This is the review of Love Potions by ali060903. Please comment down below or PM me when you have picked up your review. Please credit the shop somewhere in your foreword. I don't have a banner made yet, so a simple link is fine. :)

“I also want you to give me some tips to develop my writing style and how to add details in describing actions and emotions.”

^^ The following review rubric has been altered to meet this request.

I am going to start out by saying that your story had improved drastically between the first and last update. This is pretty astounding. I feel as though I started reading an amateur's fanfiction at the beginning, and by the end, I was deeply engrossed in a light novel. But for me to review, it was kinda hard to summarize all of it together into one piece. That is why most of my review is based off of the latest updates to your story, so you can expand your experience even more from where it is currently.

    1. Layout……..  8/10

Does the story flow? 0.5/2 - I don’t want to take all the fun out of writing this story, but you should really try to put more time into describing the imagery of the scene a lot more. I know this can be a pain in the , and it will take much longer to get an update finished this way. But if you do this, you will not only set up a scene in the reader's mind, but they will remember what the story was about a lot better.

Try to focus on little things that can be added. If an character is sad, don’t just simply write a couple descriptive words and be done with it. You have to let the reader know what he/she is feeling. What does their face look like? Are they nervous about something? If so, are they picking at their nails? Are they shifting from foot to foot?

If you take the time to slow down and add these things in, it really helps to stabilize the flow of the story. It will no longer seem like it’s all dialogue and no imagery.

Is it well organized? 2/2

Paragraphs indented? 1.5/2 - You have some parts of your story where you may have indented a bit too much. You start a new sentence sometimes when you don’t necessarily need too.

Is there page breaks or sections for every scene change? 2/2

If there is a moral to the story, is it clear? 2/2

     2. Grammar…….. 4.5/9

Capitalization? 2/2

No Run-ons? 1.5/2 - You don’t have a lot of run on sentences, but I did come across the odd one. Run ons occur when a sentence is too crammed with information. I personally recommend getting rid of unnecessary words, and creating breaks with commas.

“He was strict and extremely focused on the work whereas Camilla was that kind of person who could find inspirations only when she went out and did random things.”

Could be changed into:

“He was strict and extremely focused on the work, whereas Camilla was someone who found inspiration only when she went out and did random things.”

You can also separate the sentence into two or more pieces:

“He was strict and extremely focused on the work whereas Camilla was a different kind of person. She only found inspiration when she went out and did random things.”

Correct Punctuation? 0.5/2 - You have small little typos throughout the entirety of your story. You have some words missing, or you have the word “this” instead of “these”. I noticed how you seem to switch between present tense and past tense quite a lot. It seems pretty simple to me, but I grew up with the language, and you have not. You want to strive to have a story that follows the same pattern of text. If it makes it easier for you, you can break it up like so:

“Hello!” Lina waved excitedly when she saw Mark looking at her. Her smile was radiant and it truly could brighten up one’s day. He felt his lips curve upwards. He greeted her with a wave.

They helped, but he found his own writing bogus as he never truly experienced it in real life. The previous lyrics were not bad, in fact, they were all satisfactory.

However, being a perfectionist, Mark only wanted his product to come out flawlessly.

Nouns      -      Adverb      -      Verb        -     Past Tense Verb

Okay, so basically I have highlighted the parts where it got a bit wonky. If a word is ending in “ed” it is past tense, and it means that this happened in the past. So, “Lina waved” is in the past. But “excitedly” has a “ly” ending. This would be fine if Lina was excited at the present moment, but she isn’t. Lina was excited only in that short frame of time, therefore it is in the past. The rule I usually try to stick to is this;

If the verb is one of these four senses- taste, smell, look, feel -don’t ask how. Instead, ask if the sense verb is used actively. If so, attach the -ly. If the sense verb is not used actively, which is more common, don’t attach -ly.

Again, with the next sentence, “felt” is a noun in past tense. It refers to something that the character was feeling a while ago. But he is feeling the sensation right at that very moment, so you want to use a continuous past tense noun. Therefore: you should use “feel”

I do realize that I used a form of past tense of the same exact word while I was explaining that, but it’s hard to explain it any other way.

