Receding Shores by OrcaWolfy

Title (3.5/5)

I really, really like this title. The moment I saw your title on the form, I was so excited to read the story. It sounds sophisticated and elegant, yet mystifying and captivating. I have a thing for titles that have an allure of sophistication without revealing anything and I find that your title is exactly that. I think it has potential for a lot of different plots. I would definitely give the story a try if I were to browse around and find it by accident. However, even though it’s a good title to me, as of now, I feel like it has yet to relate to the plot of your story (other than the fact that the setting is mainly at a beach hence the word “shores”). I’m sure if the story was completed and if I knew exactly what the plot was going to be about, I could go more in depth about it. Since there are only five chapters published, I can’t say much about the relevance of the title to the story. A thought that the story will be giving some slices of angst in between romance came to my mind when I first looked at your title, although I’m still uncertain whether or not I was completely right since your story is still on-going and the tags only hint it to be a romance and friendship story that is fluffy and ty. I believe that you have everything planned and organized, therefore I hope to see how you will develop the plot and relate it to the title.

Anyway, I also would like to mention that I LOVE your chapter titles. They are simple yet lovely and invoking to me. The titles are perfectly tied and connected to your chapters so I just had to give an extra point for that even though they aren’t really a ‘title’.

Description & Foreword (7/15)

First and foremost, this section will mainly be focused on the description as there isn’t much more than pictures of your characters and credits in the foreword. To be quite honest, the description is not something that would grip my interest. The reason for that is because, to me, the description is too plain and it didn’t spark my curiosity like how a description should when I first read it. I have to be honest that the one thing I like from your description is the simplicity of it. You phrased the whole sentence with the proper length and wording. Its short and blunt content reveals the main idea of the story without spoiling anything; that’s what I think you did a good job of. However, like I said earlier, the description is not entirely captivating. The impression that it first gave me failed to grip my interest or spark my curiosity to read your story. First impressions are really important. Your title gave me a good first impression but your description didn’t. Also, the description says, “Together, no competitions, just friends. Maybe lovers even.” From here we can assume that the story is going to be about the friendship and eventual romance between the members of BLACKPINK and 2NE1. I can see the relation between the description and your tags. However, even when the story seems to be about friendship and romance, I feel like the latter is more emphasized. There are already five chapters published but I barely see that friendship you meant in both your tags and description. I wish we could see more of the friendship stuff before jumping into the romance part. This might also have to do with the fact that your story is still in its early stages, so I hope there’s an improvement as the story progresses.

Then there’s the foreword where there isn’t anything else but pictures and some credits. I don’t mind them but I don’t think it is sufficient to not include something else in the foreword, like maybe, an excerpt from your story that can lure the readers in more. A description is supposed to attract readers, and the foreword is supposed to support the description. Both descriptions and forewords are there to capture people’s interest to read the story. When your foreword only consists of what you have right now, it doesn’t really reach its purpose of supporting your description. Please use the advantage of forewords to support your descriptions. Either an excerpt or a short preview. Even a simple quote that is relevant to the plot would be great.

Overall appearance (3/5)

I think the overall appearance of your story is nice. The font and size are just right, and the poster and background are really pretty. However, I have to admit that the poster and background lack some spark to them. They don’t really set off the mood and tone of the story well. From what I’ve gathered, the story is quite light and romantic with some depiction of drama in the plot. Unfortunately the poster and background do not portray that dramatic and liveliness ambience of your story. The colors are too gloomy for a story like yours. I did say that your title gave me an angsty vibe but after reading your story I don't think angst is part of your genre, yet both the poster and background appear angsty, which is why I find that they don’t fit your story at all. You did mention in the form that your story is slight angst but the colors of the poster are still a bit too dark even for a slight angst fic. Besides that, I’m also annoyed that the poster fails to portray your character personalities. Maybe because it’s hard to make a poster of eight characters and it’s easier to use pictures from official pictorials for a poster like this. However, I feel like it’d be a lot nicer if the character personalities are properly conveyed in the poster. In your story, the BLACKPINK members are mostly cheery and childlike while the 2NE1 members are mostly mature and sophisticated. I wish these traits could be seen in the poster because that’s what posters are for. In fact, the character layout portrays your characters and story better than the poster does (kudos to the designer). I know that you didn’t make your own poster so it’s really not your fault.  If you’re willing to request for a new graphic, I suggest one that is mixed with a whole lot more light romance/drama qualities. The poster and background are nice to look at and very aesthetically pleasing but they don’t do your story justice so I’m really sorry if I’m being too critical right now.

