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When I Fall [Review]
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Title: When I Fall Author: iluvjaejoongie Reviewer: ava_lava Site: http://ver-sah-tyle.blogspot.com/ * Title: 4/5 I thought this was a really good title. It sums up the story in many aspects, not only on the outside. On the shallower side, whenever Taeyeon falls, Jaejoong is there to catch her. Yet, if you think of it in a deeper layer, Jaejoong is falling emotionally, and Taeyeon was always there for him. That’s what makes a good title—one that completely sums the story up, but not directly or too straightforwardly. Nevertheless, I would suggest that you change the title to “If I Fall”, not “When I Fall” since it gives it a more ambiguous feeling to it. “If” signifies a conditional tense while “When” implies a fixed point in time that will most definitely happen. * Poster/Background: 8/10 The poster is beautiful! I have been a fan of Asian Artsy Crew for a while now, and Faye is just amazing with posters like these. I absolutely love the blending of the colors. I think that you should have made the background a little bit lighter (like light silver or something close to that) since it just does not seem to match with the poster too well. Or you could have faded the edges of the poster and blended the poster into the background. This can be done with almost any photo-editing program like GIMP. * Forewords: 5.5/10 I like your characterization in the forewords, but I think that you need to give a little teaser or at least a description of what the whole story is about. This would catch peoples’ attention and have them wanting to know more and how the whole story will end. I know that your Chapter 1 is the Prologue, but I cannot guess enough of what will happen afterwards in order to keep me interested. For most of my stories, I usually always start with something like this: Title: Pairing(s): Genre(s): Length: Rating: Summary: Warnings / Disclaimers: It pretty much sums your story up and will let people know if this is really what they want to read. * Plot: 13/15 Although I would not say that this plot is extremely original, I have to admit that the manner in which you write it definitely makes it unique in its own way. I love your plot mainly because of all that is going on. It is not ONLY about how Jaejoong falls in love with Taeyeon; there is also their pasts that they need to deal with, Hongki, Hyojoo, Hyojoo’s mom, their businesses, etc. Sub-plots always compliment the main plots really well, and yours was no exception. However, I think that Jaejoong fell in love with Taeyeon and vice versa way too fast; in real life, things like that don’t happen, especially if Jaejoong and Taeyeon both have had heartbreaking experiences. I would think that it would take much longer than two weeks to fall in love. * Creativity/Originality: 13/15 As I said before, it was not exactly original. I have read many stories about arranged marriages and broken hearts and other clichés like that (granted, I read a lot, period). However, yours stood out because of your poetic writing style and amazing characterization. Your writing style is also very unique. Kudos to you! * Flow: 8/10 At first, when I saw the many flashbacks and changes in time, I thought that it would have been extremely hard to follow. Luckily, my first impression was wrong, and I actually found it quite easy to understand. However, like I said in the plot, it takes people longer than two weeks to fall in love (unless you are just like that, but it is obvious that both Taeyeon and Jaejoong aren’t). Oh, and about Taeyeon bursting to tears: do not make her start crying all of the sudden all the time. I would suggest in a fanfic, only once would the main character suddenly burst into tears; any other time, she/he would start with watery eyes, then a tight throat, followed by a trickle down her cheek, and THEN starts sobbing. I found your crying scenes very abrupt at times. It’s your choice, though; this is just my opinion. * Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary: 5.5/10 One of the things I noticed was your use of commas. Sometimes when you have a verb in the “-ing” form in the middle of the sentence, you need to add a comma before it. For instance, instead of {“His words suddenly came crashing down on him making him speechless.”}, you should have put down {“His words suddenly came crashing down on him, making him speechless.”} There is a comma before the “-ing” verb. Another thing is your use of capitalized letters. I know that all of the books say that after every period, question mark, exclamation mark, etc., you need to make the next letter capitalized. However, I would believe that things in quotation marks are an exception. Instead of {“Are you okay?” The little girl asked.}, it should be {“Are you okay?” the little girl asked.} Check in a novel—any novel—and you’ll see what I mean. Some of your expressions are not written properly, mostly because of misused prepositions or something totally insignificant like that. {Stuttering back a little} misused the word “stuttering”, which actually means “talking as if breathless or as if nervous”; “shuffling”, “taking a few paces”, or “stepping” would have been a better word. {Keeping a distance with each other} is also incorrectly formed, as you should have replaced the word “with” with the word “from”. {Gathering himself again} is not completely correct, and even if it is, most people would be quite unfamiliar with it; I suggest something like {Once he pulled himself together again} or {Once he recollected his thoughts}. {He didn't want to reason with himself about why she would concern so much anymore, she just did.} could be replaced with {He didn’t understand why she would worry so much anymore; she just did.} By the way, when you are using the word “stare”, the –ing form of it is actually “staring”, not “starring.” * Characterization: 9/10 I thought your characterization was the best part of the story. Most of your characters were fully developed, described in detail appearance-wise, and I could almost see them in front of me. You could have described Hongki better, but it is probably because he just arrived that he didn’t have a chance to develop yet. What I thought you could improve, however, was the character emotions; you could describe them in more detail, your goal being to make the reader feel what the character feels. Although what you did was already very good, I would not simply put down {She never wanted to feel that pain again}; I would instead write {She never wanted to feel the pain of losing her loved one again. Every night she would cry into her pillow and yearn to be in his arms, joyful reminiscences flashing through her mind like cars on a highway, etc. She never wanted to experience that again.} Describe more and put more meaning into every word, and the readers will remember your story more than others because they actually FEEL it. * Writing Style: 9/10 It was quite amazing, I must admit. You had varied vocabulary, interesting idioms and expressions (ex. I love the expression “lack some height” because it describes me perfectly), and impeccable metaphors and similes. I also liked your descriptions, and could picture all of your characters as if they were right in front of me. Your style is also very poetic, and it flows very well from one sentence to another, which is an amazing feat for an amateur author. However, as described above, add more descriptions about how they feel, using metaphors, similes, allusions, anything! Just as long as the reader will be able to understand the pain as if it were their own. * Overall Enjoyment: 4/5 To be honest, your writing is very good, and I was very impressed with it. Sub-plots and characterization really helped. Just improve your grammar and spelling, and make sure that you can make the reader feel the story as well as read it. * Sub-Total: 79/100 I really hope you keep writing this story. I’m definitely going to keep reading! * Extras: 5/5 First off, Jaejoong is in the story, and that accounted for three of the extra marks. I also felt bad for being so harsh on you (I am a really critical reviewer, as you can see), and decided to give you the two marks more. By the way, I am REALLY picky, and 79/100 is actually a high mark for me. I rarely give out higher than 75/100 when I am correcting my little sister’s essays (and she is an amazing essayist). * Total: 84/105 |