AUTHOR: ystar16 STORY TITLE: Stay Away.

Title (02/10): The title doesn’t really fit the story. Who is staying away from who or what?

Characterization (04/10): I can’t give many points for characterization when the characters are supposed to be mentally sick and the portrayals of the illnesses are vague and mainly misunderstood. Minseok is too meta-reflective for someone who is supposed to become mentally sick. Minseok is said to have social anxiety, but the anxiety only holds for the first 4 chapters or so before Minseok suddenly becomes a social butterfly with a screw loose. I also have to comment on Minseok’s mother. Her character is too crack-esque for a story like this. If there are anyone bipolar in this story, it’s her.

Themes (07/10): The theme of the story is an interesting choice and has potential to be a whole lot. But I need to pull a few points for the tag of social anxiety which is definitely not the main point of this story. I think other tags would have been more suitable for the story

Setting (03/10): “Regular hospital or kind of like a hotel” is a sentence you use to describe the mental hospital. In my experience with hotels and hospitals they are not alike in any way. Your plot takes place in a mental hospital, but I don’t think you do the setting any justice. There are so many things that takes place that wouldn’t have happened in reality. So a recommendation for another time is that you take your time getting knowledge about the settings you use before you write about them.

Description and Foreword (04/10): The description makes a story that is about one thing, while the actual story is severely different. The description makes the story out to be about social anxiety, while the story is more about other mental diseases. The foreword is what a foreword is. It shows lines from a chapter in the beginning of the story which adds a point.

Writing Style / Techniques (06/10): Mostly action followed by thoughts that are kind of crack-esque. There aren’t that many grammatical errors and the ones that are there aren’t really disturbing, but your writing is kind of clumped, rushed in parts that holds potential and too slow in scenes where nothing really happens. I’m missing a layer in your writing. Your writing consists of dialog, actions and thoughts, but I’m missing the tactile dimension of Minseok’s experiences. I am missing to know what things feel like. I miss a dimension of the mental experience Minseok has when he is hit by anxiety and how he feels when he is hearing Xiumin.

Presentation (09/10): The layout of the story is nice and easy to follow. It’s easy to read and the lines don’t float together. The story also has a nice poster though the meaning of red only shows in the last couple of chapters.

Structure and Flow (03/10): The story development of this story is chucky. In the first four chapters, you get Minseok introduced as this person. To chapter 5 Minseok makes a character development that is completely unprovoked and as a reader I’m wondering where it came from. This new character lasts for a handful of chapters, then Minseok makes another leap. There is no gradual development in his mind. Personally, I think this story deserves more chapters and a more fluent and gradual development than what it has.

Plot (05/10): First thing that comes to my mind is the credibility of how Minseok is admitted to the mental hospital. When writing a story on this kind of topic, I think the least you could do would be to educate yourself on the process of how people are admitted to a mental hospital against their will. Following shortly after this clear lack of research, comes a break of the professional confidentiality of a doctor. The in the story is highly unrealistic and often the is there for the sake of and not there for plot development. I think it’s a misunderstood addition to stories to add . But coming to the overall plot, I think the plot is very interesting and holds a lot of potential, I just don’t think this story does it much justice.

Overall Enjoyment (03/10): My overall enjoyment of this story is heavily put down by the presentation of the characters and their mental disorders. While the plot could have been used for something good, this story is vague in the research of the mental disorders. It’s unrealistic in the description of mental hospitals and those are things that irks me. As someone with close encounter of some of these mental disorders, this story just doesn’t feel right to me and I have to admit I hadn’t come past chapter 5 if it wasn’t because I had to review it.

Overall Score: 46/100
Overall Percentage: 46%
Reviewer's Note: I know this review is harsh and I’m saying things bluntly. I mean nothing personal with it, but as someone who has mental disorders close to my life, I see the stigmatization of mental disorders very upfront and I see what this stigmatization does to the ones suffering from them. And it bothers me to no end that when you decide to take up a topic like this you don’t use your words to help reducing the stigmatization by doing the necessary research instead of working by general misconceptions.
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