Charlie Yang

1686320
Feb 2nd 2023

Dear Neeru Gill：

The story "The Fall of Bexley" tells a paranormal science fiction story with
friendship as the core. The main character of the story is a girl named Amelia, who
lives in a small town. She gets lost while going out with her only good friend Jamie.
Next, Amelia encounters some witches who tell Amelia the reason why she was
chosen - she is needed to restore the balance of nature. Amelia realizes that she has
gained some sort of supernatural power, including the ability to control weather and
plants, which she eventually learns to use under the witch's tutelage. Amelia is trained
by a forest witch before being sent back to her normal reality. Some underlying
feeling she had for her friend Jamie contributed to Amelia's eventual return to the real
world.
The story has a good setup and the main character, Amelia, is well-developed
with a clear sense of feeling out of place in her small town. The descriptions of the
forest and the appearance of the mystical creature add an element of fantasy to the
story. However, the plot could benefit from some refinement. The sudden
disappearance of Jamie and Amelia's sudden transport to another world feels abrupt
and lacks sufficient explanation or build-up. Additionally, the dialogue could use
improvement in terms of natural flow and character voice. The sudden shift in tone
from the real world to a magical one also lacks a clear transition. With some revisions
and further development, the story has potential to be enjoyable for a reader.
I have a few suggestions about the main plot points of the story. I think the
dialogue and narration in the story somehow created a bad reaction, which made the
reader feel out of place at some points. For example, on page 6, "Geez Lia, don't run
off like that again." He sighed with relief. For myself, a one-sided dialogue of this
kind does not allow me to understand the personalities of the speakers or to feel the
reaction of Amelia, the protagonist of the story, and perhaps it would be better to
change it to a one-sided narration. I think this would help us understand more about
the relationship between the protagonist and the storyline, and make the reading
experience better for the reader.
In terms of characterization and detailing, I think your descriptions are
impeccable. For example pg 2 "She spent many of her evenings with her nose in a
book, laying on her stomach on the heart shaped rug which covered half of her
bedroom floor". The reader can quickly imagine a three-dimensional image of a girl
who likes to read. In the opening sections of the story, you use a lot of padding to set
the stage for Amelia's disappearance. However, when she disappears into the real
world in a supernatural way and appears next to a fictional witch, the pace of the story
suddenly picks up and this part of the read seems a bit rushed. It's great for both the
fox and the crystal that grants her powers, but the reader doesn't get enough of a
fantasy adventure story vibe from it. As a reader, I inevitably had many questions that
were not explained in the story: Why would the fox know that the crystal would give
Amelia her powers? What is the relationship between the fox and the witch? Do the
other witches have the same powers as Amelia? If the answer is yes, why is Amelia
the key to maintaining the balance of nature? Although in a fantasy adventure story,
Charlie Yang
1686320
Feb 2nd 2023

all of the above questions can be answered with magic. But as a reader, I wish I could
have gone deeper into the other characters, and the inner logic of the story.

Thank you!
Charlie Yang