Link to the story: Toulouse: The City of Refuge

To KPossible21: Sorry for taking so long! Chaptered stories are quite a challenge to review in a short time, and incidentally I had a myriad of tests this week (no kidding) so I apologise for the wait. Let’s get to it, shall we? I hope you don’t mind my review structure. I’m not a very organised person, hurhur.

About the Review:

I will begin with my sentiments on your story and pointing out the most prevalent mistakes. After which I will zoom in on a few chapters that had errors in them, or that I feel can be written better, given your ability. Following that, I will score your story and elaborate on it.

*I have only reviewed until Chapter 13 because that was the latest update when I started on your review.

In General:

You have great storytelling abilities. Without zooming in onto the specifics of your writing, your story has left a pleasant afterglow in my mind. I really liked reading your story, although I was slightly apprehensive at first (Chapter 1 had some issues, for me) but your story, amazingly, got better at an almost exponential rate. I really liked some of the chapters. I’ll point them out to you later.

Some things I really liked:

1.     The usage of pictures for text messages

2.     The characterization and the way the characters were portrayed

3.     The realistic quality of your story

On (1), I felt that it added that much more life to your fanfiction and it was a sheer delight to come across. It was extremely fun to read.

On (2), I felt like the characters were extremely lively and understandable, all of them with different priorities and thought processes and quirks of behaviour. I think you did very well in this area. Through all this, the important characters brought forward a sense of realism in their actions and feelings - which leads me to (3). I really enjoyed how real the characters pictured in my head throughout the story. Sungyeol’s internal monologues and dilemmas were masterfully done, including the whole ‘do I love Amber’ thing going on there for a few chapters. Great job on that! I was enamored with the secret development of Myungsoo and Amber, as well. You brought out their relationship very well, and the way Myungsoo reacts to his inner thoughts about Amber when he is with Sungyeol is, strangely, very relatable. A+.

One thing I have to mention – this is sort of a subjective thing, well, this review is rather subjective but – I did not fancy the italicization of hyung. It felt unnecessary. Just pointing out!

The most common errors in your writing would include:

1.     Missing words/letters

2.     Incorrect usage of words

Other than that, your story is written quite meticulously and I, as a reader, appreciate the hard work put into it.

Right, as an example for (1), allow me to pull something from Chapter 13.

I noticed that familiar in Amber’s eyes when Flic and Yuri adopted their position at the start of the movie.

After familiar, a word is missing. These were the kinds of errors I saw occasionally when reading your story. It didn’t bother me per sé, but it would have been best to publish a flawless piece of text, so I’m sure it’d be great for you if you could rectify those.

An example for (2), also from Chapter 13…

They past it like any other day.

Past should be passed.

AND

From Chapter 3, “I scrutinised my eyes as he packed up.”

To scrutinise is an action of looking critically at something - you can’t scrutinise your eyes. You can scrutinise a piece of work or a sculpture or an object, but you can’t scrutinise your eyes. I think the word you are looking for is ‘narrowed’.

Also, the way you express certain things can be rephrased. The way you phrase some sentences disrupt the flow of reading; they aren’t nice sentences that fit together perfectly. Many sentences in your story, actually, can be rephrased to sound more poetic. Such as, from Chapter 1:

I ask weakly, desperately wanting to know where Amber is planning on running off to.

There are too many –ings in that sentence, making it unpleasant to read. Perhaps: “I ask weakly, desperately in need of knowing where Amber plans on running off to.”

SOME SPECIFICS (My Sentiments, & Grammar)

CHAPTER 1

For the first person’s point of view, the way you describe your character’s feelings seems rather detached. People always say to show instead of tell when writing, which I think you are doing magnificently in, but I feel like a certain emotive element is missing from the words that you use – which is extremely important in my opinion – especially in a paragraph of text that aims to describe a current feeling.

What I am referring to is actually your opening sequence. You start by describing his feelings. When you explain the feelings, do so grippingly. This bothers me: “as my eyes water up a bit.” and “Flic’s words echo in my mind as we stand in the middle of my living room.”

The reading flow isn’t very good, because as completely breaks the moment. Try to avoid using as when trying to entrance the reader into a concentrated moment of feeling. What you are doing with the ‘as’ brings the story into a sort of retrospective point of view – which is rather distracting, instead of a steady sort of introspective focus that will enable the reader to remain fixated on the emotions that Sungyeol is portraying in the opening paragraphs… even as you introduce new surroundings or events.

Add the detail about location and objects (standing in the middle of the living room) along the way (it should not be something that the reader takes extensive notice of) and use it to add to the moment, not to disrupt it. At first I could vividly imagine the state Sungyeol was in until the point where you introduced:

“Flic’s words echo in my mind as we stand in the middle of my living room.”

