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The Most Beautiful Moment in Life [Nika]

Book: The Most Beautiful Moment in Life
Author: jkuromi874
Reviewer: Nikachu22
Chapters read: 5
Main focus: Character portrayal, overall enjoyment and whatever other thing you decide to review.

I notice that you often say the same thing twice which creates an issue with the flow of reading as well as diminishing the emotions you’re trying to put out there. I’ll take Sam’s chapter as an example but I noticed this throughout the entire read.

1. She felt as though the song was drawing her in, inviting her to follow it through the tangle of abandoned structures and quiet machinery.
2. The song seemed to be calling to her, a phantom of remembrance of better days long since gone.
1. She didn't notice, though, that the lovely, ominous piano music that had been playing had abruptly ceased--
2. The song seemed to have stopped in the middle of a note--
3. The abrupt silence was startling--
1. She was startled to hear someone slam the piano keys with their fist at that very moment, the discordant note echoing through the darkness.
2. She was astonished by the sound, a sudden intrusion that reminded her of the terrifying noises she had heard as a child.
1. For what seemed like an eternity, Sam and Jackie stood still, their gazes locked in a wordless conversation full of unspoken feelings.
2. They felt as though there was a physical silence surrounding them, a cocoon of mute words.

All of these sentences are repeating the same thing/have the same undertone, just written differently. You could get the idea across without repeating it if you use a little wordplay. Even certain words used are repeated. If I were you, I’d keep away from doing this when it comes to trying to express emotions as saying things repeatedly may take points off on the emotional pull.

What I noticed is you often use the character's looks or the setting to paint us character portrayal. Saying something like, 1. Her shiny dark brown hair had come loose from her ponytail, framing her face in an untamed, wild way that reflected the anguish inside of her.

This isn’t so much you portraying a character, just telling us things to compare so that we could decipher the portrayal ourselves, but this leaves a wall between readers and the characters because you cannot leave it up to us to make our own emotions if you're trying to show us. We might not care at all about Jackie and Sam’s situation. Giving us comparisons only does nothing because, for one, we do not know these characters. It’s like meeting strangers in real life, for us to feel we have to be drawn in. (Not talking about empaths.) So you want to focus on an emotionally compelling setting.

Telling us will not give you the satisfaction you desire.

So instead of telling us… what you need to focus on is showing us. This requires writing from a different angle. Your goal is to write and paint the characters themselves as you would elaborate on whatever emotion they are going through. What you’re doing is painting the setting and incorporating the characters and then giving us the setting that is supposed to work in place of character portrayal. While it’s not bad to use the setting, constantly telling us is bad.

Do you want us to feel Jane, Jazz, Vicky, Jackie and Sam? Then show that.

Her dark brown shiny hair had fallen loose, framing her face and hiding the darkness that shaded beneath her eyes. Her pupils were dilated, quivering lips and chattered teeth caressing the silence that stood between them. A fallen doll disapproved of by society became the story behind that frame. A mere epitome of the lack of care that flowed through her blood. Jackie blinked rather slowly, jitters following her smooth fingertips left rattled when her digits tightly clenched a nearby napkin as if she could not visually see it. One she had searched for a few seconds before cradling it as if but a lifeline of her plaguing emotions.