Everything Has Changed By alwaysinWRITERSBLOCK
Reviewer: RavingBlack
PLOT
Is there a clear goal/direction?
Yes, I know that the end goal is Silas and Oliver's romantic relationship. Because you have listed your book's genre as YA romance, I will evaluate Everything Has Changed according to a traditional romance plot structure. This means that the goal of the plot is for Silas and Oliver to "get together". You've explained to me that the goal deviates a bit which is fine if you don't want to strictly follow the traditional structure. However, my expectations were that the plot would be tracking the two main lead's romantic relationship which I think is true of all romance plots.
Is the plot connected to the characters?
My definition for a plot being connected to a character is for that character's desires and fears to be tied in the events of the plot. By pursuing the plot, the character will naturally be pursuing their true desire as well. Please see the character section for a definition of "fears and desires".
Fear and desire is important because it provides the context for why readers should be emotionally invested in the plot and what happens to a character. In other words, it's the reason why they should care about anything that happens to this character at all. For example, imagine I told you that a teenage girl's parents abandoned her. Sad, right? But you don't really have a reason to care because you don't know the girl, and an orphan is just an orphan. No one bursts into tears at the sight of an orphan. If anything, orphans make people more uncomfortable than sad.
However, what if I told you that the same girl has always wanted to be close friends with her classmates but is deeply scared that they would abandon her? Then, the death of her parents had a special impact on this girl, specifically, because the people she loved had left her suddenly. Her worst fear had come true and intensified, and now the obstacles to achieve her desire are more insurmountable than ever. Now, you have a more substantial reason to feel sad. This is all a very wordy way to explain that I don't have a reason to care that Oliver's best friend left town without telling him. Why should I care? Give me a reason to care.
I'm aware that you provide the context for why we should care later on, but it only comes after that sad moment. If you don't provide us a reason before you spring that sad event, Silas's anguish can make readers feel locked out of the story, essentially. None of us can participate in the emotions he's feeling, so that means we just feel bored and are waiting for him to get over it. The plot is connected to Silas's desire and fear, but it's critical that you establish that before any emotional scenes, so they can have the desired impact.
I myself have written plenty of characters like Silas, and writing a character in this way makes Silas at best come across as uninteresting and at worst annoying. I say this to you as a writer who's received this feedback before, and I give it to you with the best intentions. I do think some minor changes to how you convey Silas's character would clear up this small flaw.
Is the pacing rushed or dragged out?
The pacing is a bit messy and dragged out. Usually, the inciting incident is supposed to be the moment that the two love interests meet. Oliver is supposed to throw Silas out of his comfort zone—force him to break away from his status quo and embark on a journey of change. To make an inciting incident like this work, you spend some time before the inciting incident crafting a hook. You establish your characters there and show exactly why these two characters will have a unique impact on each other.
You've already shown why Silas and Oliver will have a special impact on each other; Silas has totally given up on any kindness from his hometown and is ready to leave it behind, and Oliver who has nothing but kindness will challenge his belief that everyone Silas will ever meet will disappoint him. However, you give us a reason to care about their first meeting only after they have already met. The inciting incident would be more impactful if you give us these reasons prior to their meeting, so we will have a reason to care about Silas and Oliver meeting each other. Your inciting incident doesn't have to be flashy or super dramatic, but your readers should grasp that it is a significant moment in regards to the plot. They have met, and there is no return to the old world where everyone has always let Silas down because now Oliver is here to challenge that belief. The rest of the plot follows how Silas will deal with this and eventually change himself as a result. As it stands, their first meeting lacks too much significance or impact. Their consecutive meetings are similarly uneventful aside from Oliver rescuing him from bullies and also picking him up from the roadside.