It reads awkwardly. Try not to break away from Sungyeol’s point of view and his emotions. ‘As’ breaks the immersion I had in reading Chapter 1.

Also, don’t specify how much Sungyeol’s eyes water (water up a bit), it is an unimportant detail and impedes the flow.

Perhaps:

“Cold and numb. That is all that I can feel. My muscles stiffen slightly, and my eyes helplessly water. My breath catches in my throat— and slowly, I take a measured breath to calm myself.

We stand in the middle of the living room, Flic’s words echoing relentlessly in my mind.

She’s leaving.

! If you refer to the echoing of words as the last thing in the sentence, it is easier for the reader to connect it to the actual ‘echo’ (She’s leaving… she’s leaving…) right after.

-

Your tenses are wrong here:

He knows that my Uncle has died. The news has reached both Korea and France.

It should be:

He knows that my Uncle has died. The news had reached both Korea and France.

This is because the news had already reached Korea and France.

-

“One of her colleagues was meant to go, but he turned it down at the last minute. The hospital is expecting someone by next week, so Amber was the next candidate,” he explains.

The sentence would be more self-explanatory if you change it to:
“…expecting someone by next week, and Amber was the next candidate.”

OR

“…expecting someone by next week, so Amber has to go.”

-

“Surely little Jaden has to be upset that his girlfriend is leaving him (even though they both deny dating, but everyone could see the love growing between them).”

This can be phrased better. I’ll leave that to you!

Overall this chapter, which I believe must be a large source of your worry in terms of grammar, can be improved by changing the way you phrase. Play around with the sentences that sound awkward when read out, so you can find a better way to express them. It is a sub-par chapter in comparison to your others.

-

CHAPTER 2

“And the looks of admiration and envy of my classmates were too good to be passed on.”

That is slightly incorrect – it should be phrased as:

“And the looks of admiration and envy from my classmates were too good to pass.”

-

CHAPTER 5

“She got him wrapped in her fingers.”

I believe the expression is “She’s got him wrapped around her fingers”.

CHAPTER 6

“The way they poured their love for each other into every action they emitted made my heart squeezed.”

“…made my heart squeeze.”

-

“Realising what I was implying to, his eyes burned with fury and his face contorted in anger.”

“Realising what I was implying, …”

There are many small mistakes like the ones above. I suggest a re-read of your story, just to edit out the parts where you made unintentional errors, or just to make your sentences flow better.

“As much as I wished they could leave in a nice planned situation, it turned out that they had to leave without preparation.”

“…they could leave in a nicely planned situation, …”

If you could proofread your own story to rid it of those mistakes, your tone in the story would become significantly much more eloquent.

CHAPTER 9

The bolding of Yuri’s words don’t create a very nice effect. It steals away too much attention. I think the sentences are resonant enough on their own, so perhaps you should do away with the bolding. It won’t make the content of the sentence any less impactful.

-

There are still numerous little errors scattered across your story, however I regret that I cannot possibly go through all of them. They are all quite easily spotted though, so just do some editing and it should turn out fine.

Okay. Let’s get to the scoring.

SCORING & EXPLANATIONS…

Grammar/Spelling: [/15]

You definitely could have done better, no doubt about that. I’ve mentioned a bunch of little mistakes above, so do take note of them and look for any similar errors elsewhere as well. After some tweaking, your story should provide an even better experience for the reader.

[11/15]

Flow of words and sentences: [/15]

Not done as well as you could have, given your ability. There were awkward sentences every now and then, a few misplaced words and a few missing words. All of this affected the flow of reading. Chapter 1, in particular, was rather arduous to read, so please consider changing the sentence structures where it sounds strange. However, I feel like after the first few chapters you actually gained momentum with your story and the way you told it, so I commend you for that. Regardless, there was a lot of room for improvement in this area so play around with sentence structures more to tell your story more beautifully!

[8/15]

Coherency: [/20]

This, in a sense, is related to grammar and flow as well. For the most part, you did well in explaining what you wanted to. I’m not quite sure if I missed something, but I don’t quite know why Myungsoo is in such danger to begin with. Actually, from what I’ve read, I don’t understand how Sungyeol’s father and Myungsoo’s father know each other in the first place. Why does Myungsoo have to marry Hyuna? Because his father is controlling? And why would he want to kill Amber off only because Myungsoo was supposed to marry Hyuna? I don’t quite understand that bit, so perhaps you could clarify it to me if I’ve come away with some sort of misunderstanding, or you could incorporate some explanatory bits in your story... unless, of course, you explain that in the chapters following Chapter 13 - which would then be understandable.

