The Evanescent Princess

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Story Title: (4/5)

Your title has sort of a haunting and wilting kind of feeling to it. The use of the word ‘evanescent’ here is pretty interesting in my opinion. The moment I set my eyes on this title, it sparked this curiosity in me. Why is this princess vanishing? Why would you describe her as someone soon to be passed out of sight? And the fact that this title roused my interest and made my mind turn proves that it is a fairly decent title, one in which I think would catch a few reader’s attention if they were to browse through many.

On another note, I was also glad to see that your title fits well with the historical setting of your story. I’ve seen many fanfics in AFF before set in the historical times but with fairly ‘modern’ titles that in my opinion, does not sit well with the genre they’ve chosen. I’m glad that yours weren’t, and I wasn’t too surprised seeing that it was set in the Joseon dynasty, which once again proves that you have a good title: one that not only sparked my curiosity, but also gave me a hint about the sort of story I would be reading.

Graphics: (4/10)

Unfortunately, I did not see much attention put into your graphics. If you’ve read my other reviews before, I stress almost every time about how important graphics is (make me kind of sound like a graphics maniac, but I’m not, really :D). Anyway, I’ll stress it here again:

The better the graphics, the higher the chance readers will proceed to read your stories, because I’m sure there’s readers out there like me who sometimes judge their first impression of the story based on the graphics. Having good graphics just give your fanfic that extra boost, makes it seem more ‘professional’ and also makes the readers think that you’ve put a lot of effort into your story. (Not that you don’t, and not that anyone would feel like you didn’t, but having that graphics just proves how much you care about your story).

Your graphics can also enhance your reader’s viewing experience. For instance, I would suggest that you have a greyish, blueish colour. A more ‘elegant’ sort of colour would suit your story since your story gives off that ‘whispering sort of sadness’ kind of feel. Not full angst, but a sort of gentle melancholy we see a lot in historical dramas like ‘the moon who embraces the sun’, and ‘orange marmalade’.

Also, I suggest you change the poster you have now. I wouldn’t even really call it a poster, just photos placed together with your title written at the bottom. Either go to a poster request shop (they’re usually free) or get someone you know who knows how to make posters to do it.

Description and foreword: (6/10)

Despite the not-so-high mark here, your description is actually pretty interesting IF you rearrange it a little and correct some errors in there. I won’t say anything more here, and go straight into the correcting:

Original:

She never liked or enjoyed being a Royal Princess, she hated it. Every single part of it. The restrictions, the things that you need to do to become a Princess full of poise. Seul Gi went through it all but did it all with hard and cold feelings, but there was one particular thing she hated the most being a Royal Princess: Marriage.

There is no freedom for her except when the sun sets and she goes out of her chambers, to the do her rightful duty as a Princess, who knows her own rights, in secrecy. There was only one pursuit she practices every night to free her mind and be herself: Swordplay.

Kang Seul Gi was a Warrior inside a Princess's body and a Princess inside a Warrior's body. How will she hide the Warrior Kang Seul Gi from Hong Jisoo? Will he find out? Will her family and in-laws find out? What will happen?

Things are going to change, big - Kang Seulgi: The Crown Princess who breaks rules.

There's something fishy going on with her - Hong Jisoo: The Crown Prince who is willing to know more about Crown Princess Kang Seul Gi.

I don't want us to change, but what can I do? It's already changing - Kim Mingyu: The top notch Warrior that fell deeply in love.

Revised:

Kang Seulgi never liked or enjoyed being a Royal Princess, she hated it. The restrictions, the things that you need to do to become a Princess full of poise, Kang Seulgi hated every single part of it. Being a Royal Princess, there was no such thing as freedom for her. She was being watched constantly like an expensive bird in a cage. Yet when the sun sets and she sneaks out of her chambers, she seeks to do what she deems as the ‘rightful duty’ of a princess. There was only one pursuit she chases every night to free her mind and be herself: Swordplay.

Though with burdened feelings, Kang Seulgi was able to endure all the duties she must do as a Royal Princess, but when the one particular duty she hated the most came into play, she wasn’t sure whether she would be able to endure it all: Her marriage with Crown Prince Hong Jisoo.