Another concern in regard to the general timeline of important plot points is that the main object of the plot—Silas and Oliver's relationship—seems to have taken a back seat to Silas's problems. Of course, spending a scene or two establishing Silas's situation is necessary, and I think that using Silas's plan to run away as a plot device to bring him together with Oliver is also very necessary. However, I think too many scenes come before that essential moment where the plot finds the excuse to make Silas and Oliver spend time together. The book as of now reads like the main object of the plot is Silas finding freedom instead of Silas and Oliver getting together, so it doesn't feel like a romance book in that sense. Although Silas can and should have his own goals/motivations, the plot of the novel is a separate thing altogether. I suggest defining the plot's goal and prioritizing that in the narrative.
That aside, I think that you spend a little too long describing things that have little value in terms of plot development or characterization. For example, in chapter two, you walk us through Silas waking up, getting ready for school, walking to school, going to school, talking to a friend, and going to class. Much of this list doesn't feel very important for you to show to the readers, and I felt like you could have cut or summarized nearly all of it in a sentence or two and begin with his bullying scene with Damien. It would be tedious to list every single scene that feels a little too long or strays a little off focus in describing the weather, so I would just suggest that you ask yourself what you're trying to do with any given scene. Are you trying to show that Silas is dissatisfied with his home life? How many words can you accomplish this in? Can you demonstrate this in a paragraph or two?
Now, I'm not saying that you try to condense all your important details within a paragraph or two. If it's something that you or your readers would find interesting, then absolutely write more about that something. However, you also need to account for other things such as spending too much time on a detail that doesn't really matter too much in the grand scheme of things. Being careful with your words is especially important in the opening chapters, so choose your priorities carefully.
Is the plot compelling to root for?
Not as much as it could be. The plot could be more compelling if you strengthened Silas's emotional connection to the plot and streamlined the pacing a bit.
CHARACTERS
Are characters' desires and fears clear?
A character's desire is what they truly want and is the motivation behind their actions. A character's fear is what they're running from over the whole plot whilst pursuing their desire. It's important to show these so readers can better see how a character will experience development and also make them more interesting.
Based on what I've read, I think that Silas's true desire is to be free, and his deepest fear is of imperfection (?). His desire seems clear enough, but fleshing out his fear a little more can provide tension and internal conflict. What is the deep-seated fear stopping Silas from obtaining what he wants?
I'll make up an example of how fear interacts with desire. Say Silas desires true freedom, so he tries to obtain that by moving in with Oliver and exploring a side of himself that he could never show his family or peers. In that case, a fitting fear could be his fear of being imperfect or 'wrong' that manifests in his internalized homophobia which stops him from fully embracing his desire for freedom. You already have the elements of fear and desire in your draft, but if you manipulate them just right, you can pit fear and desire against each other to create internal conflict that would naturally lead to character development.
On the other hand, I have no clue what Oliver desires or fears. You don't have to define these things for every single character in your book, but major characters that have their own character arcs do need them, especially romantic interests in a romance novel. I think that you could improve Oliver's likability and relatability if you gave him an internal struggle between his fears and desires, too.
Are characteristics shown and not told?
Yes. It's easy to tell that Oliver's easygoing, friendly, and a bit of an airhead. Silas is perfectionistic, somewhat easily attached, and introverted. I have little complaint here.
Do they show development?
I define development as a character's steps to changing their behavior to overcome their fears in order to obtain their goals. To do this, you need to establish what it is about Silas that has been holding him back from his goal of being free all this time. If the thing—his fear—is his fear of imperfection, then this makes sense. He cannot bring himself to challenge his parents because a son that isn't obedient and well-behaved is flawed, and he cannot accept his sexuality because he perceives homosexuality as a flaw.
Silas shows a small sign of development when he decides to accept Oliver's help, but how does this play into his fear of imperfection? The reason Silas doesn't want to accept help from Oliver is because he's afraid to impose. I think that it would be more meaningful to Silas's character if you changed that reason to Silas is afraid to seem pathetic, pitiful, flawed etc. in front of a stranger. Him overcoming that fear thanks to Oliver encouraging him to be unashamed of seeking help when he needs it would then demonstrate his character development. Perhaps this is already what you intended to show through that scene, but I found it more vague than I would like. To show Silas's character development, you need to show what part of his behavior he is changing in very clear terms.
