☀ l e m o n swirls → reviews!

Calling Silence113 [BE]

Saturday, August 20, 2011 @ 5:10 PM

Title: Blind Emotions

Author: Silence113

Story URL: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/12812/

Reviewer: Maria/SKID_11 @ http://lemonswirls.visualchic.net

~~~

Title: 3/5

“Blind Emotions” is definitely an interesting title — it makes one wonder as to what the story is about, and what it could entail. Still, I don’t really think that it would be something that I would click on, so I docked one mark from this because of that.

Also, I docked another mark because the title didn’t really have much to do with the plot of the story, so to me it didn’t really make much sense to me as to why it was named “Blind Emotions” and not something else that would actually go with the plot of the story.

Description/Foreword: 5/10

Your description was good, but it would’ve been best if you wrote in detail a bit more about Changmin’s feelings for his girlfriend and then for his friend; perhaps even start from before he met his girlfriend, to how things used to be with his best friend, just to show how close the two of them used to be before he met his girlfriend and they decided to date. If you had added a bit more, you would’ve really caught the reader’s interest and attention, thus making them want to read more. Still, the description was good.

Your foreword, however, was another story. You used character charts, which is a big no-no in my book. I do not like character charts in the description, foreword, or any part in the story, for that matter. I believe that the readers themselves should be able to find out how your characters are and how they act personality-wise. Character charts make it seem as if you, the writer, believe that the readers need to be fed this information rather than finding out themselves as they get to know the characters better as they continue reading the story.

These reasons were why you only got five out of ten for this section of the rubric — four for the description and one for the foreword.

Originality/Plot/Creativity: -/20

This plot has been done millions of times — where the main character gets a significant other, and their best friend or friend feels alienated all of a sudden from them. Then, right when the friend begins to pull away from the main character, the main character realizes his or her “true” feelings for the friend, and so they dump the significant other and instead chase after the friend. This ends up with the two of them ending up together and having their happily ever after.

However, I do not know which part of the plot is “Sunset Avenue’s” and which part of the plot is originally yours, so it’d be unfair to give you marks for something that may or may not have been thought up by you, so I decided to go ahead and give you no marks here.

Don’t worry; I will not be added to your overall mark.

Writing Style: 3/10

I liked your writing style for the most part.

However, there were quite a few errors in your writing from time to time which really dragged down your mark in this portion of the rubric. The grammar, spelling and vocabulary I will write about and mark in the next section, but for this section I’ll talk a bit about your punctuation, capitalization, and things like that.

First off, let’s start with the punctuation. You don’t use two exclamation marks at the same time, because it doesn’t at all add any “extra” emphasis to your sentence. Therefore, two exclamation marks are totally useless together and must not be used.

For example, you wrote this:

(Chapter 1, entitled ‘Chapter 1’)

“Minjung!!” yelled a tall handsome figure while walking down the locker and student filled corridor.

What you should’ve actually written is this:

“Minjung!” yelled a tall handsome figure while walking down the locker and student filled corridor.

However, there is still a problem with this sentence of yours. A punctuation problem. You see, you forgot to add a comma somewhere in this sentence. It’s really easy to fix and edit yourself, however; all you need to do is read your one-shot, story chapter, scene, or whatever piece of writing it is aloud to yourself.

Do you pause somewhere where there isn’t a comma? Then it’s best to place a comma there. Do you not pause somewhere where there is a comma? Then it’s best to edit the comma out from there. It’s really easy once you get the hang of it. :)

So, if you read the sentence aloud, you should spot the error. Then, once you edit the sentence, it’ll look like this:

“Minjung!” yelled a tall, handsome figure while walking down the locker and student filled corridor.

Another problem is capitalization problems. What you need to watch out for is CAPITLIZING WORDS LIKE THIS. You don’t need it, because you can easily emphasize these words like by using italics. After all, there is a reason italics were created.

Also, you don’t really describe scenes very well. It was hard to imagine them because of this, I’m afraid. You need to describe just how crowded that corridor was; maybe by writing how Changmin had to constantly elbow kids out of his way. You had describe in detail how Changmin looked rather than saying that he was tall and handsome — perhaps even describing what he was wearing. A school uniform? If so, what does the school uniform look like? Really describe so the readers can visualize in their minds how each individual scene looks like.

In addition to this, you don’t write something like *CRASH*. You have to describe this events rather than writing out the sound effect. After all, you’re not writing a script.

What you should’ve written it like is this:

(Chapter 1, entitled ‘Chapter 1’)

Suddenly, there was a loud crash, followed by a thump and a muffled curse from a slightly high-pitched voice — in other words, a girl’s voice.

Not only does it add to the content of the story, but it definitely makes the story much more interesting to read rather than just a word with an asterisk on each side of it. I hope you understand what I mean by this.