I would also like to talk about the way you organized your foreword. I’m sorry but the way you put the pictures and credits look a bit chaotic. It’s not a problem if you view the story on computer but it looks crowded when you view the story via phone. I can see your effort in making your foreword look pretty, and it is, but try to make it look neat. Also, try to separate the character layout from the credits, maybe make a bigger spacing in between or just insert a horizontal line. Whatever that can make your foreword look cleaner and more legible.

Plot / Flow (10/20)

I think because the story only has five chapters right now, so obviously there isn’t much development to the plot yet. It’s nice that each of the chapter has something going on so that readers can actually have something to look forward to when they read your story. However, despite that factor, I have to say that from the beginning until the latest chapter, the plot idea has been extremely simple and isn’t quite engaging. I said this before but the story is quite light, and I meant that in a way that there isn’t anything exciting about the whole plot so far but at the same time nothing boring about it either. Maybe the reason why I find the story quite on the plain side is because the story itself is not the most realistic. I have a hard time understanding the characters and plotline. The situation in the story is very odd. Realistically, popular idols who are nationally known like BLACKPINK and 2NE1 have packed schedules and rarely have time to do other things regardless of whether they are promoting or not. If as described in the story, all the characters should be way too busy to have so much free time to go vacationing in Busan, and it also won’t be easy for them to go somewhere without the media not knowing about it. I’m not saying it’s entirely impossible for idols to go on a vacation freely but it’s highly unlikely. Plus, where are the managers? It doesn’t make sense that their managers are not with them even if they are on a break. It also makes no sense when none of the managers contacted the girls. This is one of the reasons why I prefer AUs because when it is the opposite, it’s hard to write realistic and believable situations unless you have worked in the industry or have done a lot of research to actually have knowledge about it.

Besides that, the flow of the story is pretty choppy. It's good that your story is starting to have a conflict because all stories require some kind of conflict, no matter whether it is a major conflict or a minor one. Conflict is arguably the most important element in making a story because without it your story will have no movement and no narrative drive. I can see that you know the importance of a conflict so you managed to create one that I believe happened in chapter 4. The conflict is fine but the problem I have with it is how unnatural and awkward it is included in the story. The conflict seems to be randomly thrown just for the sake of having one rather than part of an ulterior plan. It’s hard to grasp how quickly it went from Dara and CL to Dara and Jennie. The transition is just not natural. It is too abrupt and quite hard for me to digest what’s really going on. My main problem with it all is how it doesn’t flow well together. It lacks coherence. In my opinion, the plot is already enjoyable and satisfactory, but the structure and organization need some improvement. What you can do is elaborate and develop your plot in a cleaner and more orderly way before starting the conflict so that everything can actually flow well together. Consequently the overall flow and plot of your story will be better. 

Writing style (11/15)

Your writing style is not complicated. It’s easy enough for readers to understand what is happening in your story. You keep your diction and syntax pretty simple and straight to the point. I love the simplicity and delicate tone of your writing because it suits well with the story. However, I just wish that you could be more descriptive in your writing. Different authors have different kinds of writing styles and I’m not asking you to change yours because it’s already fine and it has its good points, but I do hope that you can try to describe more about the things in your story. More often, your descriptions seem more factual and clear-cut, focusing more on the actions rather than the characters’ thoughts, settings, etc which sometimes can be hard for readers to connect to the story. I just think that it would be much more interesting if there were more details about the plot, settings and characters.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say I struggled reading your story but I certainly had a few difficulties. The reason for that is because I really hate the inclusion of romanized Korean words. I know that the story is revolving around Korean idols and of course we picture them to be speaking in Korean, but I find that if the story is written in English, it is best to keep all phrases and expressions in English (this does not include honorifics so -hyung, -unnie, -sunbaenim, etc are fine). Maybe it’s a pet peeve of mine but it makes the story feel awkward to read because you’re just randomly interjecting a Korean word into an English sentence and it just doesn’t fit there. Try saying something in English out loud and then add an “aigoo!” or "nae~" to the end or beginning of it; it seems so...weird. I also think that these romanized Korean words in an English story make everything look childish.

Other than that, this only happened in one chapter which is the first one but I still need point it out anyway because it’s a flaw that every author should avoid doing. Please do not change POVs like the way you did in chapter 1. When you want to write a story, one of the most important things to consider is the type of POV you’re going to use. I think you know that there are three types of POVs; first person, second person, and third person (omniscient & limited). These POVs are what going to narrate your story. Covering different POVs in a single story is always a poor decision. You must always stick to one POV. In chapter 1, you switched from third person (Jennie) to first person (Minzy), and I’m sorry but that’s just wrong. That’s not how narration works in a story. If you have so many characters that need to be covered, then it’s best to just stay in 3rd person like you have mostly done in the other chapters. This change of POV only happened in the first chapter so I hope you can quickly fix it and not repeat it in your future chapters.