Kang Seulgi was a Warrior inside a Princess's body and a Princess inside a Warrior's body. How will she hide the Warrior Kang Seul Gi from Hong Jisoo? Will he find out? Will her family and in-laws find out? What will happen?

~~~

‘Things are going to change, big.’ - Kang Seulgi: The Crown Princess who breaks rules.

‘There's something fishy going on with her.’ - Hong Jisoo: The Crown Prince who is willing to know more about Crown Princess Kang Seul Gi.

‘I don't want us to change, but what can I do? It's already changing.’ - Kim Mingyu: The mighty Warrior that fell deeply in love.

So, let me list out what I’ve done here:

1. I reordered your paragraphs in a more logical order. As your first and third paragraph were both discussing Seulgi’s duties as a princess, and your second and fourth discussing about the marriage, so I switched the order around and put them together.
2. I also changed a few of your sentences and added in a few of my own. For instance, you should start your description with ‘Kang Seulgi’ instead of ‘she’. It is important to always introduce your characters before anything or it gets confusing for the readers to process. Also, I added in some sentences such as ‘She was being watched constantly like an expensive bird in a cage’ just to give it that extra depth and boost. But these added in sentences were just my own perception of your story, so you may, or may not take them into consideration.
3. I changed the last bit into something like quotes from your characters. Also, I added in that paragraph breaker ‘~~~’ to separate the two because it got confusing when you put them together as these ‘quotes’ weren’t actually a part of your description.

In regards to your foreword, there’s really nothing much I can say about it. That’s fine, but I suggest a character chart. Keep in mind, when I say character chart, I only mean a picture and a name underneath with maybe minimal descriptions about them. (Stuff like age and maybe their status) Personally, I’m someone who finds character charts helpful since I can keep track of the characters and also have an image in mind as to how the characters are supposed to look like. But that’s all up to you since this is all my personal preference.

Characterization: (8/10)

You have solid characterization going on. I can sense the different personality of each characters, what with Kang Seulgi being the tomboy princess, Hong Jisoo being the charming and gentle prince as well as Kim Mingyu being the responsible and sensible warrior. As you only have four chapters right now, I cannot mark you much on this section, but what you’ve got so far considering the few chapters you have is pretty good.

I hope to be able to see how these characters grow as you develop your story, and I anticipate that you will allow your characters to mature as time goes on. Maybe I’ll even get to see a twist to their personality, who knows? It all depends on how you want your characters to develop J

Plot and consistency: (35/40)

Since I, for one, am someone who quite like historical fanfiction, so your plot did manage to capture my attention. Another reason why your plot caught my attention was due to the idea of the princess being a strong warrior. I feel like that there are too many propagandas nowadays in Asian culture (especially through the media) idealising the ‘perfect woman’ to be always cute, well-dressed, pretty and talented. But though these kind of woman are perfect in their own unique way, I think people under-look those women who may be normal business women working in an office, women who does physical labour and work in construction sites, even those ahjummas selling vegetables in the market – I think that these women are all ‘perfect’ in their own good way as long as they’re trying their best and living to the fullest of what they can in their role. So, I was glad to see that there was a sense of rebellion in your fanfiction as to what a princess’ duty should be, and that I could see you questioning the views of the people in the historical era as to what the ‘perfect women’ should be. Is it really to look pretty and get married off to bear children for her husband? Or should a princess stand up and fight for her country? These are all great motifs ringing throughout your story, but though they were apparent, I think they weren’t brought out to their fullest. It may only be just four chapters right now, but I still think you could’ve come off a little stronger with these ideas since your story does revolve around this sort of plot.

Anyway, despite it only being four chapters, I did manage to find a bit of loose threads I would like to go over with you. Feel free to disagree with me, but I just want to point out my thoughts in case you really did miss out on these details. 

1. In the first chapter, about the part where Seulgi sneaks out at night to practice, I would just like to point out a few questions. Firstly, about Seulgi meeting new people, making new friends, and them all knowing about her identity, I think personally, if Seulgi was the smart princess I think she was, then she wouldn’t had done that. Yes, she would’ve had made friends, but no, I don’t think it would be logical to allow so many people to know about her secret antics at night. But if you meant those ‘friends’ were the people in the group she was fighting in, then I guess that’s alright. But if not, and they were just mere ‘friends’, then I think you could alter it a little to make it that only her maid and Kim Mingyu knows since I think that would be more realistic, and also adds more tension and secrecy to the idea of her being a secret warrior.
    
