Author – Elynor, Meghan & Hannah
Reviewer – sadnitez
Story Link – http://www.winglin.net/fanfic/agoodrumor22/
Title – 3.5/5
While this title does catch my attention, what rumor was the whole fan fiction targeting at? Perhaps you can provide a stronger relevance between the title and the story plot. In fact, as I read on, I felt that “A Good Scandal” would fit better to the content. And I felt that scandal will be a stronger word to catch the eyes of readers ;)
Graphics/Poster – 3/5
I do like this kind of rusty, paper-ish touch to your poster. But it still seems a bit plain to me with the blank corners at the sides. The poster didn’t portray the story’s image well either. I would have like the poster better if it had pictures of other characters in it – Donghae, SeoHyun, Kyunhun etc. since they have appeared in almost every chapters you have wrote so far.
This is important because a poster can allow me to tell at first glance, which characters will be in the story and whether this fan fiction will be a sweet/happy or a dark/angst type of story.
Foreword – 4.5/10
I won’t mind writers if they do self-introductions in their forewords. What I do mind is when the foreword is written in such a way that the whole story plot is laid out in plain sight. A foreword is usually written to get someone excited about the story before they read it and shouldn’t be written in a way that spoils the entire story content.
So instead of going…..
“Anyway my story is about how Yuri, and her boyfriend Donghae. Yuri breaks up with him because she thinks he has something going on with her best friend Seohyun who also broke up with her boyfriend Kyuhyun. One day Donghae is trying to get Yuri to take him back and starts hurting her, once Yuri fears that she won't be able to get away from her exboyfriends grip, a sudden rescue from an unexpected guy comes to her aid and even after that, Yuri wanted no part to become a part of his life, but she has to face the fact, that they, have become a good little rumor.”
You can try to make it more exciting and mysterious to the readers by writing…
“A simple misunderstanding can break up even the most Perfect Couple ever – Kwon Yuri and Lee Dongahe.
Things aren’t back to the way they were; even if Donghae is willing to do anything to get the old days back. Yuri only wants to escape, and get back to her normal life. But things were only made worse when she was saved by an unexpected savior – Kim Jaejoong, the hottest Korean idol of DBSK.
Before anyone knows it, a good rumor has begun….”
I’m not trying to force anything on you (in fact my foreword isn’t 100% grammatically correct), just trying to show an example where words can be played to make a foreword more interesting without revealing too much of everything. I really hope you can re-write the foreword again (>.<)
Originality – 5/10
I can’t really find any originality in this plot. I can’t recall how many times I’ve read heroine who moved into an idol’s home and fall in love with a certain handsome idol. Nothing has really caught me off caught so far either….. (>.>)
Flow – 9/15
You have to try to pace your story with unbelievable plot. It is a little incredulous that Donghae-Yuri and Seohyun-Kyunhyun can be lovely-dovely in one moment, break up in another moment and try to get back to each other by next day. And before I knew it, Yuri was forced to live in an idol’s dorm, with FIVE GUYS and have Seo-Hyun moved in by tell next day as well. Which parent in their right mind would allow this?! (someone please tell me) (-_-)
In all, the whole plot and pacing went too fast for me to accept. It’s just….unbelievable, even for a teenager’s written fantasy. *cough*
Plot/Characterization – 11/20
The plot has been rather unbelievable so far. I do see where you’re going at with all these created idol fantasies. But the sequences of events just make me went “Whhhaaattt???” There are certain points which I found the story to be rather sweet. But with the way that characters were behaving, it swept those sweet feelings away almost immediately.
I do see the efforts you’re trying to make to portray characters (e.g.: Yuri, Seo-Hyun, KyunHyun, Jaejoong) as sweet girls/guys. But I do wish you had added more depth to them. I could hardly take Yuri or Seo-Hyun seriously with the way they initiate break-ups over Tiffany’s silly accusations or the way they seemed to be falling in love with people so quickly after their break-ups. I know that the ones they are attracted to are idols, but they really do seem like they are jumping into relationships like there’s no tomorrow. The rest of the characters seemed really kiddy in the story, with all their random talking/laughing/actions. This seemed a bit off from their 18-24 years old images I had in my mind. Maybe you can rephrase some of the characters’ lines/actions and make them appear more mature in this story.
