Nostalgia

Story by: vonpika

Reviewed by: TheDividingTree

 

Title [3/5]

I usually like short titles because they show that there’s a potentially meaningful story for me to read, but, to me, “nostalgia” seems incredibly overused, which it is, on AFF. If you search “nostalgia” in the search bar at the top right, and there is a surprising amount of stories named “nostalgia”. However, I’m not saying that your story is bad because you used an overused title. The title fits your story, though, so no worries.

 

Foreword/Description [3/5]

Your use of the foreword and description was fine, and the description gave us a good idea of what the story would be about, but I didn’t really like your foreword. The first sentence was good, and gave a sense of her being trapped—and she was. It was definitely a nice contrast from the reminiscing description. But I felt like you overdid the foreword. I would have preferred if you stopped after the first paragraph of pain description, because it just seemed like you were reiterating what you had written before in the second paragraph. It also made it seem like the story was about her fight against the pain that was consuming her—but that isn’t what your story is about.

 

Visual Appearance [4.5/5]

Your poster and background fit your overall theme, and everything seems organized. Originally, I thought that the pink was a bit too happy for the theme of your story, but after reading, I’m now interpreting it as that you were trying to separate the difference in emotions before and after her death. If you did that intentionally, well done. If you didn’t do it intentionally, still well done.

I would suggest not using tildes when separating POVs and scenes. Try using a series of hyphens and asterisks instead because the tildes look a bit more playful and don’t really fit with the atmosphere of your story.

 

Plot/Storyline [10/20]

I’m not really convinced by your story. I think that if this whole situation was based on an illness that required an organ transplant, it would be more believable, but I am very unconvinced that it would take one month to get a surgery. I’m sure that if a hospital ever did that, they would probably get a lot of bad publicity because if pancreatic cancer is in its final stage, it needs to be treated immediately. The doctors probably wouldn’t suggest surgery a month after diagnosis because she’d be too weak for it. 

The anesthesia sort of bothered me as well. Surgery begins after the patient is in stage three anesthesia, so her face will not twitch because of her dreams. If she were twitching in her dreams, the head doctor would probably start yelling at the anesthesiologist.

You probably think I’m really nitpicking here, but every little thing changes a reader’s view of a story.

I found your story to be quite clichéd. It was the sort of story that I would expect many people to think about when they pieced the prompt quotes together. The date was also quite clichéd, and I don’t think Kris would really have the time and energy to plan something like that out. You could argue that people do great things for love, but if she was really simple enough to eat street food outside, Kris shouldn’t need to do that much on a first date. But maybe that’s just me, because I like subtle fluff like when Kris said that SoYeon looked cute. As;dfklj I loved that part. Ahem, moving on… I completely understood your plot, so you got full marks in understandability.

 

Characters [12/20]

Let me start off by saying that Hana is the best. She has a lot of sass, confidence, and playfulness, which really amused me, especially the part where she told Jaewon to wash his clothes himself. Priceless. I would definitely read a story about her to get to know her better.

But let’s put that aside and move on to your main characters. I felt that SoYeon was a bit surreal in her positive outlook on her condition, and in that way, she seemed quite clichéd. I would have liked her more if you showed a bit of her insecure side, or maybe showed her missing Kris a bit.

On that note, I think Kris’ appearance was a bit too out of the blue. If she loved him—I’m assuming that she did—she would have thought about him at least a bit. Even though you’re writing in third person, that doesn’t completely detach you from the character’s thoughts. Don’t keep telling us about how SoYeon acts, or how her parents feel about the way she acts—show us with actions, words, and thoughts. Give us subtle hints about both her displayed feelings and her hidden ones.

I also don’t think Kris, the leader of EXO, would be so irresponsible and insensitive as to say that Minseok did not love his sister as much as he did, but then again, people can change quite a bit after someone’s death, so I guess I could sort of let that pass.

I’m still laughing at Jaewon. xD

 

Flow [9/10]

The flow was generally fine. There was just this one part where Kris was at the florist. You went from him running to the hospital, then back to the florist, then to the elevator in the hospital—all in the same tense. This was sort of confusing, so I would suggest you use the past perfect when talking about the trip to the florist (so instead of, “When he got to the nearest florist,” write, “When he had gotten to the nearest florist,” etc.).

 

Writing [13.5/25]

Ex. 1: Tenses

You lost quite a few marks because of your tenses.

“It could no longer be special. Its core is now long gone.”

The first sentence of that excerpt is in the past tense. The second sentence is in the present tense. If you proofread your story, I’m sure you can find those and correct them without any problems.

“It could no longer be special; its core was long gone.”

The semicolon is optional, but I think it fits that sentence.

 

The main problem I had with your tenses is something I often see in other stories.