Concerning Oliver, he shows no development because the narrative has not defined a fear for him to overcome.
ROMANCE
Does the relationship cause change and conflicts within both characters?
It has the potential to. In regards to Silas, there's a clear opportunity for him to work past his fears of imperfection and abandonment through his relationship with Oliver. However, I don't think you write enough of this as you could. To generate conflict and change from a relationship, Silas's fear should be the thing holding him back from pursuing Oliver in a romantic way, and a relationship with Oliver would fulfill Silas's desire for freedom (freedom to love who he wants). This would naturally lead readers to be emotionally invested in their relationship and root for it to happen.
With Oliver, the answer to the above question is no. I suggest that you flesh out what it is that Oliver wants and fears as you have with Silas and consider how those things would play into a romantic relationship with Silas.
Is attraction believable?
This section evaluates whether the attraction on either side is believably driven by the character's themselves or whether the attraction seems forced by the plot.
I can believe why Silas might like Oliver given that he's so nice when everyone else in his life is abusive or disappointing. However, I think that you need more justification than that to base Silas's attraction on. Anyone can be nice. Anyone can strike up a friendly conversation with Silas, so what is the innate quality in Oliver that Silas likes? For example, Oliver could be a very carefree person that is very forgiving of his own and others' mistakes, and that personality would speak to Silas's extreme sensitivity to perceived imperfection. In that case, attraction would be very believable.
On Oliver's part, I have even less idea why he treats Silas the way he does. Friendly chats and rescuing from bullies—I can buy that because those are things an average person would do. However, Oliver often goes out of his way to interact with Silas such as when he struck up a conversation with Silas in the cafe before he ran away. It could be because Oliver is more friendly than the average person and is eager to make friends, but it's difficult to tell. Oliver going out of his way to pick up Silas from the side of the road and setting him up in his house is another implausible event. The only way to explain all of this behavior is that Oliver is naturally an extremely generous person that does everything possible to help a total stranger. It's not as if you cannot ever write a character like this, but these types of people are so rare that it feels unrealistic even if Oliver had some reason to like Silas. Instead of believing Oliver is a naturally helpful person, readers will perceive this as the plot forcing Oliver to do things just to progress the plot. I say this about Oliver because I have also written a character just like him. No matter how much I emphasized how helpful my Oliver-character was, his actions still seemed unnatural when my Silas-character didn't provide much reason to motivate such actions.
I suggest a few things to remedy this. You could establish a solid reason for Oliver to want to go out of his way to help Silas; maybe Silas once unwittingly did him a huge favor in the past that he wants to repay. Another way is to make Silas do things to drive the plot as well; maybe Silas makes a serious effort to kindle a friendship with one of the few people to show him kindness.
Beyond the reasons why Oliver might go out of his way to help Silas, I also don't see why he'd like him in a romantic sense. Of course, people in real life can fall in love for simple reasons such as "this person has the type of look I like" or "this person is very nice and funny". However, you have the chance to be more profound or poetic when it comes to fiction, and that's the reason why anyone reads romance, right? What is it about Silas that attracts Oliver? I want you to consider this question for Oliver, too.
Is the relationship compelling?
Not really. For me, a romance is only compelling because of how it affects the characters in question. If the relationship is not based on believable attraction to the other person, and the relationship does not generate interesting internal conflict and development within both parties, then I cannot be compelled by it. I believe that you have the pieces to make a great romance, but you need to flesh out the characters more in order to make it compelling.
GRAMMAR
Does the grammar hinder reading?
I evaluate this section based on whether your grammar's bad enough that it hurts my ability to understand the narrative, and if you pass that, I evaluate whether your command of conventions is skilled enough to add to the reading experience.
