My Barista Boy

by MOIRA_0735

 

reviewer: kshanti

 

title 2/5

 

» Your title is very trivial and unfortunately does not attract readers from the vast variety of stories to choose from. I do give you credit for taking advantage of letter repetition regarding the letter “b” because it is a powerful rhetorical effect resource in literature. Maybe you could have put a bit more thought into your title? It is the utmost first feature the reader will notice and hopefully pay attention to. Like in real life many people sadly choose a book by its cover, on online we tend to do the same thing. Therefore the name of your story is a crucial factor. However, your title gets straight to the point and the reader knows for sure what your story is going to be about.

 

foreword and description 2/5

 

“Baekhyun is a university student who cannot live his life properly without a cup of coffee. After going through worst times which occurred on his first day in the new university,he went immediately to his favourite place, Starbucks,and he saw the world’s brightest smile, his new addiction.”

 

» Description could be a little shorter because it is a tad too long as it is. Your description also has incorrect grammar which is definitely not good in terms of trying to get others to read your story. Your first sentence is fine, but the second one is really messy and you’ve forgot to add a space after the commas. It’s a rookie mistake and you should fix it as soon as possible because these sort of mishaps are distractive and fast send possible readers off. Also, using present tense and then past tense both in your description causes a bit of mayhem in the coherence of your text. Try to stick to one tense in the description. In the actual story it is more than okay to add e. g. perfect tense flashbacks and memories, but when your aim is to try to hook others into reading your story you should keep it simple and captivating. Don’t babble too much, reveal only something that’s intriguing and leave it extremely open so the reader doesn’t figure out everything from a mere description. In the future you should pay attention to these things. You description is elaborate and gives a clear idea of the plot, which is something I will give you a thumbs up for.

 

» Now, foreword is really important. Moreover, it is essential to put together a clean, simple and compact one. Obviously you’ve had plenty of collaborations with different shops so you’ve properly given credit to all of those. A good foreword includes the following: author’s name, rating, genre, character information, pairing information, possible warnings and disclaimer rights. Preferably these facts would be first and in this order, then the banners of the shops to be credited. However you do not have any of these written in your foreword, except for the disclaimer which I really think should not be at the bottom of your foreword because it’s harder to notice after the various banners. Also it’s okay to ask people not to leave hateful comments, but because you’re an author, you’re going to get critic and hopefully comments which are constructive, so you have to it up. They may sound a little mean (not intentionally) but people who actually read a lot, themselves write and know a bit of literature can help you learn, grow and understand more about writing. I hope you do not consider those sorts of comments hateful, they are merely offering advice, tell you what was good and what you could have done differently. Unfortunately comments as such are rare and most readers only end up saying how great and cute your story was instead, and therefore do not help you evolve as an author. But that aside, it is not your place to tell people what they can or cannot subscribe or unsubscribe. Your story is a subscriber-only story, so you have to understand that after reading some people are going to unsubscribe it. It’s merely something you have no power over and should not feel upset about. The good thing about your foreword is that you’ve stated your rights to the story and have a copyright marking at the end of the page.

 

»  In the future you should pay attention to the visual presentation of your foreword, perfecting your grammar and coming out as a bit nicer to your readers because as of now you sound a bit arrogant (the remainder part). A good writer knows how to take critic and use it to get better, stays humble and friendly towards his/her subscribers and appreciates them, and provides proper information on the story for the readers so they know what to expect. Nowhere in your foreword does it say e. g. if your story has any mature content in it.

 

plot 6/15

 

» Your plot is very plain and the reader knows right from the start what will eventually happen. Your story would benefit from having some sort of ground to sprout from, you could have used some twists to keep the reader interested or included some surprising incidents, accidents or just something to stir a spoon in the soup. The plot is very flat without any of those things. Your idea is really good and has fruitful possibilities, but you don’t take advantage of it.  

 

flow 8/20

 

» Your story flow is not very smooth and you’ve written in short paragraphs of one or two sentences which might look like an easy read, but it’s not. Try to collect your text into even paragraphs or at least put together more sentences to prevent your story from looking too airy and scattered. Now the only thing that happens is that your story looks long but is dreadful to read and to scroll down. Try to make it more compact perhaps, or at least do so in your future stories.

