SCRIPTURIENT REVIEWS | CLOSED

❄ RESTLESS | CRAZY ❄

After you've gotten their attention, an introduction of the main character is intended to make them invested in your story.

If you've successfully gotten their attention and investment, now it's time to spice things up. Tell them what changes so that they feel the disruption that the characters are going through. This amps the excitement for the next step.

The last step ties everything together. Now that your potential readers are invested in your story, and your character, and they've experienced an upset, your last step establishes risk. They should care about the characters by now, so stating what these characters stand to lose forces the hand of interested readers.

At this point, potential readers have a choice. Find out what happens to these characters or keep wondering. If you've done this successfully, potential readers feel invested enough in their characters to take the time

Plot/Flow: 17/20

There seems to be lots of points where you tell the audience important information that has happened, when this would have more impact if you showed it. Kind of messes up with the flow of your story. Besides that, since your story is only seven chapters, your introduction of the love interest (and the insomnia) comes a little too late.

Tips:

The earlier you introduce a character, the easier it is to get your readers to empathise with them. No matter how much love you put into a character, if you introduce an important character too late, they risk being seen as an intruder. This is partially because characters, especially in romances, that get introduced later tend towards being obstacles between characters and their goal.

If you're set on introducing him the way you currently do, you can try to mitigate this issue by making it so that the characters see him as an intruder too. That way, readers will travel with your other characters, through the distrust and to the point where they realize that they were wrong.

Please note that this doesn't always work, and it takes time to do it accurately. If you rush it, readers will notice, and it will kind of feel like a poor attempt to add drama.

You can really go with either option.

As for your other issue, I'll get deeper into it in a later section, as it relates to that as well.

Characters/Character development: 8/10

I feel like your character descriptions could use some sprucing and that you don't remind the readers of their surroundings often enough. However, even with those issues, I like the way you developed your characters and their relationships with each other. I especially like how you chose to have the main character forgo his love interest in favor of his mental and emotional health. That shows development, since at the beginning, he hadn't put much focus into that. His attempt at sponsorship at the end was a nice boost as well.

I think you could emphasize the change a bit more in the beginning and the middle, but that's not a deep-seated issue, just a small improvement.

Overall, I'd say this was almost an 8.5, but I rounded down because I feel lower numbers teach you more.

Tips:

If you want to improve your character development, I'd just advise on more drama. I don't mean this in a 'oh, gasp! Stuff happened.' kind of way. I mean, what does happen, make it bigger. He argues with someone? Maybe it almost comes to blows, especially since his crime was to hit a police officer. He rejects someone out of his life? Maybe he leaves them mid-conversation or roasts them or just loudly scream at them.

The first time I was given this kind of advice was in dance class, where I had to make my movements bigger and bolder, so the people in the back could see what I was doing. In this case, by making your arguments and emotions bigger, readers who are only half paying attention become riveted, especially the emotions part.