Another thing would be that you don’t use page breaks, and instead add words like “~In Changmin’s Class~” which isn’t really needed. You already added the fact that Changmin entered his class, so it’s really not needed. The readers already know that he is as they read on; it’s not like it’ll be a complete mystery if you don’t add the setting after changing the scene in the chapter.

Plus, you should get rid of “Guys’/Girls’ reaction/s…” and instead write this out into “The guys’/girls’ reaction went like this:” or “The guys/girls reacted with many sentences that ran into one other constantly” and it would be fine. No need to emphasize it by bolding the sentence and using italics to top it all off.

If you just fix these mistakes, then I believe that your writing style will be much more enjoyable than it already is.

Grammar/Spelling/Vocabulary: 6/10

Your spelling mistakes were rather minor; sometimes you forgot to add a space between two words or something along those lines — things that didn’t really need much looking over.

But, still, these are two mistakes that I decided to just show you in this review.

The first mistake was this:

(Chapter 1, entitled ‘Chapter 1’)

“I was like no and he was like pleeeease. And I was like, in your dreams and -”

Not only does this have a spelling error in it, it also has a few punctuation errors as well. The spelling error is obvious—you don’t need to needlessly stretch out the word; use emphasis on it with italics instead. The punctuation is basically putting in commas where needed and using the quotation marks.

So, if you fix the mistakes in the sentence, you’d get this:

I was like, “No,” and he was like, “Please!” And I was like, “In your dreams,” and-”

The second mistake was this:

(Chapter 2, entitled ‘Chapter 2’)

Come to think of it, it happened almost everyday this month.

“Everyday” is an adjective used to describe something ordinary or commonplace — basically, something normal that probably happens all the time. What you were looking to write was “every day,” which means “each day.” This is a pretty common mistake, so it’s nothing too bad, but you should, nevertheless, change it.

So, if you changed “everyday” to “every day,” your sentence would turn out like this:

Come to think of it, it happened almost every day this month.

Your grammar could use a bit of help as well, I’m afraid. They are ones that can be easily found if you just read them aloud, like with your comma mistakes as well as spelling, even.

For example, you wrote this:

Minjung was the average girl next door that everyone loved to get along with.

What it should actually look like is this:

Minjung was the average girl-next-door who everyone loved to get along with.

They were pretty subtle changes, but made much more sense if you switched them around, like with the “who” and “that” predicament.

Your vocabulary could use a bit more work than your spelling and grammar, because I notice the same words being used and not much of a change. There is a lot of words that you can use at your disposal, don’t forget. If you’d like, even get a thesaurus and skim through it from time to time — it’s your friend, after all. Every writing tool is — even the dreaded research. :P

Characterization: 3/20

There wasn’t much that separated your characters. Eunsae and Minjung seemed the same to me—well, that is except for the fact that Eunsae was much quieter and withdrawn, as well as clumsy and Minjung was simply the cliché “evil, bitch girlfriend that stands in the way of Changmin and Eunsae’s love.”

Also, Changmin just seemed to be…there. I didn’t really feel like he was a character in a way because he seemed so…lifeless. I’m not trying to sound mean here, but it seems as if you didn’t take time really crafting your character and making them seem real.

In short, there wasn’t much to divide their personalities — they were all nice, all polite, all “good” — that sort of thing (Except for how Minjung becomes in, like, around the third-fourth chapter of the story). I have you two marks for Yunho’s personality, as well as one mark for Minjung personality, simply because Minjung’s personality changed from happy-go-lucky to evil, and she had only done this because she liked Changmin so much.

Another thing that I think you should do is check out my blog post that I made on AFF if you’d like to find out how to make more solid characters. I believe that it should help you out a bit more when you make your characters.

Flow/Detail: 8/10

Your flow for this story was actually pretty good. However, I think you started too early into the story; you should’ve shown Changmin and Eunsae together when Minjung hadn’t been in the question first, then showed how Eunsae felt when Minjung did come into the picture — just so you could really describe how Eunsae felt, knowing that Changmin had a girlfriend and all that jazz. Your flow would’ve gone much smoother and the readers would definitely support Changmin/Eunsae even more.

Apart from this, I think that your flow was good. Great job on it — especially the whole “Minjung finding Eunsae's letter” scene in chapter four even though the letter had been put into Changmin’s locked in chapter two, because it showed how you really fleshed out the story to make everything fit. :)

Ending: 3/10

The ending was just like I thought it would be — sappy and happy-go-lucky. Changmin and Eunsae got their happily ever after while Minjung got absolutely nothing because she had been evil and tried to keep the two best friends from getting together and becoming a couple.

However, I had expected Changmin to read Minjung’s letter as well as Eunsae’s.

Afterwards, I thought that he would go on a tangent about how he would never get back together with Minjung because of the fact that he loved Eunsae and they belonged together or something like that, so I gave you three marks for this.

Bonus: 3/5

Three out of three marks for the spelling and grammar!

Overall mark:

34/80

Back to the top~