Story Title: Accueil au cirque
Story Author: BalancedCuppycake
Reviewer: minminXP

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Title: 2/10
Yes, your title is different, definitely. It’s in a completely different language from English, for goodness sakes. I don’t even know what language it is. Latin? Spanish? I’m not sure.

While it has its good and bad points, I find that it’s better if you use an English title. For one, people like me will not even bother clicking on your story title to find out the plot. A title should be able to sum-up the main idea to draw in potential readers. However, if a potential reader has no idea what the general plotline is about, they most likely would not bother to find out.

On the other hand, there will be a smaller group of curious readers who will be attracted by unique titles. Your story will appeal to that group, but if you have an English title, you will be able to reach a much bigger audience.

This goes for your chapter title too. Although by then, you will have already drawn in your readers, they will still have no idea what in the world your chapter will be about. Yes, the translation has been placed at the bottom of the page, but what use does it make when the chapter or foreword and description has already been read through? A title is meant for summing-up something, and there is no need for a title after it’s contents has been read. It’s an indicator to readers, a first impression. My first impression of your story was, very honestly, a skeptical one. 

Lastly, your chapter title didn’t make sense in any way, even to people who can read the language. How do the words ‘riddle me’ refer to the chapter in any context? Yes, the situation is different, but it is not confusing. Dongwoo never felt much confusion. Terror, yes. Worry, yes. But not confusion. Do consider revising your titles.

Storyline: 15/20
This story is unique in many ways, although the plotline does move very slowly.

The plotline itself is one of the less common storylines around. When there is a story about a circus, they’re normally about freaks and their lives as enslaved attractions. Of course, there is always that clichéd concept of clowns coming to life, and people getting lost in freaky mirror mazes.

Furthermore, you changed the main idea of magicians. Mention the word ‘magician’ to anyone and what image pops into their minds? A man in a suit, pulling a rabbit out of a top hat by its ears. By choosing to write about completely unheard of magic tricks, you have captured my attention-which is, believe me, an extremely evasive creature.

Choosing to focus on brotherly love and a magician is a less explored route for many writers, and I liked how you made even the entrance to the magician’s tent seem different, playing on people’s instincts.

The part about having a mentally handicapped brother wasn’t much of a good point for me, though. I found Sungyeol’s character to be seriously underdeveloped and that Dongwoo treated him like an adult would humour a child. If Seungeyol had been a normal brother, he would have functioned equally well in the story as a key character. He could still have been chosen to go onstage and act as an assistant. He could still have been the one who shut Dongwoo in the box at the end. I don’t see the need for Sungyeol to have been made mentally handicapped, and I get the feeling that he was only made that way in the story in order to make him a person that the readers would pity and to provide a reason for their visit to the circus in the first place.

Appearance: 4/5
I found your paragraphing to be quite accurate and consistent, which really helped you in this section. I honestly get quite peeved when I’m told to read something with a huge chunk of words, or with basically no sense of paragraphing. It’s confusing and gives the story no sense of rhythm.

I liked how you chose to put the picture of the little tent in between scenes. I don’t generally encourage any pictures in the text at all because they’re quite distracting and useless. But in this case, the graphic you chose was simplistic, refreshing and a bit of a wallflower, which is a good thing as it keeps the main focus on the text and not the picture. It also allows readers to know that a different scene is taking place. Of course, a simple “—“ in between the paragraphs is enough, but this stylistic choice of appearance really made a difference.

Although your paragraphing and your main text body was fine, I find that your background is a tad bit distracting. When I was reading your one-shot fic, I found my eyes gravitating towards the background whenever I reached a paragraph that I found boring. Keep your backgrounds simple and preferably quite plain, so that you don’t distract your readers from the story. After all, it’s your story you want them to read, and not the background that you want them to stare at, right?

Writing Style: 5/10
Your writing style was… coherent. It wasn’t amazing, but neither was it horrible. It was just coherent, although it’s definitely a notch better than the average AFF writer.

First of all, your writing style was extremely long-winded. Too many examples peppered your descriptions. For instance, when you described the colours present in the circus-or the lack thereof-you went on and on about many different colours. Not only did you rant on and on about the monotonous hues of the place, but you kept on recycling the word ‘colours’. Another pet peeve of mine is when writers continue to use the same words over and over again. Of course, words like ‘you’ and ‘I’ are quite basic, but words such as colours can be written in so many different ways! Words such as hue, tone, tint and shade all can mean the same thing. Even the names of different colours can be changed! Ebony, for black, caramel for brown, and instead of using the word ‘red’ to describe the assistant’s hair, you could have written this “crimson curls cascaded down to her shoulders” instead of “…her flame red hair. It spilled in flawless curls”. Not only does it disrupt the monotony of your writing in a good way, but it also gives a stronger mental image of Dalia.

Do check a thesaurus for alternate words when you are stuck. As a rule, I try not to use the same word in the same paragraph. Sometimes, I even try to limit it to once every two paragraphs. Or course there will be times when I will break this rule, but no one’s perfect. However, your excessively usage of the same word over and over again can get quite tiring.

