Review

The Worst Has Yet to Come written by NotsoGwiyomi

First of all, the description isn’t as intriguing as it could have been. The overall plot is very interesting and could draw in more readers if the description was more captivating. It is quite dull for a description. Your description must be the most attention-grabbing part of the story because it is what people first see and it is what makes people decide if they want to read it or not. Try and phrase your sentences in a way that is not as blunt as that as it can make it more exciting. Also, don’t put in the phrase ‘But that’s not all’ as that makes it seem like you are trying to sell your story to people watching infomercials (if you’ve ever seen any of them, you’d know what I mean).

In your foreword, you include ‘Problems always occur later in the game, yes?’ I personally really like this line but, you should get rid of the ‘yes’ part in the end. Leaving it without that extra word leaves more of a sense of mystery and what are people attracted to? Things they do not know.

The overall plotline is quite different from the other stories I usually read and come across. I personally do not read m-preg stories as it is a bit too peculiar for me but I am an avid reader of angst stories. There is one thing I want to stress out to you; the way you are writing is not suitable for angst (dark). The genre from what I’ve read is more suited towards a comedy side or something lighter than angst. A key thing for angst is character development and good descriptions and therefore drawing connections with the mentioned things. But your descriptions are lacking for the style of angst. You are too straightforward for angst as it tends to explore more.

For example, take ‘My world crashed, burned and disintegrated’ from chapter 3. This moment is where Jonghyun is panicking due to Kiseop going into labour. This sentence should be elaborated more to give it more of an emotional response from the audience, to truly let the audience know what Kiseop meant Jonghyun. For example, the phrase could be re-written as:

‘My hands moved on their own accord, pushing his hair out of his hair to finally see the tears flooding his eyes and now mine as well. If he leaves the world, if he leaves me here alone, he’ll leave my world to be engulfed with fire and an everlasting cloud of darkness and sadness would stalk my every movement. The eyes that once shined with happiness now seized with anything but said emotion. If Kiseop leaves me here, the sunlight in my life would be lost - I’d be lost.’

Another thing I would like to bring up with your writing is to be more realistic. I know mpreg is not realistic but angst is supposed to be (what I mean is, don’t overdo things or put too much into a single chapter). I’m not too sure about what someone would do in a situation like this but generally, if your best friend just went into labour and there is an extremely high chance that he is going to die or is already dead, I have an inkling that your full attention would be on your best friend. When yy mum’s water broke for my brother, my entire family dropped everything and quickly went to the hospital so from coming from this experience, I wouldn’t think that Kevin’s concern would be of Taemin at the moment. Perhaps he may have a quick wonder but it would most likely be pushed to the bottom of his concern list. Another example would be when Kiseop is in his comatose state and Jonghyun is observing him, you wouldn’t really make a ual comment towards anyone in a comma would you? Therefore, the use of the word ‘y’ is out of place, words that describe beauty though, seem more appropriate.

In your chapters, you have written events in the perspective of different people involved and to be quite frank, I skipped entire chapters because of it. It got too repetitive as I could just guess what the other person was feeling due to their reactions as told by the current narrator. Instead of re-writing entire events, how about you make a reflection from the second person and include the important parts of dialogue in the reflection? This way, the same insight is given without repeating yourself too much.

This one is just something I personally don’t like as a fellow author and reader; don’t try and involve the reader by bluntly saying ‘reader.’ For example in chapter 8; ‘How funny, reader.’ Try getting rid of reader and it comes ‘How funny.’ It works the same - sad and sarcastic without awkwardly trying to involve the reader. Also, please, never say ‘in the last story’ ever again. What makes a story a great story compared to as a good story is that it has a good plot and is believable; that is, as a reader, we want to make a bond with the characters, we want to fall in love with them and feel their joy and sorrows but if you are mentioning the previous story bluntly like that, it destroys the fantasy that is being created, destroying the realism as well.

Something that I really liked from your story and stood out above all other things is your opening in Chapter 8. The repetitive use of the word ‘floating’ allowed the reader to feel the frustration that Kiseop faced with only being able to float and not make contact without actually saying so. This piece shows that you are clearly capable of writing at a good quality level but just needs more adjusting to how you are writing with your other passages.

This is generally a tip I give to everyone – never write your chapters out directly into the textbox when uploading a new chapter. Try to write it out on Microsoft Words first, this way, the program can check your grammar and spelling before uploading. Although the textbox from the uploading page has a spellcheck function, I personally have never used it before and do not know if they check the grammatically part of literature but feel free to play around with it. By writing your chapters onto Words and having autosave on for every minute (I myself have it on for every minute as I like to ensure that my school work will still be there in case something happens and I’m forced to shut down), you can still have entire chapters encase aff ever goes down again (and I pray that it doesn’t!)

Overall, it is a story with a good plotline but hasn’t been written in the best way. Changing the way you write can be beneficial for you. I am not a very successful author myself but as an avid reader, I pointed out things that I believe you could work on. You can only get better by continuing to write, so please write more.

Rate: 62/100

*** Please do not get discouraged by my words and I apologize if I was too harsh. I’m currently completing my final year of high school and we are told to always make harsher rather than more lenient for our SACs and EXAMS.