Reviewer: Lina (linalagosya)

Review: Her Brother's Keeper: A Story of Alpha Centauri

Client: arkham71

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Title/Cover:

I think the title suits a sci-fi novel when put altogether. It gives the sense that maybe this is one of many stories set in this world, which is cool. With just "Her Brother's Keeper," however, it does give a bit of a sense of Jodi Picoult novel or something of the same ilk. I would give a think to see if there's some way to insert some kind of hint to the world and genre of the story within that primary title.

I can appreciate what you were trying to do with the cover, but aesthetically I have to be honest, it's not great. The lettering feels very dated and hard to read, and the world we're seeing isn't a dynamic enough image, nor does it tell us what the story is about. Maybe take a look at some of your favorite sci-fi novels (of this day and age) and see if that inspires you to go a different direction with it.

Summary:

The summary is a bit long for Wattpad but if it was on the back of the book I think the length suits. So that's just a matter of what you're aiming for! For the most part I think the information you're giving away is the right kind. My main suggestion would be to start with character (and give her a name), and then go into world, and then go into plot. "Immerse yourself in a world" feels like you talking to the reader, trying to entice them. Instead of using that gimmick, jump into the story synopsis. "All Christiana has ever known is the dystopian society she's grown up in...." etc.

Some things I think you need to include to make the synopsis make sense: why her brother needs protecting, and what the choice is that she's facing exactly. It's a bit unclear as is. Other details can be cut in the service of this. For example, we don't need to know her brother is entering junior high, as that has literally no bearing on the synopsis. Pull it out and it doesn't change anything for the reader as they don't yet know the significance of that. The other part that is unclear is if she's competing against her sister or not. What are the actual stakes - what might she lose? That part I don't understand from reading this.

Grammar:

Don't really have anything to say for this category. It was spot on. There were no noticeable or repeated errors. A typo here and there, but they were very sporadic. A proofread would take care of them easily.

Writing Style:

Overall, your writing itself, at the sentence level, was good. There were no big errors, no odd sentence structures, no awkward run on sentences. In terms of mechanics, your writing is solid and it's not a slog to read, which is nice. That being said, your writing style is so expositional and so plot-y, it makes the writing a bit hard to engage with.

It's okay to just imply things about the world or show it through scenes, dialogue, character interaction, action, etc without feeling like you have to explain it all in an expository dump, which is what all of your chapters are. I'll speak to this a bit below in the plot section, but the only actual action that really happens in the first eight chapters is that Christiana leaves school and goes home, has a talk with her mom, then goes to bed. She has a few conversations sprinkled throughout. And that's it. That's eight whole chapters of your story. About 16,000 words of your story, at least. Probably more. That's a lot to devote to so little plot. And there isn't much character building in the process. It's all just explaining every minute detail of the world. And it's great that you know the world. You did the solid work of building this whole society. The culture, the history, the science. That's awesome! But we don't need to hear every detail of it. Just tell the reader what they NEED to know. And try to do it in ways that sneaks the information in or makes it quick. Give them a little trust too. Don't feel like if you show something through a character's dialogue that you then also have to explain it thoroughly in the prose.

A lot of writing advice suggests switching up words to use for the same thing so your writing doesn't get repetitive. Although this can be useful, it can also complicate writing that doesn't need to be complicated. Be careful of using synonyms too much, as they can cause confusion. For example, in Ch. 1, you use "sensei" "lecturer" "teacher" "instructor" and "tutor," I believe all to describe one person. This gives the sense that there are multiple people involved. It seems that she's talking about several different people, to the point where I wasn't quite sure if it was just one or not. Just giving the character one moniker and then referring to them by "she" "he" "they" or whatever their pronoun will help fix this confusion. In a similar vein, constantly referring to characters by different nicknames, by their hair color, etc. can be awkward and make us feel disconnected from the characters. It's okay to just use names. You have a lot of women in the story, understandably, so I can see how it can get tricky. But simplicity will go a much further way than complicating things with as many synonyms as you can think of.

This might be more preference but I think it is also a good note. I would refrain from comparing things in description to the old world. It pulls me out of the story a bit. Instead, I think it would be a neat exercise if you tried to describe things in a way that made it clear what the aesthetic was without needing to fall back on "it looks like this old thing from Earth." Similar to some phrases that feel a little too of-our-world. I particularly noticed this in chapter four with phrases like "gothic lolita" or "Asian persuasion."

