Review for ‘Inseparable Yearning Love’ by sapiya

Review by ScreamingMidget

Title (6/10) : I’m gonna be totally straightforward in this review but look at the score to see how I’m judging, okay? I’ll compliment you, sure, but your improvement is my number one priority! I’m saying this so you won’t want to hate me xD

Inseparable Yearning Love. You’re using two adjective for ‘love’ - each adjective lessens the impact of the other. ‘Inseparable’ takes away from ‘yearning’ and vice versa. How so? Well, okay let me start off with this:

You’re describing love as being inseparable. I get that you’re using ‘love’ as in like a romance as opposed to the actual emotion (right?). Like, you know: “An insatiable love” or something like that.

This is how it’s defined in a dictionary:

1. an intense feeling of deep affection.

"babies fill parents with intense feelings of love"

2. a person or thing that one loves.

"she was the love of his life"

If you’re thinking of ‘love’ in the emotion form of the word, then, I’m sorry but your title makes the least amount of sense this way. An emotion cannot be described as inseparable or yearning. So based on this, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and I’m gonna say that the way you meant for it to be defined, is that it’s a romance, an affair, a love. Got it. Moving on.

Yearning means to want and inseparable means that it is impossible to separate. I got that too. But what I don’t got is how this ties to a love? Substitute in ‘romance’ and ‘affair’ because they all technically are just the same thing, okay?

Inseparable yearning romance. Inseparable yearning affair.

Honestly, those titles just lack a certain appeal. It doesn’t quite give me an OOMPH. The only people I can think of that title their works with literally no connection to the plot are rom-com drama producers. No, for real. Their titles: “Love Now”, “Love Around”, “Just You”. They have no relation to the plot whatsoever. And that’s okay because they’re just cheesy rom-coms and there are hot guys to compensate BUT this is your STORY and we just can’t compensate with anything. So, don’t use two adjectives in a row to describe ‘love’ of all things. At least 90% of the fanfics on AFF are romance stories. What is the main idea in your story? Is there something that sets it apart? What’s the plot? The theme? Try to work with different words that you use throughout the story. For example, consider the hypothetical story about an abused little boy, tied to chains in his own home, who grows up and finds a way to escape his imprisonment. You would want to name it something like “Broken Chains” because HEY he breaks out of that house eventually. I think what you’re doing is that you’re thinking too generically. Your mind is focused on the fact that it’s a romance story and not on the story’s idiosyncrasies (not that it’s actually...alive, I guess) that sets it apart and gives it it’s own personality. The way you’re going about with the title, you would name that kid’s story “A Sad Domestic Abuse” and we don’t want to do that.

What if we called this something like “An Insatiable Love” or “An Insatiable Affair”. ‘Love’ is WAY too common of a word and you might want to just get rid of it. I read the quote on your poster - something about lying - and got the gist of your story with the appearance and description - Wu Kingdom, Chinese, martial arts, prince - so something like: “The Myriad of Lies” could suit it. See, with the word ‘myriad’ we elicit connections with the reader. It has kind of an old-world charm. Probably obscure enough of a word for people to think it’s Chinese.

LOL. Jokes.

Description & Foreword (7/10) : WOW. I LOVE IT. The description was short and sweet. You kept it succinct but sophisticated enough to give it a taste of your writing capabilities. The only concern I have is that...the title might not be structured as well as it could.

Original:

A medieval Chinese tale of a forbidden love between a servant in training in becoming a martial artists, Huang Zi Tao, and a prince in becoming a king, Wu Fan, who find unexpected love that no one must know of.

Look at the first thing I highlighted in yellow. That’s not grammatically sound. And neither is anything else I highlighted in yellow. When you’re saying ‘who find’, you’re actually referring back to the love that was forbidden (first part of your sentence). This is because the two characters are between commas and are used to describe their...descriptions. OTL Idk how to explain this. Just trust me on this one. This is how you’re going to fix it:

This is a tale, set in the heart of ancient China, of the forbidden and unexpected love between Huang Zi Tao, a martial artist in training, and Prince Wu Fan, a king to be.

You can take out the ‘Prince’ in front of Kris’ name since it’s kind of redundant (because we already just said that he’s going to be king). I changed ‘medieval’ to ‘anceint’ because okay, I usually hear ‘ancient’ and YEAH ‘heart of ancient China’ is pretty common of a backstory but who’s judging so long as it makes sense?

No one :D

Now, here’s a better version of that description:

An epic, set in the heart of ancient China, of the forbidden, unanticipated affair between a martial artist in training and a king to be.

SHORT AS POSSIBLE. NAMES NOT NECESSARY. I LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING.

You must really love the word ‘love’. Well, it’s such a popular word that it actually has at least ten other popular synonyms that you would be better off using.

1. endearment 2. attachment 3. affair 4. romance 5. intimacy 6. fondness 7. devotion 8. adoration. 9. infatuation 10. lust

And somehow, they all have different tastes to them, too. So use whatever is necessary in that context. If your two guys are together in that moment, you would use intimacy, not fondness because ‘fondness’ or ‘yearning’ elicits a feeling like they’re far away from each other.

As for the foreword, I like it. I was never a huge fan of character charts but it’s elegant and probably necessary for your story. I also like that you gave a ‘preview’. Beautifully written - GREAT JOB <3 !!!!!!!!!

Content & Plot (20/20) : Ooh, yeah, gull. It looks really original.

Characters (8/10) : I like this a lot! I think this is definitely one of your strengths. The characters’ actions kind of allude to their personalities and that’s all swell and great. I think you could use more descriptiveness. OMG by no means do I mean you actually sit down and describe like their faces. Little by little - he brushed aside a strand of his black hair that had a habit of brushing his eyelashes - try to describe your characters so that even if a reader didn’t know what Tao and Kris looked like - lmfao xD this is hypothetical - she or he could still paint a picture with your words.

Grammar & Spelling (10/10) : Too amazing. I couldn’t notice any mistakes. Keep it up!

Organization/Flow (7/10) : You kind of need to work on your flow. Look at the first chapter. Tao had one flashback and two line breaks. Then, it abruptly switched over to Kris and he had a line break too. I think when you’re thinking of what to write, you tend to think with scenes. Your brain plays it out like a movie. In dramas and movies there’s so many scenes that transition off to another one. Books don’t quite work like that. You’re going to have to start thinking of ideas where you actually write in your head. So when you’re thinking of ideas, try to find the words for transitioning and stuff like that. You’re getting better as you go along but I don’t want you to forget this.

Appearance (10/10) : This is really appealing. The font and its size and all. Great! I love it!

Enjoyment (20/20) : It was a total joy to read! I hope you figure out how to make your writing less blocky and more fluid! Anyway, it’s an amazing story and, above all, your writing style is amazing. The ideas you have - especially the roles you assigned the guys - are fantastic! I hope you only benefit from my review, that you’re not disheartened but motivated, and continue to write well!!!!!!!!

Total : 88/100

Btw: SO sorry if you had to wait a while!!! I have a load of hw now. It’s definitely not because I was ignoring your hard work! You totally deserve that spot in the hall of fame!!! I hope your story gets the attention it deserves ^u^!

Jangmii's a/n: i'm putting you in the hall of fame because ScreamingMidget recommended to.(: