A Thousand Petals

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Story Title: (5/5)

I adore your title. It has such an attractive and elegant quality to it. I was drawn to your title the first time I saw it, and immediately expected an angst and mysterious sort of plot behind the title. It indeed did reflect your plot and the mood it gave off – which was a sort of an elegant melancholy kind of atmosphere at least from what I felt. I also liked how you incorporated the cherry blossom petals as a reoccurring motif throughout your plot and in your title, as it then intertwines with the meaning and story of your fanfic perfectly and leaves a deep impression in the mind of your readers.

Graphics: (9/10)

Beautiful graphics, beautiful layout, beautiful settings. All suits the idea of ‘cherry blossoms’ and ‘elegance’ perfectly well, I would just comment on one thing though: I would recommend you to get a background as I think that’ll complete the graphic layout you have right now. I suggest something like this or the sort:

http://www.istockphoto.com/vector/cherry-blossom-pattern-gm455594983-23354255

Description and foreword: (8/10)

So, before I get into anything else, let me just list out the good things I found in your description. Firstly, your description is pretty good considering how I spotted no grammatical mistakes and the sentences flowed smoothly. Secondly, the way in which you presented your description was also pretty satisfying, I especially loved that pink section and the page breakers you used there. Thirdly, you have good use of language and the mood your description emitted was all pretty in sync with the aura of your story.

But, we have one major problem here which pulled down the marks here in this section. Your description, unfortunately, does not reflect the plot that you want your readers to perceive. I think this may be a big reason to the confusion your readers may be having right now in regards to the sudden plot change in chapter 8. I for one, was not expecting anything of the sort because based on your description, what with it all talking about cherry blossoms and how Yerim broke up with Yixing, I mainly assumed it would be a melodramatic story between the OC, Chanyeol and Yixing.

Now, after going back to your description again, I did notice the remarks you made in the foreword, but honestly speaking, not many readers will scroll down that far and notice the foreword. I for one, read the description and dove straight into your plot, and though you did mention a ‘mysterious truth’ in your description, I was expecting more of a secret about their relationship. I think in your description, you should make it more obvious of Yixing’s illness, and below is a suggested version that I think may help a little:

Revised: A mysterious truth unravels between the bittersweet relationships of three people, threatening to break apart everything they have built until now. Yerim is a quiet girl with a mysterious past who keeps to herself. Chanyeol, the person who stays by her side and Yixing, the man with the hidden secret that even he himself is not aware of. Past relationships surfaced, and present emotions revealed. Whilst the secret is gradually uncovered, what will happen to the relationship of the trio?

Here, I didn’t actually alter much of your foreword, and I’m sure this could be revised even further, but I gave away more hints about the ‘mysterious truth’ in here which hopefully may allow your readers to keep in mind of the ‘mysterious truth’ yet to be uncovered.

First of all, I started off the description with the mention of the ‘mysterious truth’, which then will allow the first impression of the story to be upon the ‘mysterious truth’ instead of the ‘bittersweet relationship between 3 people’. Also, the sentence that I added in ‘Yixing, the man with the hidden secret that even he himself is not aware of.’ Can also help hint the readers that the ‘mysterious truth’ may be related to Yixing some way or another.

As I assumed you want Yixing’s illness to be discovered through your plot rather than telling your readers through your foreword, I can understand why your foreword mainly just talks about the love triangle between chanyeol, Yerim and Yixing. Also, although I really like that little excerpt in your foreword, but maybe you could replace it with something more relevant to Yixing’s illness to make it more obvious. Unless you want the illness  to come out as a surprise for the readers in which you don’t need to worry about all that I just said up there, but as I assume you would want it to be more obvious, then above are my suggestions.

Characterization: (9/10)

If we were to look at this story from Yixing’s sickness point of view, then your story would heavily rely on characterization to draw out the differences between the normal Yixing and the crazy Yixing. Here, I think you did quite a good job on that. Though there’s only three chapters around right now dealing with the ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ sort of thing with Yixing, but if I forget about the plot and look solely at your characters, then I do see each character’s unique personality.