There are several instances per chapter where you could use a lot less words than you do, and it would help the pacing. For a random example of this, in ch. 8 you write, "Christiana immediately responded by exclaiming..." You lose nothing by shortening that to, "Christiana exclaimed..." either before or after the dialogue. This will help trim things down a bit and give us more of a sense of being "in scene." It will pull us into the story more. I would do a whole read through once you complete this draft and just see where you're being unnecessarily wordy. Reading out loud will help!

Be careful of overusing phrases or words, such as "after all" or "however."

If you're going to be positing that this world spells out sounds of things, wondering why the "H" in H-too-oh" isn't phonetically spelled out? Seems a tad inconsistent with the language you're creating.

Worldbuilding:

As I said above, this piece of your story is truly magnificent. As it should be for this genre. You have fleshed out this world so completely. I fully believed it as if it were real, and could start to anticipate the rules of the world very clearly. The society especially, with the women in charge and the eugenics and all that, was a very cool part of the story. And it felt very motivated by their circumstances on this planet. Really good work there.

But, as also stated above, there's so much world info-dumping. You could really dial it back about 60-70%, I think, and still have plenty of exposition to go around. The sci-fi and fantasy genres have a reputation for sometimes being a bit... prose-y, to put it nicely, lol. And it's fine to go into long paragraphs when necessary or do a lot of description. That's a part of the genre, but it has to be spread out. And it has to feel MOTIVATED and NECESSARY. You can get away with it not being one or the other every now and then, but not every other paragraph, as it basically is now.

Characters:

To be candid, I wanted to care about Christiana much more than I did. She's such a cipher. Right now she is a lens through which we can get information about the world. Beyond that, we don't get a lot from her. What are her strengths, her flaws? What does she want most? What is the arc that she's going to go on? What is she going to learn? Right now she seems kind of perfect, while at the same time not being particularly special in any discernible way (people say she's special, it seems, but I'm not seeing it in scenes). Which is not ever really what you want in a protagonist. Unless the point is that they're about to have their downfall, which doesn't seem like where you're headed.

You seem to be leading up to her having some kind of big choice between her sister and her brother (I'm getting this from the summary, not quite as much from the story). Is her only characteristic that she loves her siblings? Is that all that is being challenged? If that is in fact so (which feels light to me), then we need to see how much she loves her siblings. Not be told about it. She has one tiny scene with her brother in the first ten chapters, and I don't really get a sense at all from that scene of what their relationship is like. Her relationship with Haruhi is more fleshed out, but even that feels super trite and juvenile, to be frank. They act like six year olds together, not the age they actually are. If this is a symptom of the world then that needs to be made clear. Because the world as it is now seems to be expecting a lot from them. I would think that would make them grow up faster. Instead they seem to be in a state of arrested development. Which is interesting, character-wise, but doesn't seem like what you're intentionally going for. Perhaps reading some more stories where middle-school-aged girls are the protagonists would help?

So that begs the question - what are you going for? What cracks exist in these relationships now that will start to widen as the stakes of the story grow? Show (show, don't tell) us the uniqueness of Christiana's relationships with her siblings (both of them) so that we understand how special these kids are and how important they are to each other.

The part that felt the most clear to me, character and relationship wise, was when Christiana talked to her mom. Their dynamic was interesting and unique, and I was curious to see more of that in the story. Her mom is still a mystery but it was the good kind of mystery. The kind that keeps me reading rather than leaves me frustrated.

Plot:

I sense there is a really great premise and story arc lying beneath the expositional writing of this story. I would highly recommend doing a deeper dive into three act structure and how it works. I think your story would benefit a lot from it. It's just a matter of working on craft. I have full faith that you could restructure this to be a powerful, well-crafted story with a little research.

I'm not going to dive too deep into structure when plenty of people much wiser and better than me have written loads about it on the internet or in books. But, from reading your first ten chapters, this is what I will say. I'm getting the world set up for me. But I'm not getting the story set up for me. I should not still be wondering what on earth Christiana is training for or why. I should not have no clue where the story is headed, which is kind of how I feel now. What's the inciting incident? It should have happened already. It doesn't feel like it's the teacher holding her back from school, as that just seems like a random plot point. What is about to turn Christiana's world around? Is it just the talk with her mother? If so we need to understand that more clearly. What's at stake? What's changed here? What does Christiana want and what's in her way? You're hinting at these things without making it clear for your reader. It's okay to hold on to things for mystery, but the basics of the story should be being properly set up in these early chapters.