The third sentence I only highlighted because when I mentally corrected your mistakes, it automatically created another around the word “greeted”. I will fix the whole sentence so that you can see what I mean:

“Hello!” Linda waved, excited, when she saw Mark looking her way. Her smile was radiant and it truly could brighten up ones day. He could feel his lips curve upwards, and he greeted her with a wave.

As you can see, I took the liberty of smashing those two sentences at the end together. I did that because they were fragmented. This is just a fancy word to say that the sentences were too short and it makes it a bit awkward to read aloud. If you add a comma and a “and”, it helps to create a more stable sentence.

> Tiny tip from a fellow writer - I would highly recommend switching out the would “he” for the name of the character, or another name that he can be affiliated with.

For example, if you were talking about Harry Potter, you could replace the word “he” with orphan, wizard, boy, Harry, young Potter, etc.

I’m not saying that you should never have the word “he/she”, but it makes the story flow a lot better if you add in details like that.

Example:

Harry grabbed the broomstick with sweaty hands. He was not at all happy about the way that his fingers stuck to the handle, and he quickly let go to swipe the gross moisture onto his dressing robes. The young wizard cursed Professor McGonagall’s decision to let him race in such conditions.

I completely made that up off the top of my head, but I want you to notice the difference between this paragraph, and the one below, if I had only used “he”.

He grabbed the broomstick with sweaty hands. He was not at all happy about the way that his fingers stuck to the handle, and he quickly let go to swipe the gross moisture onto his dressing robes. He cursed Professor McGonagall’s decision to let him race in such conditions.

See the difference that makes?! If do it the second way, it seems pretty simple and boring.

I also just want to point out that you don’t need an apostrophe in “one’s”. The apostrophe before a (s) makes the sentence possessive, so if you place it there you are implying that the “day” can be owned by someone. Just try to remember that you never use an apostrophe to make a regular noun plural.

Proper English? 1/3 - My recommendation would be to go back and rewrite your first few chapters. I have to admit that the first few chapters were a little hard to read because of your poor english. I really think this can be holding you back from your full potential. A lot of people “judge a book by it’s cover” so to speak, and if they have a hard time reading through the first few chapters, I guarantee you they aren’t going to stick around to watch it improve.

      3. Plot Line………..8/12

Has a clear point? 2/2

Conflict is resolved in the end? 2/2 - You haven’t written the end yet but I see that it is going somewhere.

Plot line is complex, but easy to get a grasp of? 1/2 - You do have a clear plot line, although it was a bit hard to grasp at first. The beginning was hard to read because of your english, and because of that I kinda got lost. It’s also a bit harder for me to review a fanfiction when I don’t know any of the people in your story. That aside, my lack of marks is mainly for the fact that the plot line seems to be pretty simple. There is nothing wrong with that, but you might want to add some heat to keep things entertaining.

Plot is intriguing and draws people in? 3/4 - I can’t say a lot about this, since opinions vary between every reader and many people find different things entertaining.

Great imagery that creates a scene in the reader's mind? 0/2 - As I have mentioned previously, adding description goes a long way. If you really want the reader to feel something when reading the story, you have to put some effort into it. I can see that you have been trying to do so:

“Jeno abruptly stopped his foot movements as the words sunk in. He stood there, baffled, eyes glued to the ground, not daring to lift his head up. After seconds of silence, where both did not say a word, he eventually faced her, putting on the most boring expression he had.”

You have confirmed a few things here. You have conveyed to the reader the fact that Jeno is shocked, but attempts to cover this up by faking a facial expression. This is a great start. But delving further is the real key to showing clear emotions. You should try to explore motives for Jeno’s thinking. Why does he want to cover this up? How does this acquisition make him feel? What does he think about Lina currently? Is he mad that she brought this up? Is he fearful, or nervous? If so, how does his body react?