Yerim, the quiet and reserved girl. Chanyeol, the straightforward and bright guardian and Yixing, the seemingly ‘dreamy’ prince who has this unknown side to him. I don’t see much problem with your characterization honestly, so let’s move on.

Plot and consistency: (32/40)

This section is a hard section for me to mark. I feel as if there’s two plots going on at the same time. One in regarding to the relationship between Yerim, Chanyeol and Yixing, and the other regarding to Yixing’s illness. But before I dwell into anything else, let me just point out the things I like about your plot.

Firstly, I actually quite liked the relationship dynamics between your characters and the revolving plot around the three of them. It was indeed quite bittersweet, and the unrequited love that followed one another sometimes made me really feel sorry for your characters. Likewise, I think the plot revolving around Yixing is too, quite interesting. I haven’t seen much stories based on mental illnesses as such before, so I am quite curious as to see how it would turn out, and to find out the cause behind Yixing’s sickness.

Now, despite both being rather interesting themes, (this may be only me, I don’t know, but I’ll mention it anyway as reference) but I felt as if the two plots were separate. Maybe I’m not smart enough, but I actually did not catch onto the hints you left throughout the plot, and it came as kind of a ‘wtf’ moment when you started making Yixing’s illness very obvious. I’ll like to maybe give you some suggestions as to why I think people may have not realised your true plot, and explain some confusions I experienced in your plot below:

In my opinion, chapter 8 came out too sudden. I remember being very confused when I read the start of chapter 8, and I even went back to previous chapters to try and see if I’ve missed out on anything. I only understood that starting section where Kris chased after ‘the guy’ after I finished reading all chapters, and I think the transition wasn’t fluent enough which caused the confusion I received.

Honestly speaking, your plot reminds me of this Korean movie (I forgot the name) which was seemingly about the love story between the two main protagonists, but you find out later that the guy has this mental illness which caused him to hallucinate, and then you find out only maybe halfway through the movie that some characters actually aren’t real, but figments of the guy’s imagination. It also kind of reminds me of the movie ‘A beautiful mind’ which deals with similar themes. I’m not sure if it’s your aim to achieve that kind of effect where the readers find out later on of Yixing’s illness, but if you wanted your readers to actually be aware of this plot from the start, then I suggest that you scatter in sections revolving Yixing’s illness to make it obvious enough that there’s something wrong but not enough to spoil the ‘myserious truth.’

For instance, you could add in sections where Yixing suddenly wakes up from the bed and describe his confused emotions as he couldn’t remember what happened beforehand. Or mention how maybe Yerim or some other character met Yixing’s mother coming out of the hospital from a chat with the doctor regarding Yixing’s illness or something to arouse the suspense and suspicion instead of introducing the sickness only in chapter 8.

Anyway, other than that, your plot is fine. I would just recommend that in your future stories, if you want to deal with subjects like this again, maybe make the transition go smoother. That’s about all I have to say, moving on~

Grammar and Writing Style: (18/20)

Despite English not being your first language, your writing was actually rather fluent. I didn’t spot too many mistakes honestly speaking, and I’ll just go over a few that I’ve found below:

Original: ‘If we don’t go to the same one, you’ll attend one with many cherry trees?’

Revised: ‘If we don’t go to the same one, you’ll attend one with many cherry blossom trees?’

The revision here is very small. But just to remind you that ‘cherry trees’ are fruit trees that bear cherries, and you would need to add the ‘blossom’ behind the cherry to mean the tree that bears blossoms.

Original: Yerim’s heart screamt WAIT!

Revised: Yerim’s heart screamed WAIT!

‘Screamt’ isn’t actually a word. I know some people uses it in regular speech, but as we’re talking about a piece of literature here, I would just like to point it out. ‘Scream’ is a regular verb, and its past tense is ‘screamed’.

Reviewer’s enjoyment: (4.5/5)

I really enjoyed your story! I especially loved the songs you put up on each chapter, I’ve fallen in love with them and they really helped get me in the mood of your story. I also liked how you introduced characters before your stories, and overall, there’s many good things I liked about your story. The only thing I would improve on though, is smoother transition into Yixing’s illness. Great job!

♠ TOTAL SCORE: 85.5/100