Random side note, but I'm not sure what the interludes are accomplishing? What's the point of them?

Some chapter specific thoughts below!

Ch. 1

Christiana's reflection on how in three months time she wouldn't want to stay late at the gym feels a bit expository and like a bit too much information that we don't need to know just yet. I understand there's a bit of worldbuilding going on here, but right now it pulls me out of the story. If you motivate it more (give her MORE of a reason to be thinking about three months from now when Winter comes) it might help. But I would suggest just holding this information for another time when it's more relevant. (Update: after reading on through ch. 10 I don't think there's any real reason for us to get this information about the world at all. Can easily cut.)

There is a lot of worldbuilding and scientific explanation in this chapter. It's great that you have all this info down and it's good to seed a lot of it into your story. I just don't know that we need this much all stuffed into chapter one. I'm learning more about the science of the world than the actual world or the character. That should be flipped. It should go character > world > science of the world. I'd rather know first more about character - her motivations and drives, then the world - maybe what danger she's in walking late at night or why she has to train at the gym or what the expectations of her school are, etc, THEN the science - hear about the air farms, etc. You can still have all the information seeded throughout the story, it's just about what real estate you're giving it compared to other story elements.

Some additional moments that felt unmotivated: when you write about how bright the light is compared to old earth's sun, when you write about the woman's hair and their jobs preventing them from keeping it long, the City Hall paragraph (this last one might work if there weren't already so many other not-so-motivated informational dumps).

Ch. 2

I love the detail of Christiana and Haruhi's relationship, but would love to get some of this in scenes rather than exposition. You're telling us a lot instead of showing us, essentially. One or two paragraphs about Haruhi might fit in naturally here, but after that it just feels like you're explaining a lot to us that would be better shown to us later in the chapter or in future chapters.

In the paragraph about Christiana crawling into bed with Haruhi and telling her tales, you again use so many different descriptors that at first I thought there was another sister and was unclear what was going on. It's totally acceptable to just call them by their names repeatedly sometimes. A few alternate monikers are fine, but you don't have to feel that you can never reuse a proper noun. It's actually more distracting when you overload a paragraph with alternates.

When you get to the part about the mothers, it gets really confusing. Consider waiting for them to be introduced in scene to go into minor detail about who is who. Dumping it on us all at once makes it much harder to track and understand. Their conversation about Sydney also feels like forced exposition rather than natural dialogue, when a moment ago they were conversating pretty organically. It's not bad information to include, it just doesn't feel like the right place for it. Again, I'm learning way more about everyone else and the world but not Christiana. I still feel like I know next to nothing about her but I'm learning Sydney's whole backstory here, for some reason. The doling out of information is hard in a big worldbuilding story, but reworking it will really pay off in your story, I think!

I like how you're seeding in the importance of Christiana's training and potential future at the end of this chapter, but I think it would make more sense and read better if we could have seen some of these things for ourselves. See her training, see her talk to Sydney about her troubles. Maybe see some jealous mothers that could have it out for her. Whatever it is, adding more actual scenes to show us these things will go a much longer way than trying to explain them all in dialogue or exposition.

Ch. 3

When they pull into the airlock garage, we've already seen how this works through your description of other things in the world and can probably piece this together so you don't have to describe every step in a long, fairly dry paragraph. You could just say, they waited in the car while the air was cleansed of any harmful see-oh-too levels, or something along those lines. One sentence and done.

Why is Anastasia used to the security but Christiana is questioning it? Did they not both grow up that way? Has Anastasia not visited other places?

The end of this chapter feels a little weaker than the others. Can we end on a different beat that could further the story, tell us more about Christiana's character, introduce a new conflict or tension? Something with a little more excitement. It's nice learning about Jessica, but it's not enough to warrant a chapter end.

Ch. 4

It was surprising to me that you made a point to say the children in Christiana's family are not given everything on a silver platter but then say they live like the upper-middle class. Upper-middle class is still relatively well-off, I assume, even in this world? I wouldn't consider it "normal" in any case. They definitely would have much more than the bare necessities. However, if upper-middle class is different in this world, I don't really know it. And as you've been using old-world phrases to describe things in this world, it's hard to differentiate when they mean the same thing and when they don't. This is a relatively small note, but I bumped on it so thought I would mention it!

Ch. 5

This was the chapter that first felt like we were really getting into the story more, even though it felt like only a little bit. It was nice to get a sense that we were going to start to understand Christiana's importance.