 

» In the first chapter a lot of things happen but because you’re carrying out your plot with dialogue rather than portrayal, it feels like nothing happens at all. However things aren’t advancing too fast in the first chapter, which is a plus. You do get a bit hasty with your story in the next chapter however and incidents just keep happening without much explanation whatsoever and there is unnecessary drama happening which is not very tasteful (Kris’s stomach aches and such). I feel like you’ve tried to make your story humourous with force. Towards the end of your story you're definitely rushing everything, not paying attention to details and it sort of seems that you're either bored of your own story or do not have a proper line of thought of how it should continue.

 

character and relationship development 2/20

 

» Personally, I’m not a fan of mixing fandoms because it’s messy and if a reader is looking for a story of their own preferred idols, it’s not nice to throw in characters from other bands without informing them beforehand. This is why you should have character information in your foreword.

 

» You haven’t put much thought and time into portraying your characters, which would be nice but the reader kind of gets the grasp of what sort of personality at least Baekhyun has. Other than him, the rest of the characters are a bit of a blur. Nothing changes in you characters throughout your story, except for Baekhyun coming out as homoual, which itself isn’t really development. The characters stay the same and do not grow, have significant traits or basically do anything that would benefit their characters, in any way shine light on them or allow the reader to have a closer look at them. In literature and in fanfiction (or any fiction for that matter) it’s important to create characters with relatable insights, thoughts and personalities which evolve on the way as the story goes on. Something happens and it changes the character’s view on things or they have a flaw, and that flaw peeks his head out from time to time. Baekhyun is supposed to (based on the description) be a coffee addict of sort yet he orders hot chocolate and there’s not much anything about the coffee. You could have played with that trait but either forgot or chose not to.

 

» I’m not entirely sure what possible relationship development there was in your story. Nothing happened between Baekhyun and Chanyeol, and suddenly Chanyeol just confessed his love to him? First of all, nobody declares their love to someone on the what, first date? Like perhaps but not love. Because of this was your end to the story was not only a cliché but a very bad one as well. Secondly, you rushed your story and the possible relationship growth between your characters. I understand that you’re young and probably not familiar with these sort of things/feelings, but I assume that you’ve read books and fanfics, so you should have a clue of how things evolve. However I do not know the quality of the fanfics you’ve read so I can’t trust on you learning from them.

 

grammar, spelling, word use 4/15

Important advice ahead, please read carefully.
 

» I checked your profile before reading your story, and I understand that you are still fairly young (13 yrs) and my guess is that English is not your first language. Taking that into consideration, your grammar is fine. However you slip into the shambles of mixing up past and present tenses together, which is a big mistake when used in a sentence in which everything is supposed to happen during a same period of time. Here for example: “Meanwhile, a sleeping body was dangling from the bed and is about to fall down, with all the sheets, stuff toys and pillows surrounding his body.” “Is about to fall down” should be “was about to fall down” if your story happens in past tense. This same mistake replayed multiple times during your story and since it is an infant mistake in grammar, I will have to decrease your points. Please go over your story to correct these. Not only would that be good for you as practice but would make the reading experience a lot more enjoyable for the readers.

 

» If you use quotation marks in dialogue, please remember basic punctuation rules. At the end of a phrase inside “...” do not use a full stop (.) if you’re going to continue with something of the lines of …”she said, he muttered” etc.. When someone says something, the correct form is to put their dialogue inside “...” and then add a comma (,) outside the last mark, after which you will write who said that and continue on your story. Here is an example: "Aigoo, Baekhyun-ah." she crouched down to wake up her son up, rocking his son's body back and forth forcing him to wake up. ➝ "Aigoo, Baekhyun-ah",  she crouched down to wake up her son up, rocking his son's body back and forth forcing him to wake up. You might want to change these mistakes in your story since it is a relatively huge typographical error. I am trying not to be too harsh on you since you are young and I remember my own first actual stories from around the same age as you, but please understand that as it is my job to review your story, I will give you my honest opinion and try to help you develop yourself. You have plenty of time ahead of you to get better, and that happens when you take in constructive feedback, benefit from it and practice hard. Also, try to stay away from writing something in all capital letters, because it breaks the coherence of your story and is distractive to the reader, so none of “There was a really good reason though, they were all GODDAMN HANDSOME” these anymore, okay?