Secondly, I don’t like how you wrote in present tense for most part of the story. It seems very strange, and as if the event was taking place while the reader is there at the same time. It disturbs me and gives a very weird feeling to the entire story in a bad way. For example, instead of saying that “he notices”, write that “he noticed”. It keeps the flow of the story more even and people don’t feel disrupted when they read your story. This is the one point where I will deduct the most marks for in this section.

One more thing that I really, really dislike about your writing style is that you randomly add in brackets after sentences, as if to throw in an afterthought. It’s annoying, and some of them are placed in areas that make it incorrect in its punctuation usage. If you want to add in more details, do so the in actual sentence and not throw in a bracket just to make it seem correct. If you absolutely must put in a comment at the end of your sentences, you should use the punctuation mark ‘-‘. But please, do keep the brackets out of the text altogether! I’m not saying that you can’t use them, but you’re overusing them, and that’s another matter altogether.

One last thing! About the aforementioned long-windedness in your writing style, it’s a good and bad thing. You have to strike a balance between describing and over-describing. Long paragraphs can turn off a lot of readers, especially the impatient type of readers who will just skim through the story to get the main plotline. Some readers may even choose to quite reading, just because they have been intimidated by a long paragraph about colours, which isn’t even necessary! The example of colours that I keep on picking on isn’t the only time you ranted on about things. Try to keep your descriptions engaging and relatable. Paint an interesting mental image in their minds. But don’t overdo it.

Characterization: 3/10
Dongwoo was well developed; you managed to portray his impatience, his love for Sungyeol and his opinions. In other words, you fleshed out his character instead of creating an empty shell.

However, I found the relationship between Dongwoo and Sungyeol to be a little too shallow. I get the impression that Dongwoo loves his brother, and will treat him like a spoilt little brat just because he has a mental disability. It doesn’t paint Dongwoo in a favourable light, and I felt a little disgusted with Dongwoo, honestly. If you meant for it to be that way, great job! If not, you might really want to relook your character development.

The other two charcaters, the magician and his lovely assistant named Dalia, played a big role in this storyline. However, they were both severely underdeveloped. The magician appeared, gave Sungyeol stones that were not necessary in the plotline whatsoever, and conjured a few insane tricks that involved Sungyeol and Dongwoo. When you introduced Dalia, you described her with such care and detail, but you hardly even looked into her character. It was as good as having a faceless magician’s assistant, since she just turned out to be there just for the sake of being there. There were so many loose ends in these two characters that had so much potential for more development. I felt really disappointed with the lack of personality in these characters. Characterisation is actually the most important category to me. Without interesting characters, how is the reader supposed to be attracted to your story? It’s highly unlikely that people are going to want to read about an underdeveloped character or a personality that they hate. But thank goodness you didn’t resort to a Mary Sue. Those are the worst.

Story Flow: 4/10
The story went a bit too slow for me. It was actually a bit of a pain for me to wade through all those long-winded paragraphs with a barely passable writing style.

Furthermore, there wasn’t much of a in the story, besides that slightly agitating scene where Sungyeol goes onstage, no action or anything, so the excitement level was pretty much flat. It made the story flow seem draggy somehow. I don’t really have many comments for this section, since it’s pretty much self-explanatory.

Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling: 6/10
Thank goodness your grammar isn’t that bad, other than that irritating hiccup of using present tense. Your punctuation, well, I raised the issue of using brackets earlier, didn’t I? Well, I’ll explain the basic technicalities of it now.

For instance, ‘the man picked up the heavy sack-or at least he tried to.’

When interjecting it in the middle of a sentence, use it like this:

‘The man picked up the heavy sack with a grunt-or at least he tried to-before making his way out of the door.’

It’s not a very good example, but you get my gist. You can also use commas in these kinds of situations. I am a big fan of using commas for putting in additional information. These information is normally put in the middle or at the end of the sentences using ‘-‘ or ‘,’, with these information being examples most of the time.

Creativity and Originality: 11/15
Was it clichéd? Not really, I found it rather original. It’s hard to come up with an original plot, especially with the number of stories out there, there’s bound to be one that’s similar to yours. However, your story would be placed in the minority group, which is a good thing, because when readers read this story, the plotline will stay in their heads longer then compared to a rather common plot where an orphan gets taken into an idol’s dormitory or similar to the like.

Overall Enjoyment: 7/10
The plot was relatively original, the characters were passable, and so was the writing style. But technicalities aside, you write a lot better than most AFF writers and it’s a nice change from all the scary use of inappropriate grammar I have seen on this side. I guess I could say quite safely that I enjoyed this fan fiction.

Sub-Total: 57/100
Bonus: 2/5
Although I was really strict in this review and I pointed out a lot of bad points to you, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy this particular fan fiction. I tend to get carried away when I write about people’s flaws, do forgive me for that, it’s a flaw of mine.

Furthermore, I do admire your attempt at writing a serious fic like this, although there were slip-ups when you injected strange, unnecessary sentences in a less-than-serious manner. The one where you wrote about how the chair hugged his in a comfortable way was very random and uncalled for, and it kind of killed the serious mood. But overall, very good attempt.

Total: 59/100

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