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I Lived For You [Review]
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Author: Jade Fox Title: I Lived For You Link: http://www.winglin.net/fanfic/Jae_Babe/ Reviewer: ava_lava Site: VST http://ver-sah-tyle.blogspot.com *Title: 4.5/5 This was actually a pretty good title. They were all fighting to live, and they lived just to be with each other. It fit and it was more eye-catching than a lot of other stories out there; what I liked best was that it did not include the word ‘love’ (I mean, seriously?). However, keep thinking. There is always room for improvement, unfortunately. *Poster/Background: omit/10 I’ll omit this since there wasn’t one on the site that you specified. But just one tip? I saw your story on the winglin site and if I had to mark your poster, I would give it a 4. It was very unclear, disproportioned, and just needed some more time and effort on it. I suggest that next time you go request from somebody, look at their past works (usually in the STAFF section) and choose the graphic designer that you think would do it best (all graphic designers have their strong/weak points; choose one that would be able to convey the mood of your poster). Or you could be like me and learn how to make your own posters with free downloadable photo-editing systems like GIMP 2.0. *Forewords: 6/10 It was good in terms of organization although it was a bit messy. Make sure that you space things out neatly and consistently, and that the headers are always correct. The biggest thing for me was your grammar (look at the Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary section), so please improve that. You also had many POV changes that came without warning. For instance (I made some grammatical corrections while I was at it), {“I can hear them behind us.” I heard my lover say. HIS voice was trembling. HE was scared. And cold.”} was the first thing you put down. Then, on the next sentence, you put down {I cursed myself for it. How can I promise to protect HER from the very hunters behind us when I hadn’t even brought a simple blanket or coat to protect HER from the harshness of nature?}. Your POV changed WAY too drastically without warning. It was quite confusing who was narrating at the moment. Fix that. Moreover, for your character list, if you’re going to put down last names, don’t be a lazy ass and put down ALL of the last names (whether it is Kim, Choi, or Lee). Oh, and 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. You can omit the summary and add a teaser instead, though (both is better *cheesy smile*). In fact, the best part was the teaser. It definitely caught my attention and had me wanting to know more and about how the whole story will end. *Plot: 11/15 I love your plot mainly because of all that is going on. It is not ONLY about how Jaejoong falls in love with Yunho after they both lost their memories nor is it all about how Nyx reunite with their lovers. There was just so much more to it, like how they became the way they were and how they finally get back together. Not only that, you actually made a link between everything: Yunho’s father and the ‘hunters’. This makes up and complex and intricate plot as a whole, and everything actually made sense (*applause*). Sub-plots always compliment the main plots really well, and yours was no exception. The only thing that took away from it was your grammar and orthography. Please make sure that your readers do not need to reread anything in order to understand. Here is a way to improve that: 1. Pretend that you are in the readers’ shoes. Can you understand everything you wrote? Like, absolutely everything? 2. Is your grammar / orthography / spelling all right? 3. Does everything flow correctly and make sense? 4. Did you put enough details for you to grasp the main idea of the chapter? 5. Are there any abrupt glitches? If there are, fix them. *Creativity/Originality: 14/15 Never heard of a plot like this—wow. Did you watch a movie and get inspiration? Because it is really movie quality. There were several clichés that would have been better off omitted and replaced (really, amnesia is way too cliché for my taste; next time, try a different problem like mental stress or psychological trauma that made them almost delusional and UNWILLING to remember). I love your ‘hunters’ imagery; it always makes me think of “Lord of the Flies” by Golding (literary allusions are really good—use them more often). *Flow: 6/10 Grammar really dragged your mark down. PLEASE check your work. Refer to the Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary section. Also take note of your POV’s and make sure they are CLEARLY marked and not distorted in the story in any way. Besides orthography, I disliked the part where Yunho suddenly started harassing Jaejoong. Like, does that happen in real life? All of a sudden Yunho felt the urge to almost rape this hot guy that looked like a chick. And then Junsu and Changmin just hit it off in the boys’ bathroom? Really? Shouldn’t they have caught up first or something? Whatever, you get my point. Make sure that everything really makes sense and seems realistic. Everything else was fine in my opinion. You gave enough background information, you were able to make sense of the story, and you had enough feeling and power in your words (kudos!). Just remember: people don’t have sex every time they look at each other. *Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary: 3.5/10 1. There are no spaces before the periods, commas, etc. They only come after. Fix that because it just looks messy and therefore unattractive for readers. 