 

» "Nothing, Let's go home, Baekhyun-ah" ➝  “Nothing. Let’s go home, Baekhyun-ah.” / Nothing, let’s go home, Baekhyun-ah.”

 

» "Miss Byun, you're son will be starting school tomorrow, please remind him to be at school at 6am sharp." ➝ Miss Byun, your son will be starting school tomorrow. Please remind him to be at school at 6am sharp." My dear, this is a rookie mistake and sadly even native English speakers make it.

 

» Unfortunately this is very common and I see this a lot, but please, if you are writing in English, try to stay away from including Korean words too much if those words do not mean a certain type of food, place or something culture related. This is just an advice. This is a feature that especially many beginners use, because they think it’s appropriate or cute or whatnot. It’s not. It can easily make your story really tacky and decrease its value as a piece of fiction, make it seem immature and childish. You can use foreign phrases and words as an effect if your story is situated in a foreign land, for example if a story happens in Spain, your character can say a few words of Spanish maybe a couple of times, but using the language excessively is just too much. Or if your story has a theme that revolves around French, then by all means, but in your story here I would advice to drop the Korean. Tacky. (You can however use hyung or ge/gege depending on the language you imagine them speaking in, that’s perfectly acceptable. These are things you learn in time, to judge what is tasteful and what is cringeworthy.)

 

» "ARRASEO ARRASEO,  NOW COME EARLY WILL YOU???!!!" No, no, no, no. A big no in my book. Capital letters make a person scream in their head, and although I assume that in this particular phrase that’s exactly the point, it looks terrible. A reader understands the concept of yelling or raising one’s voice even without everything being written in capital letters. I would like you to consider changing these sort of phrases into normal one’s like the following: “Arraseo, arraseo. Now come early will you?!” (Also would advice ditching that Korean.) You can use “?!” instead of the exclamation point and the question mark keys of your keyboard. Less is more and it’s just as effective, believe me.

 

» “Mind blowing”➝ “Mind-blowing”  You seem to have difficulties with compound words. I advise you to seek the help of a beta reader in the future, someone who will not necessarily just read your story and fix your mistakes, but who will point those mistakes to you and tell you how they should be revised so you can correct them yourself and this way learn to write better. It can also help to google the word or to use a dictionary.

 

» Do not use gifs/pictures in the middle of the story. It’s destructive to your text and confuses the reader.

 

» I think it is brave and wonderful that you’ve shared your story. It’s great that you’re interested in writing! Therefore I will offer you some advice on how to write better, because I assume that your goal is to build up your style and make progress. As of your story, you’ve used very simple words, repeated them and stayed in a comfortable zone, so to say. Have you used an online dictionary while writing? Always have a good online dictionary open while writing, because you can search for more words there and give life to your text. Also, check out thesaurus.com. It is a synonym dictionary where you can type a familiar word you already know but wouldn’t reallu want to use. It gives you words that hold a similar meaning but if you use them, they make your story more vivid and more sophisticated. The language you use in your story defines you as a writer and the whole spirit of your plot. You should aim to write in a way that describes you, use charming words and explore the language. It takes time to learn these things and to develop your own signature style of writing. My first stories here on AFF are a far cry from the way I write now. So please be patient and practice hard. The more you learn, the easier it becomes.

 

overall 8/20

 

» I hope that you do not feel discouraged now for it is merely my intention to help you. Because you are young, you have a naive touch to your story and for this reason perhaps even the end result of the established relationship between Baekhyun and Chanyeol stays friendly rather than grows passionate. Don’t worry though, you will get more life experience and understand things better as you grow up (but enjoy your innocent youth while you can, don’t rush to adulthood). The more you study and learn, the wiser you get and then can include your viewpoints in your fiction as well. As of now, your story is the work of a child, but that’s okay, because you are one. High school will mould you into a more mature thinker (hopefully) and if you keep practicing, you will definitely enhance your writing skills.

 

32/100

☆  At the end of your story you mentioned that you’re moving up from elementary to high school. I wish you the best of luck. High school isn’t scary and you get the hang of it quickly. Be sure to make friends, stay kind and study hard. Please take my notes into consideration and continue to write. This review is only my own personal opinion and I do not mean to upset you with it. I know that you are probably frowning at the points I gave you, but this is only helpful for you. I do not lie to you and I wish that you can take something from my review and start establishing your own personal style of writing, develop and continue to put out more stories.