When the Night Falls… [An Interactive Story]

Story by: swyuki and cheryllly

Reviewed by: TheDividingTree

 

Title [1.5/5]

The title of your story is literally what the story is about, but other than that, it is quite bland. If I were scrolling through the newly updated fanfiction on this site, I would not click on your story. The “the” in your title should also not be capitalized; “the” should only be capitalized at the beginning of a title. It was, however, smart of you to put the “[An Interactive Story]” in the title.

To summarize, your title doesn’t really leave any room for curiosity because readers can guess the general plotline, especially after the first chapter.

 

Foreword/Description [0/5]

Your description has so many font types and colours that it looks a bit immature. It’s one thing to want to get a person’s attention, but it’s another thing to look extremely disorganized. What is the difference between the different colours, fonts, and font types of the description and foreword? If it is to categorize things, then it’s fine; otherwise, it’s not necessary. There are also many grammatical errors in your foreword and description as well as C.A.P.S.L.I.K.E.T.H.I.S., which can either be distracting or even annoying as too many of them distract from the actual content of the sentence.

Your tags also don’t really make sense. A horror is not meant to be a comedy, vice versa. How are you supposed to scare people while making them laugh?

 

Visual Appearance [2.5/5]

The text of the chapters is mostly fine, but I would advise you to make the font of the options more consistent. The description also looks quite messy with the different fonts (as I’ve mentioned before).

 

Plot/Storyline [4/20]

For the whole review, I followed the path with Jonghyun, and then every first option after that.

First of all, in general, the situation that Nicole is placed in is not realistic at all. And, even if the situation is not in a realistic setting (since it’s horror and how realistic horror is depends on the reader’s perspective), there is no valid explanation as to why Nicole was placed in a room with a boy. A system error can be fixed. If you were placed in a room with a boy and the head told you that there was a system error, would you just walk away and go live with a guy for a year? I don’t think the head would just leave it as is either—it would probably negatively affect the school’s reputation.

 Then there’s the towel scene—extremely predictable and clichéd. First meetings are very important. They bring out first impressions, and both plot and character development. Use them well.

There is no such thing as a lizard that is the size of a car. That isn’t comedy; it’s being ridiculous.

If Jonghyun knew about rumors of the “system error rooms,” wouldn’t he have protested about being in them? Wouldn’t his first encounter with Nicole be not-so-pleasant because he didn’t want to be in that room, and on top of that, with someone of the opposite , in the first place? Put yourself in those situations. Having something take place in an AU is okay, but you are still writing about people that have feelings. Your characters shouldn’t be your toys; they should be your friends.

I can’t comment too much about your plot yet—even though you’ve written six chapters on this plot—since the main conflict hasn’t really been introduced yet.  

 

 

Characters [2/20]

The way Jonghyun and Nicole are portrayed is quite shallow in my perspective—possibly less than shallow. There is barely anything I can use in this story other than my own knowledge of the idols (in an AU, mind you) to characterize Jonghyun and Nicole.

Let’s start with Nicole. She just sounds really shallow and dumb. She wonders who her roommate will be as if she has knowledge of the possibility that her roommate could be male. She actually gets paired with a male because of a system error—something that could be discussed with the head of the school, and if they really are too lazy to change it, she could contact her parents. But we have no idea what background she has because in this story, it’s as if only Nicole, Jonghyun, and the head exist in the world.

Then Jonghyun isn’t even surprised that he has a girl for a roommate. Wouldn’t Nicole want to question that? Is it common in the school or something? Nicole asks no questions and just goes with whatever wild occurrence is shot at her, which makes her seem like a mindless Barbie doll.

Boys can’t be trusted. Why can’t they be trusted? That’s a very good opportunity to develop Nicole’s character—bring in her past and family background. If something bad had happened, you could also bring out the “reliable” side of Jonghyun that you stated in the foreword.

The only thing about Jonghyun and Nicole that I know is that they’re both scared of the things that are happening. There is no depth to my understanding because there is not depth in the characters that you have created.

You really need to develop your characters and make them more realistic. Imagine Nicole and Jonghyun as your friends—put your friends’ faces on them in your imagination and then try to list their character traits. Do they seem like the sort of people you would meet in real life? If not, then there’s a problem.

 

 

Flow [5/10]

The amount of content per chapter disturbed the flow. Your author notes are almost as long as your chapters. Even though you want to give as many options to the readers as possible, having too many options isn’t the best either because then you have too many lot possibilities to follow after and you will have to keep redirecting readers to different possibilities.

Other than that, the amount of content you had wasn’t enough to judge the flow too much.

 

Writing [5/30]

You told me to not hold back even though your first language isn’t English, so here it is.

Your tenses are flawed. You need to pick one tense, and stick to it. You cannot have sentences like “I make myself comfortable as I waited for him to come out” because you cannot do something in the present while waiting for something that happened in the past. Either write, “I made myself comfortable as I waited for him to come out” or “I make myself comfortable as I wait for him to come out.” If you proofread your work and watch out for these things, I’m sure there would be fewer mistakes.

Your punctuation is very inconsistent. There is always a space after punctuation, except when right before a quotation mark or for dashes. Ellipses consist of three periods, not twenty, and it looks more professional if you don’t use tildes excessively. If you want to emphasize certain words, do not put periods in between each letter—it’s very distracting, and doesn’t look very mature. Italics work fine. Everything in quotations needs to have punctuation before the closing quotation. You can’t leave the quotations hanging like “ ‘Silly me’ I mumbled.” Once again, if you proofread your work, you’ll be able to catch many of your mistakes.

Your word choice is very simple and limited, which is understandable, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on it. For example, you used the word “smile” five times in chapter three. I’m sure there are other words for that. Read more English books or well-written fanfiction and keep a thesaurus or dictionary at hand while your writing (or reading, too). It’ll help your writing improve exponentially.

The story also had no writing style. I couldn’t hear a distinct “voice” from you; it felt like there was a broken cartoon playing in my head. However, as you write more, and your vocabulary and conventions improve, a voice will naturally appear, so don’t worry about that yet. Try to use longer sentences at times because, right now, all your sentences are really short and simple.

Avoid using words like “divaish” or “guyish.” Those are things we say and text to our friends—they aren’t words. If you insist on using Romanized Korean, at least search up the pronunciations. “진“ is not “jjinjjak.” It’s “jinjja.” But you can just say “really?” to make your life simple. Remember, even though you are writing about Korean idols, you are writing in the English language, where all of your readers understand English, but not all of them understand Korean. Also, if Jonghyun and Nicole are in the same grade, she shouldn’t be calling him “oppa.” But if he isn’t in the same grade, then ignore that.

My suggestion for you for this whole section is to read what you write out loud. If it doesn’t sound right when you say it, there’s probably something wrong with the sentence.

 

Personal enjoyment [0/5]

Between the grammatical errors and the extremely short chapters, I don’t think I can say that I enjoyed reading this fanfiction. It just isn’t where my interests reside in this community.

 

Total: [20/100]

 

Reviewer’s note: Your request said not to hold back—so I didn’t (and I have to admit that I was really harsh in this review). I didn’t include the “special chapters” in the review because they weren’t really part of the actual story. I apologize for the extreme lateness of this review. Have a nice day~