The grammar conventions could use some polishing up especially when it comes to incorrectly used dialogue tags (explained further in below sessions), commas, and periods. Sometimes they're misused or you put a comma where you need a period or vice-versa. The mispellings, too, need some brushing out. These are problems that just need a quick review of comma and period usage rules and a little line-editing to fix, but you don't need to bother with line-editing if you're not planning to publish this particular draft. As it stands, the grammar errors don't stop me from understanding the narrative, but they don't add to the experience either. Punctuation, syntax, and sentence structure can all be used to elevate a narrative, too. This sort of treads into writing style territory, but the two overlap.
I notice that you mainly stick to commas, periods, ellipses, exclamation marks, and question marks for punctuation marks. These are the most common punctuation marks, but I think it's worth learning how to use colons, semicolons, and dashes, too. For example, you have this sentence in chapter 4, "That was one reason why he was so close to Karen, she actually acted like she cared about him." The comma is used incorrectly here and instead calls for a period. However, you put a comma there because these two sentences are related, and you didn't want to totally separate them with a period. The semicolon fits much better here because it portrays a bigger pause than a comma but not as big of a pause as a period, and the semicolon connects two sentences with related ideas. The sentence reads better as "That was one reason why he was so close to Karen; she actually acted like she cared about him." It seems like nitpicking, but sticking to just commas or periods restricts how much control you have over how a sentence flows and leads to the problem you have with your original sentence. You didn't have the tools you needed to make the sentence read the way you wanted it to. I suggest incorporating not only semicolons but the full range of punctuation marks to give yourself more control over your writing.
EXTRA NOTES
Is the book inclusive or insensitive?
I took some issue with how you portrayed the girl that Silas met in the bathroom. Silas stereotypes her at a glance as some popular, conceited, and shallow girl who's even blonde and putting on makeup to boot. I'm not sure why Silas immediately stuck her with such a bad image or why you validated him by making his assumptions exactly right. It tasted a little misogynistic to me especially when there was no need to insert such a character or such a scene here. If you wanted to convey that Silas hates his school, the people in it, and their behavior, then you have done so, but you have also painted him as somewhat sexist. I suggest displaying elements of school life that Silas in particular would really dislike. For example, because Silas is introverted, avoidant of crowds, and generally nervous, what if the school had a very academically competitive culture that stresses him out, and it was a huge school that had crowds everywhere he went? I suggest that you consider how and why you decide to incorporate an element such as stereotypes. Stereotypes aren't always a bad thing because they can serve as satire, parody, subverted expectations, or something like that, but I suggest that you ask yourself if it's the most effective way to get across your point or if you can create a better device or element.
I also have a suggestion that you could put some trigger warnings for homophobic language/bullying, the eating disorder, as well as for the f-slur that pops up here and there. Because they're hard to read about and could trigger readers sensitive to that, I really recommend that. That said, I think the homophobia and the eating disorders tie in well with Silas's character. It shows that he's extremely sensitive to what he thinks are "flaws".
Something else I noticed with Everything Has Changed was that it seems like most of the characters are white, able-bodied, neurotypical, and cishet(mostly). I'm not saying that no one in your book can be those four things or that everyone must have at least one marginalized identity, but I think that there's a missed opportunity here. The reason for including different types of ethnicities, sexualities, disabilities, etc. is to create depth in that character. For example, what if Silas is autistic? Being berated for all of his autistic behaviors would tie into his fear of imperfection, and Oliver helping Silas with his masking would play into his desire to be free. His autism is an added dimension to Silas's internal conflict that makes him a deeper and more relatable character. And another example can be Silas being an adopted black kid. Being black in a predominantly white town would obviously subject him to a lot of scrutiny and probably bullying; thus, his fear of being flawed gains a new dimension. I'm sure you get the point by now.