I attempted to add on to this paragraph to demonstrate what I mean:

“Jeno abruptly stopped his foot movements as the words sunk in. He stood there, baffled, eyes glued to the ground, not daring to lift his head up. Never in his dreams had he expected her to find out. This was bad. Really bad. How could she see through him like that? He was positive that he had covered up all the signs. He was careful about what he did, what he said, just to make sure he wasn’t caught. His whole career could be on the line if anyone else found out. But what could he possibly do to persuade her otherwise? She obviously had her mind set on this decision, and anyone could tell from a mile away that Kim Lina was stubborn and hotheaded. Jeno’s stomach swam with anxiety and fear. His heart drummed its fingers against his ribcage. It was so fast, so loud, that he swore a line of bruises now marked the inside of his shaking body. He had trapped himself in a corner, and he was going to have to face the consequences. Unless he could deny it? But would she really believe him if he told her otherwise?

After a couple seconds of silence, where both did not say a word, he eventually faced her, plastering on the most monotonous expression he could muster.”

Here I have answered all the questions that could be asked in that situation, and now the reader has a much better understanding of this character, and his motives.

      4. Character Development 5.5/9

Are emotions present in the story? 1.5/2 - You did a good job in conveying what a character was feeling, but I still think you can push your boundaries a little further and really explore what this character is thinking and/or feeling.

Are the major characters dynamic and round, rather than static and flat? 1/3 - First I will give you a little bit of context. A dynamic character is a character that undergoes an important change in their personality or attitude. A round character is a character who is extremely realistic, behaving and speaking in a “real life” manner. The character is complex and has many sides to their personality. Static and flat is the literal opposite of these terms. This is where your story currently lies.

The reason for this is that you have conveyed what they are feeling quite enough. You have your plotline figured out, and you tend to only focus on that for the majority of your chapters. My best advice for you is to create a sort of list for every character in your story. You should write down what their motives are, and what goals they want to achieve throughout the story. After you have done that, I would get another piece of paper and list all the relationships for the main character.

Example:

Kim Lina

Mark Lee: describe relationship and what she thinks about him

Hana: same

Camilia: same

Jeno: same

You can use this as a reference point in order to keep relationships between characters consistent. This especially helps when you go back to a story after a couple months break like I have haha.

In order to create depth to a character, you need to establish what they want most, what their background and past is, and what their personality is like. From there you can determine how they will react to others, situations around them, and what they think/feel.

I am going to use Harry Potter as an example again;

He is both a dynamic and round character.

He is dynamic because he goes through multiple dramatic changes throughout the series, and he learns many things through them. He learns to trust others, to stand up for himself, to be brave, and have courage.

He is round because he has many sides to his personality. He can be both angry, saddened, lonely, happy, and misunderstood for many different reasons. His happiness stems from his love of the people he has met, and the fun times he has shared with them. His anger stems from his feeling of being mistreated by his aunt and uncle, and arguments with others. He is rather stubborn this way, as he cannot let things go, and he likes to see things only his way. He is saddened because of the loss of loved ones in his life, and the feeling of loneliness stems from that, because he is often misunderstood for being famous.

See the huge web that I just created with that information? Try to aim for this. I know it gets complicated, and trust me, it is not easy. But with practice, it gets better!

Can people sympathize or relate to the main/major characters? 2/2

Does it make the reader feel something? 1/2 - You still need to work on developing characters and emotions further in order to achieve this.

          5. Dialogue 8/10

Does it make sense? 2/3 - This is mainly because of grammar mistakes. I am trying not to be too harsh because I noticed that you wrote the dialogue how a korean person would say it. It would make sense in korean, but in english it is a bit weird. I see where you are coming from though. You want to make the characters as close to the real thing as possible.

Is it realistic? 2/2

Is it well balanced with descriptions? 1/2 - There is a lot of dialogue, but not enough description. Try to make it 50/50 or at least 40 description/ 60 dialogue.

Is it well paced? 3/3

Personal Enjoyment: 2/10

Overall Score: 36/60

If this review was unsatifactory, or you would like to place a complaint, please PM me. If you need more help with anything else, don't hesitate to ask! 

Good luck and happy writing!