Halfpenny OC Reviews

Mary Bolding

This character is brought to you by: 12YearsInAzkaban

Fandom: Original Story(Follows a girl in 1899 New York City and her struggles to keep her family afloat in a city run by the wealthy that depends on child labor to survive.

That's cool, I'm not a fan of historical fiction but I definitely admire people who have the guts to tackle it. There's a lot of research that has to go into everything when you write historical pieces.

Name: Mary Bolding

This reads like it would be a fairly standard name for the time period.

Age: 16

Lots of main characters are females, but it's not big deal in this case.

Gender/Sexuality: Female/Heterosexual(she/her)

Fair enough.

Appearance: Mary has long black hair that she normally keeps pinned up so it's out of her way. Her eyes are blue and she has freckles. Mary's pale and her skin is always covered with dirt. Mary is very thin and is missing the top of her left hand pinky finger.

Okay, the long hair fits with the time period, although I can't stop envisioning a bad dye job when I try to imagine someone in the 1800's with black hair. I dunno why. If you're going to make her pale then maybe you should explain why she's so pale, for instance, maybe she's sickly.

Personality: Mary is a very hard worker and she always puts her family's needs before her own. Mary tends to be passive, she knows her place and accepts it without arguing. She doesn't really argue other than with her father.

I like that you haven't gone with the popular route of making your female character a defiant spitfire, but at the same time you're going to have to be very careful how you write someone with this personality. I know from personal experience that it can be difficult to make a naturally passive character into someone the readers can root for. You will need to give her enough of something (determination, anger, ect.) to drive her, and to give the readers something to identify with when they're reading her.

Backstory: In order to help support her family, Mary started working in a textile factory at age 8. When she was 10 her mother died while giving birth to Mary's 5th sibling. Mary had to start working nights at the factory so she could watch the kids during the day. At 11, she and her 9 year old sister, Bridget, were both working. One day Bridget fell asleep and fell onto one of the machine and died, Mary had witnessed it. At 13 Mary got a finger stuck in a machine, losing half of it. Mary lost her job and started doing laundry and making artificial flowers at home for money. Now she and her father have a rough relationship because he made her three brothers start factory work too. Mary knows they need the money, but she doesn't want what happened to Bridget to happen again.

What where the father and brothers doing before they started working at the factory? Where does Mary get material for the artificial flowers? How is Mary effected by Bridget's death, and the loss of her finger? This backstory seems to be fairly accurate, if grim, considering the time setting, but with all the strain your putting on this (fairly young) character, it's going to be tough to walk that line between making her irritatingly whiny, and callously glossing over what she's been through. I'm not saying you should change the backstory, I'm just pointing out that you have to watch what you write. More research!

Strengths: Mary pays great attention to detail and she has a fantastic memory. She's very good with finding solutions and creative ways for her family to make money.

That all fits with her backstory, I think you should also mention this creativity in her personality.

Weaknesses: Because she cares so much about her family, Mary tends to overlook her own wellbeing in order to tend to her family. She also has never had a formal education and she can't read or write.

Fair. For some reason, Mary doesn't strike me as the kind of person who's super concerned about her family, especially her father and brothers, but that's an easy fix as long as that's how you view her. You could probably add a couple physical strengths and weaknesses, like maybe she's particularly frail from years of hard factory work and poor nourishment.

.: Scores and Feedback :.

Originality Score: 55%- This may seem harsh, given that Mary is actually an alright character. But, all I can think of is a British version of one of the main characters off of Molly the American Girl. This character has been done before, and your going to have to work hard to make her your own, but I think you can handle it.

Interest Score: 45%- Like I said before, historical fiction isn't my thing, and this character has been done before. It would take a lot of convincing to get me to pick up her story.

Suggestions for Improvement: Mary needs more fleshing out. It feels like you read a bunch of American Girl novels, watched a couple movies, then picked out the common traits of the characters and splashed a bit of your own ideas in there. Take Mary, and make her yours, build her up and up and up, make me care about her.