Paying attention to these things concerning identity is important not because you need diversity brownie points for having one of each kind but because incorporating these identities enrich your story. Everyone's lives in the real world have been impacted by their own identities, and that makes people complex, interesting, and beautiful. If you have the opportunity to create such a layer to your character, I see very little reason why you shouldn't.
Is the writing style purposeful and revealing?
One of the things I noticed about the writing style is that it feels somewhat awkward from how unsubtly certain things are written when I think those things would be demonstrated better as unsaid subtext. For example, Silas has a scene where he's eating with his family, and you sprinkle in some subtextual clues about how he feels about them like how his mother doesn't meet his eyes, and his pointing that out to us indicates that it bothers him. Or about the unspoken, unpleasant incident Silas referenced when he hoped he hadn't interrupted his father's video call. This already tells us plenty about his disinterested, neglectful, superficial parents. Just those few details are enough to tell us everything we need to know about the family. After the subtext that you painted for us, there's this paragraph:
"Awh, that's unfortunate," Kristina said, fake frowning. He didn't know why he even bothered. Still, there was still a longing in his chest that yearned for attention or even an ounce of affection from them. It seemed like his heart would never give up when his mind had lost hope so long ago. Part of him knew they would never really care, but he held onto that hope like a lifeline.
This paragraph renders useless all the subtext that you wrote because why would we need to read all of that subtext when we could just read the last two sentences of this paragraph? Part of the appeal of subtextual writing is that readers can feel smart for putting together the clues instead of the characters dictating to readers exactly what to think about this character. It's a way to engage readers' thinking, and that's how you let readers participate in your story. Whenever you're writing a scene, I suggest considering "what do I want to convey in this scene?" and then "how should I best portray this?".
I notice that you use dialogue tags a little unconventionally. Dialogue tags are used to describe the way a character spoke or modify the way they said something. You often use verbs in your dialogues that don't quite make sense to me and would probably be better off as a sentence by itself. For example, you have the line, ""Hi," Silas smiled properly, straightening his back." It is hard for me to imagine how Silas could smile a hi, so I think that it might be best to just leave the comma as a period because ""Hi." Silas smiled properly, straightening his back."" is less distracting/confusing. Moreover, another line of dialogue is improperly written which was, ""Liv! Liv!," Silas shouted through his teeth, worrying he would disrupt someone." You can still attach dialogue tags to dialogue that ends in an exclamation or question mark, so you don't need to add a comma. If you want more details on how to use dialogue tags, or attributive tags as Grammarly calls them, then look at the punctuation guide on Grammarly.com. You could also refer to published books to see more examples on proper usage.
That aside, I do like how you wrote Silas and Oliver's character voices and gave them different ways of speaking. I don't see that often, so it was refreshing.
ENGAGEMENT
Am I inclined to read further?
No.
What makes me want to read more or less?
What makes me want to read less is that the plot seems aimless even if the end goal is apparent. After Silas moves in, his goal seems to evaporate. He has basically achieved his desire for freedom after moving out, so now I don't know what he's working toward next, and the tension drops significantly. When Damien is revealed as his roommate, Silas is again motivated to do something, but Silas's plan to get around this is similarly ambiguous. Damien's not blackmailing him or ratting him out, so it seems like Silas is planning to get over this obstacle by talking through their differences. This plan doesn't serve Silas's character arc at all; talking things out with Damien doesn't seem to serve Silas's desire to be free, and talking things out does not force Silas to overcome his fears. The way the plot is going now doesn't generate character development or tension, so that makes me want to read less.
The romance also doesn't feel very substantial either because the fundamentals of an exciting romance are missing or undefined; however, you do have the necessary pieces to make a compelling romance, so a little bit more contemplation can improve it.
I advise that you spend some more time with your characters and consider how their desires and fears interact with the plot and their relationship. I also think it would improve your pacing and tension if Silas had a more tangible plan to obtain his desire. Running away from home to live with his sister is a tangible plan. Moving in with Oliver and spending your days cooking and painting together is less of a plan or at least one that entails struggle and character development.