But overall, you’ve done extremely well. I especially like the way you brought out the character’s thoughts and actions. It all made a lot of sense.

[17/20]

Plot: [/15]

Your plot is pretty solid, and the way it progresses is very… charming. It actually enticed me to an extent. As I got increasingly connected to Sungyeol as a character, similarly, I became very concerned with his dilemmas and his story as well, which made the plot very interesting. I like the plot idea too; especially how you slowly created the connection between Sungyeol and Amber as close friends through the experiences that they go through together (the labour especially). The events you chose to showcase in this story were very significant in terms of plot development and as a result, the dynamics between Amber and Sungyeol, which I assume is the one of the cruxes of this story, became something I was very fascinated with. It is a very interesting plot and was very nice to read about. Your story had an intriguing quality to it as a whole.

Nevertheless, I still did not understand the whole connection between Myungsoo’s and Sungyeol’s families. Perhaps you were going to explain it in the future chapters.

[13/15]

Character Development: [/15]

I loved this about your story. So much. I am overwhelmed with love for your style of revealing little facts about your characters.  The way they react to situations is also very realistic, and not all ~fairy-tale and happy endings~. (Myungsoo’s initial reaction to his feelings for Amber was real to the point where it was impactful.) You were true to slice-of-life, and I give you love for that. I like those kinds of fanfiction in general.

Amber and Sungyeol were amazing characters – they came to life as I was reading about them. I could see how Sungyeol had grown as a person, and how he gradually began to accept Amber as a part of his life without even realising it. I love how you wrote about Amber’s struggles with motherhood. I sympathised with both of them at different points, and noticed their changes after their respective ordeals and responsibilities. I think that gave so much room for each character to grow, and they did just that. Sungyeol’s tendencies changed by a significant bit as well, considering how he used to be such a Casanova. After the birth of Paris, which was one of the most significant points of the story, Sungyeol gained something. Maybe it was a feeling of defensiveness for Amber, or an appreciation of her difficulties in becoming a mother. But it was very tangible, and it really touched me. I think Sungyeol really grew, after that – starting to become more responsible for Amber in little, little ways. I really loved what you did with your characters. His thought processes were a delight to read.

The only issue I might have is that in Chapter 1, Sungyeol and Minho seem like mere acquaintances, and after reading till Chapter 13, of course I know that is not the case. After all they’ve been through in the 10 years, they should have been portrayed as closer friends (as much as they are nemesis) in the opening scene of the Prologue, by, for example, the way they spoke to each other. I believe Minho would have been a little less formal. However, I do understand that you were focusing on introducing the entire story at that point. Not a large error, it’s just something that feels off to me.

[14/15]

Impression [/20]

When you got to the point of Amber giving birth, I was very hooked on the story - simply because it was an incredibly interesting take on motherhood and birth. Those two chapters left a very deep print in my mind for some reason, probably because I could never understand the beauty of motherhood. It stuck with me, for a while. You played with unexplored concepts and wrote them very well, such as the aftermath, of Amber crying in her room because Paris wouldn’t be quiet. That scene was beautiful. Your story was impactful because it dealt with real-life concepts that are food for thought in a fallow mind. I felt like I was there with Sungyeol and Amber, and actually witnessed the scene of Paris’ birth taking place. Those two chapters describing her labour were intensely and wonderfully written. It was so vivid. Because birth deals so much with sentiment, it left a deep impression on me.

Alright, away from the birth scene, everything else that had occurred in the story had its glorious moments as well. The quotes you place at the start of every chapter and how you weave them into the story is well done. They relate well to the happenings in the story, so nice work there. There were quite a few resonant lines in there, and they stuck to me like glue.

In terms of resonance, you got me there with the birth scenes. From the character development to the plot, you impressed me. However, the little mistakes did take away from the experience.

(God, but the chapters about her labour were just so nicely constructed that I can’t think about anything else. Sungyeol’s thoughts just pieced together so well with everything that was going on with Amber.)

[18/20]

Additional ~Feels~:

I liked the story, although your writing tends to be choppy sometimes. I’ve mentioned this, right? The sentence structures aren’t very nicely constructed at some parts. However this was a very interesting read and I loved your Sungyeol and his thoughts that moved the story forward. Great job. By the way, I could see the incredible amount of hard work you've dedicated to this. It was a great fanfiction, so I think you should congratulate yourself! Best of luck in the contest!

[2 points]

I at scoring in general. But do take into consideration most of the comments I've made!

OVERALL SCORE: 83/100

Reviewer's Note:

I do not include the ~Additional Feels~ section of 5 points into the final score. They are just bonus points.