Character development (8/20)

Before I go more in depth on this section I would like to applaud you for having the ability to write a story with eight characters. Characters play very important and essential roles in a story. When the story develops, the characters need to develop and grow as well. It’s really hard to develop so many characters at the same time especially when all your characters seem to be the major and central characters in your story. It takes a lot of work and effort to establish a good character development with more than one important characters, and in your case, you’re working to establish character development with eight important characters. That’s really amazing. Not a lot of people can do that, even I do not dare to try it because it’s a big challenge in writing. I really admire your skill and courage to do so because it shows that you like writing and want to grow as a writer.

Alright. Now let’s talk about the characters. I have to be honest that the characterization is pretty weak. Your characters are not well-developed and that’s probably because you have only written five chapters, so the development of both BLACKPINK and 2NE1 are not yet well-constructed. Personally, I really have no emotional connection to any of the characters whatsoever. I cannot relate, connect to, or understand them. What you lack in your characterization is depth. There are obvious traits of your characters that I can spot like how I said earlier that BLACKPINK are mostly cheery and childlike while 2NE1 are mostly mature and sophisticated. Unfortunately, that’s just it. There aren’t any sides or layers to the characters besides what I just mentioned. These girls are all very important characters to your story since the plot itself revolves around them, but there isn’t much to them as characters which makes them all two-dimensional. You don’t delve enough into their characteristics. They are also not all that realistic, like their reactions to things in their lives and their thought processes are not reasonable. Here is one example:

- Jennie and Dara. I can’t for the life of me understand how could they possibly sleep with each other. It’s true that Jennie’s relationship with Jisoo is still vague (although they do like each other), but Dara is obviously in an established relationship with CL. Also, despite the fact that Jennie and Jisoo’s relationship is still vague, they seem to share the understanding that if they are ever going to start a relationship, it’s definitely going to be with each other. Infidelity can happen but here’s the thing: before the happened, there was no indication that there was an attraction between Jennie and Dara. There was also no solid interaction between the two but suddenly they were both in their own private lodge having . It’s not realistic and it’s really an odd and abrupt characterization. I know that there’s an implication that Jennie and Dara were under the influence of alcohol but they didn’t seem to be intoxicated when they were doing it, thus it’s hard to think of what happened and their respective responses to it as believable. 

There are other instances where your characters need more depth. This mostly has to do with the fact they are not fully developed yet so everything feels awkward to read, but it also has to do with how choppy your flow is. I’d suggest slowing the pace down a bit so you have time to develop your characters.

Language / Grammar (11/15)

Honestly I’m not going to dwell on grammar. I am no grammar Nazi. I wish I was at least an active reader for tenses and spelling but I’m not. I write instinctively, more so in reading, so truthfully I can’t really be as much as a grammar critic as I would like to be. I’m not sure if English is your first language, but you mentioned in the form that you’re fluent in English. I don’t see a problem with your grammar. Your tenses are consistent and there aren’t really any major grammatical errors that are worth mentioning.

The only thing I’d love to see more in this section is the use of imagery. I mentioned before that your diction and syntax are simple and straight to the point. Nothing wrong with that. Your vocabulary is also easy to understand. The language that you used suits your overall story really well. I do appreciate the simplicity of it. However, I also mentioned that it’d be great if you could write more details in your story, and the use of imagery can be really helpful in adding depth to your plot, settings and characters.

Personal enjoyment (3/5)

As a reader, I kind of enjoyed this story. I don’t know how many times I’ve said it but I loved the simplicity of the story. I thought it was nice and satisfying which makes it pleasant to read. I thought it was a decent read. Your plot and character development need a lot more work, but then again, the story is still on-going and there are so many possibilities that could happen in the future chapters. I’m pretty sure you have everything planned. I tried my best to focus on the things that you wanted me to. If you take into consideration of the things that I pointed out and suggested, your story could seriously be good. Judging by the comments, I can see that a lot of people love reading your story and honestly, that’s what really matters. This is quite a long review and I apologize. I tend to ramble sometimes and it’s something that I can’t help but doing when I’m reviewing or commenting. If you got any questions, feel free to ask. Thank you so much for requesting from me and sorry again for being so terribly slow.

Total score (56.5/100)