CLN's Seasonal Reviews (CLOSED)

Turning a nerd into a bad boy - by Mumal16

REVIEW DONE BY : Krippy93

Chapters read: 1 – 5

First impression :

The first thing I noticed while reading your book is that the POV is first person and from the eyes of Malory, our lovely aggressive high school girl. Thing is that with first person POVs the inner voice is very strong, but descriptions are extremely weak. I'll go deeper into this later on.

Chapters analysis :

In your first chapters you tend to repeat some words a bit too much, so I suggest checking them quick to spot them and maybe rephrase the sentences or choose a synonym. Honestly, the first chapters have a weak narration style for me, not intriguing enough: you start with a fight where you present your characters, but this scene feels a bit cliché and honestly uninteresting.

Malory and her twin are kicking a guy's ass off, but their motive is actually kinda stupid. They're acting on behalf of their friend, who has been heartbroken by the guy, but why punching him that bad? School fights are super cringey, if you wanna go for a threatening character at least give her a strong motive to be aggressive. I think words can be scarier than beating if the attitude is intimidating but reading this first scene I just thought "wow, boring shit".

The good side is that you write very good dialogue lines, which I appreciated as much as I loved the side characters, which are very well made. It is evident that the cast is complex, and you made an effort in characterizing them well but watch out for clichés (at least if you are not planning on putting them on purpose) and cringey scenes.

Fast forward to soccer game with Louis. He already has scored a point but now Malory needs to score two to win. While she's lost in thought she scores a goal, but you don't describe it happening at all. Honestly, it is not possible that she, lost in thought and with lower abilities compared to Louis in that particular sport, managed to perform that stunt without even realizing. I would expect her to concentrate a lot and you to describe her tactic and her actions in detail.

Then, when they start the last match, the description of what happens is too fast and poorly detailed; it is evident that you don't know much about that particular sport. I suggest doing a little bit of research first and to describe the actions precisely, like it was an action scene. This way you'll engage your readers more, otherwise the chapter feels rushed and confusing.

"So I do what I believed I could and make the goal" what kind of line is this to describe a match? What did she do exactly? If you describe it so poorly it seems like she doesn't even know what she's doing, which is wrong (because if she's strong she KNOWS what she's doing).

Fast forward again to Zayn's makeover scene, which is the last one I read. It was very fun to read and at this point your readers are surely engaged in the story, but I have some comments to improve it and make it less cliché. First of all, if Zayn is a nerd it's kinda strange that he has a super fit body. It's okay to be lean and even a bit muscular but super fit? Not exactly nerdy.

Plus, generally speaking Zayn doesn't give off the "nerd" vibe. Is he called a nerd just because he wears glasses and has good grades? Does he like videogames, books, internet culture? Does he do weird jokes only nerds understand? Does he wear nerd brands like Atari shirts, Super Mario goodies and such? Because from the look of it, he doesn't. He's just a normal guy, not a nerd. He doesn't even speak nerdy! True nerds have trouble approaching people, especially girls. It is okay for him to approach casually Malory because she's quite the tomboy of the situation, but I wouldn't expect him to act in a super-hot-guy way out of the blue. He should have issues dealing with her, maybe you could make him do some nerdy jokes only he understands so Malory could think "What the hell man, you have to learn how to talk with girls, you can't annoy them with fucking Calculus jokes".

He should be less cocky, timid, and only after slowly opening up thanks to Malory that built his confidence, he could successfully become more skilled in the secret art of approaching a girl. Take for example the situation where Malory checks him out: his comeback was smooth, but he should have been timid and surprised about her suddenly coming close to him and checking him out instead. Only after this he could have joked about it the way he did or, even better, he could have joked about it another day, completely out of the blue. Keep in mind that nerdy people are introverts and observe other people a lot, they remember things and joke about episodes happened like a week before in a witty way. Joking the way you portrayed it I think it should be a development to show slowly, not a starting point!

Overall :

I think that if you adjust the weak points that feel super cliché, you'll get a refined work for the Wattys. For the genre you're trying to compete it's fitting and definitely engaging but try to make it more "real" and less "fictional". Aim for a slow burn, for slow development that builds up chapter after chapter! The idea is intriguing for sure but you need to polish it a bit.

I hope my analysis helped you out!