“Everyone was now staring at her.”

“They were currently standing on the steps of SoYeon’s dorms.”

Always remember that you are writing in the past tense. The past tense is not ‘now’ or what is happening ‘currently’; the past tense happened before the narration. This also includes the incidents you used ‘right now’, but in those sentences, you switched the whole sentence to the present tense. You could change the above quotes to:

“Everyone was staring at her.”

“They were standing on the steps of SoYeon’s dorms.”

 

Ex. 2: Quotation Mark Rules

Make sure you end the quotation with a comma if there is a speaking verb afterwards.

Original:

“You heard me.” Xiuman hissed.

Corrected:

“You heard me,” Xiuman hissed.

And then if there is a question mark or an exclamation mark followed by a speaking verb, use the lower case.

Original:

“What?” He drawled.

Corrected:

“What?” he drawled.

 

I generally don’t like writing or reading long eulogies or speeches because when I read them, I go tl;dr and skim through it or skip it altogether. However, since you did put one in, you must use the proper rules for quotation marks.

“Let’s assume this is a long paragraph—or just a paragraph—a few lines long or something, and since I need it to be very long, I will rant on about its length. I don’t know how long this will be but don’t worry, it’s ending soon, and it will end without a closing quotation mark.

“And now let’s continue on with the really long quote as if it were a shorter quote, but since I don’t really want to continue on with it, I’ll just end it here the way you would end a normal quote.”

Notice how there’s no quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph, but each paragraph starts with an opening quotation mark.

 

Ex. 3: Though

There were many places where you used ‘though’ unnecessarily.

“It was still suffocating nonetheless though.”

You really don’t need the ‘though’. If you really want to put it in because it emphasizes something, use a comma.

Original:

“It was still suffocating nonetheless though.”

Corrected:

“It was still suffocating nonetheless.”

OR

“It was still suffocating nonetheless, though.”

 

Ex. 4: Incomplete/halved sentences

There were quite a few places where you had incomplete/halved sentences. What I mean by halved sentences is that you separated the sentence with a period, but if you placed a comma or space there instead, it would make more sense.

Original:

“This time though, spring wasn’t coming, spring was gone. Forever lost in his heart.”

Corrected:

“This time, though, spring wasn’t coming; spring was gone, forever lost in his heart.”

Original:

“From this day fourth, he was no longer Kris. Just an empty shell containing remnants of what Kris used to be.”

Corrected:

“From that day forth, he was no longer Kris—just an empty shell containing remnants of what Kris used to be.”

OR

“From that day forth, he was no longer Kris. He was just an empty shell containing remnants of what Kris used to be.”

 

Besides the conventions, allow me to comment on your writing. I feel that you’re trying too hard to use complicated words like ‘enigma’, ‘aloof’, or ‘disdain’, just to name a few. I wouldn’t use these words if I were you. I can’t say that they’re too complicated for me to understand, because I understand them, but they just don’t fit in with the story. This is a sad story; we want descriptions we can relate to easily. If some kid came up to me and started swearing at me for no apparent reason, I would think something along the lines of “what the f*** is your problem”, “that was rude”, or I might laugh at his —not “why is this kid so disdainful”.

On the other hand, you’re also using some words very frequently—“hiss”, “coo”, and “feign” are some I can name from the top of my head. There was also a section of less than 100 words where you used sarcasm about five times, and other places where you repeated the same description. I understand your description of the time of day holds importance because it reminds readers that it was the same time of day that they first met, but “dancing water” and “glass tears” were repetitive. Even though you used them only 2-3 times, they are very unique and artistic descriptions that cannot be used more than once in such a short piece because of the impact it had on the reader at first.

You should also watch out for your Korean words. If you are talking about the EXO member Minseok, that would be Xiumin, not ‘Xiuman’, but if you did the spelling change on purpose, that’s okay. I also think you should explain what “bbokki” is. I don’t think you got the name right, but since I just self-study Korean by myself and am not actually Korean, I can’t be sure that it doesn’t exist. I considered “ddukbokki” because many stories on AFF use that as a date food, but you can’t exactly eat that with one hand. I also considered “bopki” which is a possible date food (I haven’t seen it on AFF, though), but she simply ate it so that didn’t really make sense either.

 

Personal enjoyment/Bonus [3+1/10]

I really enjoyed Hana’s character, so you got most of your points for that.

Bonus: You used the word ‘suave’. You probably think this is really ridiculous, but suave is one of my most favourite words because of a really good fanfiction I read a while back... hehe

 

Total: [59/100]

Sorry this was really late; school can be relentless, yeah? That’s a pretty bad excuse on my part… Well, best of luck for the contest, happy late lunar new year, let me know if you have any questions, and be sure to rate my review out of 10 in the comments (: