 1st pov. But you do realize that your narrator died in the end, right? Taking it that you write in the past tense, the pov bothers me a lot. I would get more into the story if you wrote in 3rd pov.

2. Syntax

Although your narration is basically beautiful and meaningful, you have basic issues with creating a legible sentence. It's not so bad that I don't get what you are trying to present, but almost all of your sentences have some kind of issue, may it be run-on sentences, wrongly punctuated, choppy, or wordy. I couldn't point them all out, but let's take one paragraph as the example.

"Tears burst forth onto her face like river water, her cheek muscles trembling, and realising that there's absolutely nobody left to believe her, and she let out a heavy sigh. She receded back, just like a river, and hit the wall backwards while I stood silently. She broke down completely, her body bending to rest on her knees, while she let out low moans of disbelief and restlessness while leaning back against the cold brick wall."

You have a spam of ideas placed wrong here. Use commas sparingly to avoid this.

You could rewrite this into something like this:

Tears burst forth onto her face like river water. Her cheeks trembled. Realizing that there wasn't anyone left to believe her, she let out a heavy sigh. Then she receded back against the wall. She broke down completely, letting out moans of disbelief and restlessness while I stood there, silently.

I don't know. Something like that. Your ideas are all over the place. At first, she leans back, then she bends her knees and rests on it, then in the same sentence, she leans against the wall again. I am not sure which one you imagined as you wrote this. Nothing could actually help you with this kind of mistakes other than reading published books. You should keep writing. You get better that way. Also read about the technicalities of fiction writing. A lot of writers ignore this, I am sure. There are small, specific rules when it comes to fiction writing. Like how and where to use a comma, what is dialogue tags/action beats (you have this issue too), what is a run-on sentence. Reading and learning them will ameliorate such simple mistakes and can make you a better writer in an instant, trust me.

Another thing I should mention is the mind hopping. This is a 1st pov. All she could do when she looks at a person's expression is...assume. She can't read people's mind. So she can't exactly 'realize there was nobody left to believe her'.

3. Exposition

Short stories are not my forte, but there's no exposition on the father and the ending. How did the father get away with the murder if the mom? Because he befriends the lawyer? That seems too easy. And what happens in the end? What's the relationship between her killer (is it the father?) and the kid in the newspaper? Did the father kill her? Why?

Chapter 2

This story is very, very short. I am not sure what's the moral of the story. I think it's simply...being good to other creatures? The scene from the mom giving her a present doesn't relate to the bird feeder scene. Or does it mean the mom gave her the tools to build the feeder? This part is not clear at all.

Here, I see you have some issues with tenses. Check your tenses. You slipped some present tense into your narration.

Chapter 3

I am so sorry to say this, but I don't understand your third story. Who's the narrator? The mother? The other guy? Her? Or all those three? What's with the coin and the poem in the end? She lost her father, right? There's somewhere you mentioned about a 'tank'. So he's in the army and died in the field?

Anyway, I think you have a lot of talent when it comes to writing. You just have to learn how to present it properly. You can always join book clubs to get help with the editing. Some reviewers can be sweethearts when it comes to helping others. Take the chance and improve. You'll do great. Good luck!