Writing style – 11/20
At first glance, I could only see clustering of words and sentences. Reading this fan fiction was definitely not easy on my eyes. I had to use Microsoft Word to re align sentences so that I could read the fan fiction at ease. The clustering of conversations in single lines also made it difficult for me to gauge which characters said which sentences. This added to the confusion and I wasn’t able to understand the story as clearly as I desired.
E.g.:
Yuri POV- “YAHH WAKE UP!” I tossed and turned pretending not to here my brother’s constant screaming.“YURI! I said wake up!” He said shaking me awake. “ALRIGHT I’M AWAKE!” I yelled back. Geez he’s so annoying I thought. I got up and pushed him out the door so I could start getting ready.After I picked out my outfit I went to take a nice long hot bath. Once I got out I smelt something AMAZING coming from the kitchen so I hurried myself and went downstairs for my breakfast.“Morning Yuri!” My mother greeted once she say me. “Morning!” I greeted back. “Did you sleep well?” “I did, until he practically started screaming in my ear.” I said glaring at Gi Kwang who just smirked back at me. “Oh, well we’ll talk about how to wake up your sister correctly later young man,” she said looking over at him, “For now just have your breakfast for now I have to get to work. Bye saranghae you two, try not to get in a fight!” My mom yelled out before leaving.
Try to add more spaces between lines and create more paragraphs. It will be easier on the readers’ eyes and allow them to read and understand the story better. Try experimenting with italized/bolding effects to differentiate words.
Here’s an example…
E.g.:
[YURI’s POV]
“YAHH WAKE UP!” I tossed and turned pretending not to hear my brother’s constant screaming.“YURI! I said wake up!” He said shaking me awake.
“ALRIGHT I’M AWAKE!” I yelled back.
Geez he’s so annoying. I thought.
I got up and pushed him out the door so I could start getting ready.After I picked out my outfit I went to take a nice long hot bath. Once I got out I smelt something AMAZING coming from the kitchen so I hurried myself and went downstairs for my breakfast.
“Morning Yuri!” My mother greeted once she say me.
“Morning!” I greeted back.
“Did you sleep well?”
“I did, until he practically started screaming in my ear.” I said glaring at Gi Kwang who just smirked back at me.
“Oh, well we’ll talk about how to wake up your sister correctly later young man,” She said looking over at him, “For now just have your breakfast for now I have to get to work. Bye! Saranghae you two, try not to get in a fight!” My mom yelled out before leaving.
That being said, I have to mention that there are quite a lot of awkward sentences, spelling errors and grammatical errors in this fan fiction. So there were quite a few sentences that simply left me feeling confused.
Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling/Vocabulary – 5/10
As mentioned above, there are a lot of grammatical errors and awkward sentences. In fact at some points, I was too confused with your sentences to understand what you’re trying to get at. One suggestion would be to get someone to proof-read your chapter before you post it up
I’ll just use Chapter 5 as an example to highlight your mistakes so that you can roughly know the problematic areas. The edited parts will be highlighted in red. As you can see, most of your mistakes laid in wrong usage of commas and full stops. Do take note of them! ^^b
E.g.:
[YURI’s POV]
After class, I saw Donghae and Tiffany again. I walked past them; I’m over with them now.
Then, I bumped into Seohyun-ah and Kyuhyun-shii.
“Oh! Mianhae!!”
“Yuri-ah!!!” Seohyun yelled, hugging me. Soon enough, Kyuhyun-shii joined in too.
When we broke apart, someone came up and slapped me.
Seohyun jumped to my aid. “YAH! What was that for?” She yelled at the girl.
“Stay away from Jaejoong-oppa!” The girl yelled at me, ignoring Seohyun.
What? I thought.
Did she see me with him yesterday? But…how?
Overall enjoyment – 2/5
I’ll apologize if I really sound harsh here. I do see a lot of areas that needed improvements I’m pointing them out so that you may know where your problems lie. Do make sure to reflect back on the story’s past events to make your plot more realistic and believable to readers. I’m sure that if you adjust your writing style and correct your grammatical errors, this story will improve by leaps and bounds!
I hope that this (over-lengthy) review can assist your writings in some ways or another. But don’t get stress over this review. After all, it consists only of my two-cent worth of opinions and they do not represent everyone else’s. So cheers! ^^
TOTAL – 54/100