2. I have nothing wrong with her fighting and killing off enemies, but there are just two things I found weird with it. Firstly, why was she so happy to be killing people, despite them were enemies? (quote: ‘Seulgi smirked. "Five,") Especially in this quote over here, she was proud to have killed more people than Mingyu, but I do not think that this is Seulgi’s character. She wasn’t the evil queen who wants everyone dead, I believe she just wanted to defend her country, and people with good hearts like that don’t enjoy killing people, they do it because they have no other choice. So here, I suggest that you can go back to chapter one and alter it a little. Instead of her smirking and being proud of having killing five people over Mingyu’s four, she should be more upset. Crying, even as she tells Mingyu how much she hated seeing all these people die. You can still have that kiss scene, but instead of it being cheerful and playful despite them just killed many people which honestly doesn’t make sense to me, they can have that kiss scene as a comfort, a way to try and forget the cruelty of fighting through each other’s warmth (and still show off that they love each other). The second thing is that there is too little background information on the ‘enemies’. Despite it only being four chapters, but I need to understand (even if it’s only a little bit) who these enemies are and why they are fighting them or else I get confused as to why it is necessary to fight them.
    
3. My third question is in regards to this quote: ‘if it was just Seulgi and her parents, she would have already butted in and argued at whatever she did not agree with her parents.’ Now, I understand that you may not be writing this fanfiction intending to follow the historical context rule by rule, but since your plot heavily revolves around the idea of a princess trapped by rules and duties who wants to break free and be herself, I then think it is necessary to think about some of the rules back in the days. Though I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that back then, princesses didn’t have a voice. In fact, women didn’t have a voice back in those times. They were decoration, trophies, and an existence only alive to make men look good. Especially if Seulgi was a royal princess, she would be heavily expect to act out that role. She wouldn’t have had the luxury to argue and into her parent’s conversation. She was meant to be silent, gentle and just sit there prettily like a flower. Now, if you were writing in a Western setting, then the idea of a princess butting into her parent’s conversation would be more plausible, but since you did mention that this story was set in the Joseon Dynasty, then I think this part should be removed.
    
4. Okay, last one, I promise! So, my last question is, how come it’s the Crown Prince going over to the Princess’ country instead of the princess going over to the Prince’s country? This is a little bit weird in my opinion. In most, maybe even in all cases, it’s definitely the princess going over to the prince’s country, so if you do have an answer to this question, please tell me because I can’t figure out the reason why it would be in this order.  

Okay, so all questions done haha. Despite my many questions, and how it probably made me seem like I hate your plot or something, but hey, have a look up at the score I gave you. 35/40 is a pretty good score, which proves that I not only didn’t hate it, but in fact did enjoy your plot. It’s just that I found some questions that has been bugging me, so I just wanted to point it out and either have you answer it for me, or maybe even find some points you didn’t even realise to make your plot better.  Overall, good job with the plot.

Grammar and Writing style: (13/20)

Considering how English isn’t your first language, you didn’t do too badly of a job. But obviously, there were many mistakes that I found in there in which I will be correcting a few below:
 

Original:  It started when she turned fifteen, she would go out at night, disguising herself as a local and she would go to the site where the men were practicing, and her instructor would be waiting for her. 

Revised: It started when she turned fifteen. She would go out at night disguised as a local in order to visit the men’s practicing venue where her instructor would be waiting for her. 

The problem with this sentence, was that it sounded clumsy. It sounded clumsy for two reasons. The first one being your repeated use of ‘ands’ which cuts off the flow of the sentence, and the second being that you used too many unnecessary words. See how in my revised version, I was able to cut down the length of your original sentence by half a line without changing the meaning at all? This was because I deleted some parts I thought was too much, and rearranged the words to create a more sophisticated sentence grammatically.

Original: Seulgi ran and jumped her face hidden by the mask and a hat, she pierced her sword through several enemies, Seulgi was a patriot, she didn't want to become a Princess or Queen.

Revised: Seulgi ran and jumped, her face hidden by the mask and hat as she pierced her sword through several enemies. Seulgi was a patriot, she didn't want to become a Princess or Queen who only holds the title in name.

Here in this sentence, you didn’t add the comma where you needed to and added too many commas where it wasn’t needed. Once again, this only makes the sentence confusing and clumsy to read, so I altered it to make it flow. Also, straight up from the dictionary, ‘patriot’ means: a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors. Now, I don’t see how Seulgi being a patriot explains why she doesn’t want to be princess of queen, because honestly speaking, she would have more power to defend her country if she was one, right? Henceforth, I figured that you were trying to say she didn’t want to be useless to her country since she was a patriot so I added in a few words to the sentence at the end.

Alright, I’ll only cover two parts in this review because it’ll take me forever to go through everything one by one, but from what I saw, I think your largest problem is probably just sentence structuring. Many of your sentences sounds awkward due to your grammatical issues, so many try find someone to edit your story for you. ^_^

Reviewer’s Enjoyment: (3/5)

Hey, it wasn’t a bad read, but unfortunately, it wasn’t an amazing read for me either. But your story has so much potential and so many hidden jewels in there that I really hope you will dig out in the future. Good luck with your story and keep writing on!

♠ TOTAL SCORE: 73/100