I think this chapter could have been trimmed down by taking away some of the explanations. There are some things that we don't need to know. For example, why Lucy is nervous about leading Christiana to the matriarch (that's clear without you having to explain it), that it's acceptable that the mother is swearing (Christiana's reaction is enough to show us that it's not unusual, until she gets to the unusual part, you don't have to tell us. You could show her unperturbed as she's swearing and then as soon as she uses the word "Terminus" have Christiana gasp.) Also describing what a Terminus is so fully kind of sucks all the punch out of that scene. This is something that could remain more of a mystery. We know that word is bad, but why? Could be a nice little question mark for the reader.

Ch. 6

I like how we're getting more hints here to what the story will become. It's clear Christiana's mother knows something she doesn't, and her high hopes for her seem to be founded in a knowledge that she has about Christiana's situation and potential. It would be great if we could see some of Christiana's potential at play before this moment. Does she excel better than the other students at school? Does the way she communicates with her family show us a sense of how she's excellent with people or good at getting what she wants? What is she like in her training? Giving us a sense of how she's special rather than just telling us will help sell it.

It feels like you've set up that Christiana would very much choose to go to school with Haruhi over Jonathan, so her contemplating not going with Haruhi to go with Jonathan seems kind of against what you've set us up to believe about Christiana. I believe that she loves them both, but don't understand why going to school with Jonathan would matter that much to her at all, especially as she's already accustomed to not going to school with him and she spends her evenings with him anyway. Essentially, the stakes are falling flat for me here.

Ch. 7

Don't think you need to go that deep into bath history. Just showing her happy with her bath is more than enough! Also I'm unclear on why Haruhi joins Christiana in the bath if it's so late and all she was doing was looking for her? Why not just wake her sister? Seems unnecessarily awkward to have her join Christiana for no real reason. And then there's a lot of dialogue about whether she showered first, which isn't super interesting or anything to really do with the story. Could easily cut!

Ch. 8

It would be nice to get a description of people beyond their height, age, or hair color. Those are pretty standard things (all people have a height and hair color). But what makes descriptions of characters unique and what makes them stand out is when you name something particular about that person. I'm not really interested in Amelia's hair color or height. Does she have bow legs or pouty lips? Is she always winking at people? What's a physical description or character trait that is unique to her that will help her stand out in the reader's mind as character? This will land a lot better and be a lot more memorable to a reader than simply saying she has brown hair.

However, alternatively, you could cut a lot of this description of the sisters out. This is an instance where we're having things described to us rather than learning them in scene. It would be great to just meet the sisters and see them behaving certain ways, rather than reading paragraphs about them when they're not even around. I understand they're coming up in conversation and that might seem like a natural time to explain who they are, but you can do that without going into full info dumps of exposition. For instance, in this scene, a simple, "Amelia was their older sister, who was only obsessed with getting married. It was all she ever talked about." That's really all we need to know to go forward in the current scene. We can learn more about her when we meet her "in person."

A little confused about the scene at the end and what that's implying. At best it seems like a scene of innocent girls not understanding anything. But it's an unusual thing for a sister to joke about, especially one that's essentially a twin to you. It made me very uncomfortable and it felt like it really didn't need to be a part of the story? But I may just be being overly sensitive. I would just be careful about that stuff as they're very young, and they're sisters. You don't want to hint at crossing a line there, I don't think. Unless that's what you're going for, in which case this is a very different story than I thought it was!

Ch. 9

Would love to get a better sense of what about the Chosen Ones story is riveting to the girls in the class. You build it up a bit more at the end, with Christiana taking dramatic pauses and such, but think that could be present throughout. Is Christiana some kind of master storyteller? What are we revealing about her character here? Whatever it is, make it clear by showing us what she's doing and how she's doing it.

Ch. 10

In this and the last chapter there is a lot of mention of the girls trying to break through internet securities, in a sense, including the government's. This doesn't seem to match in character with what we've learned about them. Their commitment to start taking their studies seriously, their drive to be the best women they can be, their respect for their elders. This seems in direct contradiction to all of that that's been set up, so I found it a bit confusing. Why are they risking breaking into a government's secret information? Why go against everything they seem to believe in?

Ending Commentary:

I hope this was helpful to you! I know I can be a bit harsh but it's all in the interest of helping your story, truly. I do think you're a good writer and have good ideas, you just need to work a little bit on the craft to get them on the page in a way that's engaging and exciting for the reader. I again recommend doing a deeper dive on three act structure, if you have the time!