Fairy Night Awards || CLOSED

BEST PROTAGONIST WINNERS + REVIEWS

The same applies to this story. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Nathan. Nathan's internal conflict and his desire to not be viewed as a weakling was fascinating to me. He makes mistakes and falters all the time, and he even doesn't really like Zara that much but still doesn't want to appear weak. Seeing the internal side of that conflict was fun to read about and also made for an interesting character arc. Like in chapter 11 where Nathan admits he's scared. That was a powerful moment I wasn't expecting to see.

Something I also really like is how Zara is flawed and sometimes falls into the very thing she wants to destroy. There's political commentary on racism and the treatment of different skin colors in society, particularly by white people toward minorities. It's a very important topic that needs to be discussed, and I love how Zara is passionate about it and decides to stand up. It's inspiring, motivational, and genuine. That opening scene where she sees the impacts of what whites have done was heartbreaking and super effective for setting up her motivation. Not to mention the imagery and repetition of the dialogue made it feel very haunting.

Going back into Zara as a person, she falters and makes mistakes, just like Nathan. She judges Nathan based on the color of his skin despite how she doesn't want people to judge her based on her complexion. It's a small moment, but it goes to show how hatred can so easily blind others. At the same time, you keep the focus on the main commentary with those subtle sub-topics in there too. Those small moments are sprinkled throughout but make the narrative feel so complex and alive.

Zara is a great protagonist who is strong but doesn't feel over-the-top or too strong in any way. She still makes mistakes and falters, but her heart is passionate and she's genuine. I really like her character, and I also really like Nathan!

My main recommendation would be to slow down in some areas and reword certain sentences to make them more readable, that way the audience can understand what's going on and what the characters are saying. For example, the first sentence in chapter 2, "You always know that this is going to be it but then you also know that this it can never fit into your life and yet, you can't do anything about it." This sentence is very long and lacks punctuation, so it's hard to understand. Here's one alternative: "You always know this is going to be it, but you also know it can never fit into your life, and yet you can't do anything about it." Notice how much I trimmed out of that sentence and how I rearranged the punctuation. If you read sentence 1 out loud, then sentence 2, you'll notice how the trimmed words and punctuation make sentence 2 flow better.

That's just one alternative so I'm not saying go with it or listen to me blindly. I encourage you to play around with it and find what works for you and your writing style!

Considering you have a supernatural conflict, understanding is crucial for readers if they're going to cheer for the characters or not. That's why I very strongly suggest reading sentences out loud and slowing down while writing so you can see if you can split up sentences more and/or add more punctuation to help sentences flow better.

This is a nitpick but there were also some strange formatting moments where sometimes there were indents, sometimes there weren't, and sometimes dialogue was even center aligned for some reason. I would suggest being consistent with where you align your text and if you're using indents or not. It was hard on my eyes to jump back and force because of the inconsistent spacing. I would recommend not center aligning anything and removing indents since Wattpad isn't very indent-friendly. Again, that's a nitpick and not a big deal, but it did make it a bit harder to read at times. I hope that makes sense!

2nd Place