2. Mind your POV changes, because those were the most confusing of your story. It was difficult to figure out who the pronoun ‘I’ was referring to—Shelby or Jaejoong or somebody else. Please make sure that you stay consistent or else the reader would have absolutely no idea where you are going with it. A good writer would NEVER let his/her reader be confused during any part unless it was intentional. Make sure that all of your sentences make sense so that the reader would not have to reread it in order to understand. 3. 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. 4. There is ONE main idea in every paragraph, whether it be a person, a place, or an idea. Yours were sometimes jumbled up together, especially with speech. There is ONE person speaking in every paragraph. No more, okay? Hit the ENTER button more often because some of your paragraphs seem to be including more than two ideas that could have been separated. If anything, hit it more often than not—it makes it easier to read, and forces the reader to read everything. 5. Check your tenses. Sometimes you change your tense three times in a single sentence (the ghost of the past, present, and future ftw!) and that’s bad. For instance, {I walked close by my hyung as we walked to crowd getting to the front doors of the school. I know he’s worrying about how people will treat him here. The way he’s dazing out , he has to be thinking about that . I tried to get him out of his thoughts.}, after correcting it, should be {I walkED close by my hyung as we walkED towards the front doors of the school. I KNEW that he WAS worrying about how people WOULD treat him there. The way he WAS dazing out, he HAD to be thinking about that. I triED to get him out of his thoughts.} Look at these kinds of stuff. 6. Spelling. Check it because you had a bunch of misspelled things that could have been avoided. All in all, please make sure that you check through your work CAREFULLY before pressing the POST button. Marks are taken off every time I see a grammatical error (I’m huge on it). *Characterization: 8/10 Most of the time, it was quite good. You were quite meticulous with your character habits especially, I found. The only thing missing was the fact that all of your characters did not have a certain aspect in them that made them different from the rest. All the girls in Nyx almost seemed like the same person. Make sure you that you depict them as individuals and not “just another girl out there”. Here’s a way I usually make my characters more realistic: 1. List their good points. 2. List their flaws (make sure that they have just as many bad points as they do good points) 3. Pretend that you are talking to them and you ask them a random question. Will you be able to know how they will respond? If you can, great. If you can’t, work on developing your character some more. 4. Know what they look like (appearances and clothing/attire) at all times. 5. Do you like your character? If I try answering all of these questions with your characters, I would already be stuck on question number 1. Work on that. *Writing Style: 8/10 I liked your writing style. It was unique, detailed, and above all powerful. Your writing style evoked so much emotion that it was exhilarating. I just thought that you portrayed the situations too clear. You always elaborated on the things that the readers could already deduce from the context (like how Shelby and Nicole were discussing how Jade ran from the Music Room) and I found that quite irrelevant and repetitive. It’s sort of like saying {The dog bit the boy, making him cry… The boy was sad.}. Well, obviously the boy was frigging sad! You get the drift? Readers are not stupid—they are able to figure things out on their own, so do a little bit less work with that fact in mind. *Overall Enjoyment: 5/5 Yunjae forever! Yay! *Sub-Total: 66/90 (poster was omitted) *Extras: 4/5 Remember, always check your work before posting it! Man, I sound like those safety procedure mascots. *Total: 70/95 I am a harsh reviewer. SUPER harsh. Don’t be discouraged with your mark. Note that I was a reader before, which means that your story is perfectly decent already. (0 happiness)
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