>> Smile to the world, Taehyung
Heart, Mind & Seoul Reviews Archive
BY Rijouku
STATUS. Ongoing
DESCRIPTION.
Taehyung is just seventeen years old student who wishes to be happy, but the road isn't that easy. Depression, anxiety and other problems that keep following him doesn't let him be. On top of that, the kid is secretly gay. If not his best friend Jiyeon, he would probably have no one. And like on purpose someone appears and decides to mess his life even more. Nothing stays the same and the troubles just come out from shadows, not letting him be. But after so much unwanted drama what will happen? How he will face everything?
This is an interesting title, I have to say, though right now I can’t really see why you’ve chosen it. The title itself if quite unique and I really do hope you’ll somehow explain why you’ve chosen the title later on in the story.
Description, foreword & tags. 4/10.
Your description is quite a heavy one, as I would describe it as. Even though it’s not a long one, it does contain a lot of information about your plot and character, to the extent that I would say it gives away a little too much. However, this could be a good thing, because it allows your readers to know exactly what they will be reading about and then decide whether or not to read it.
You’ve also included a small profile for your main character, Taehyung. However, in my opinion (and you may find it harsh), I don’t think it’s necessary at all. The information you’ve put in the profile is basically what you have in the description, plus two quotes. There isn’t really the need to repeat the information since you would have assumed that your readers would have read the description already before moving on to the next section.
As for your tags, I suggest you include the genre of your story, such as ‘angst’ and ‘drama’. I would also use ‘originalcharacter’ instead of ‘jiyeon’.
Appearance: graphics. 1/5, display. 5/5
I think you’ve had a great go at the story poster, but I don’t think it really suits the story. It has the title, the main character, and some scenes from the music video, but it doesn’t really stand out to be the story’s poster. The impact of the poster is not that big, and I think there are various different ways that you can improve it by.
On the other hand, the overall layout of your story is simple and clean, well done!
Characterisation. 6/10
Your plot is based mainly around Taehyung and the supporting characters don’t really have much of a presence yet, therefore I’ll only comment of the character of Taehyung.
Taehyung is very depressing boy. Although he has his best friend, Jiyeon, he doesn’t seem like he’s enjoying life at all. The only thing that interests him is Namjoon, who is his senior in school, but unfortunately Namjoon doesn’t pay a lot of attention to Taehyung. Not a lot is known about Taehyung’s background, but so far we know that his mother cares more about her reputation than her son’s well-being - which is probably why Taehyung has given up on putting hope in life.
I think the way you’ve created your character is quite nice and there are quite a few bits of details about Taehyung that you can definitely expand on in the future. As I’ve mentioned before, the side characters haven’t been talked about a lot, and I do think it’s essential that you do develop them more because it will really help you to get the plot moving onto the next stage. But right now, I think you’ve done a fairly good job.
Plot. -/20
Right now, I would say your plot is quite messy and a little all-over-the-place. I can just about see the vague direction in which the plot is moving in, but nothing is clear at the moment. Maybe this is due to the fact that you only have two chapters written, but I would strongly recommend more planning in detail in order for your plot to be clear and direct. At the moment, you’ve only really talked about Taehyung and how he is normally, along with the fact that Junhong joined the class, but nothing is developed enough to make a comment about. This puts you at a disadvantage because I can’t really talk about your plot at the moment, so to be fair, I will take this section away from the total score because there really isn’t much I can talk about right now.
Consistency/flow. 7/10
The flow isn’t too bad right now, but then it all really depend on how long you plan your story to be. If you’re planning on a long, multi-chaptered story ( chapters), I would say this is a nice pace because it allows you to expand on your ideas and write about the plot in detail. However, if you’re planning on completing the story in less than 20 chapters, I would say the speed is a tad too slow, especially since nothing major has happened yet.
Also, I noticed that at the beginning of the second chapter, you’ve adding one more sentence to the paragraph that appeared in the first chapter. I think it would benefit you if you don’t repeat what you’ve written in the previous chapter and write the new sentence straightaway. This is because your readers may think both paragraphs are exactly the same and probably would skip reading it, but if you don’t repeat the paragraph, they would know that it’s something different and they will read it. I might not have explained this in the best possible way, but if you have any questions or if you would like this explained in more detail, please don’t hesitate to ask!
Grammar, spelling & punctuation. 8/15
Even though English is not your first language, I think you’ve done a pretty good job in coming this far. However, there are some things that I’ve noticed. I’ve picked out a few of the things I’ve found whilst reading your story.
1.
ORIGINAL: Taehyung is just seventeen years old student [...]
CORRECTED: Taehyung is just a seventeen years old student [...]
2.
ORIGINAL: If not his best friend Jiyeon [...]
CORRECTED: If not for his best friend Jiyeon [...]
3.
ORIGINAL: The boy coughed the water out after he accidentally wasn't able to keep his head above water and sunk down to the bottom.
CORRECTED: The boy coughed water out after accidently sinking down to the bottom since he wasn’t able to keep his head above the water.
4.
ORIGINAL: What made him open his eyes and realize that he is drowning again? Was a loud voice of his neighbor behind the wall. The other male was always having his shower [...]
CORRECTED: What made him open his eyes and realize that he was drowning again? It was the loud voice of his neighbor behind the wall. The other male always had his shower [...]
5.
ORIGINAL: [...] blushing so hard of the embarrassment.
CORRECTED: [...] blushing so hard out of embarrassment.
6.
ORIGINAL: With such lazy look, he was always going to school.
CORRECTED: He was always going to school with such a lazy look.
7.
ORIGINAL: But their both curiosity was quite big so they [...]
CORRECTED: But their curiosity was quite big so they [...]
8.
ORIGINAL: " You missed, Junhong's introduction "
CORRECTED: “You missed Junhong’s introduction.”
9.
ORIGINAL: It was typical their conversation.
CORRECTED: It was their typical conversation.
10.
ORIGINAL: Taehyung felt so full already but he had more three left [...]
CORRECTED: Taehyung felt so full already but he had three more left [...]
11.
ORIGINAL: " Your pronouncing is cute "
CORRECTED: "Your pronunciation is cute."
12.
ORIGINAL: " You aren't the best at speaking ether "
CORRECTED: "You're not the best at speaking either."
Generally, your writing isn’t bad, but there are a few things that you can improve on, such as your tenses. I think you’re writing the story in the past tense, but there are quite a number of times when you’ve confused yourself with the tenses you’re using, and ended up using the present tense.
In terms of punctuation, please do note that there should be no spaces after an open quotation mark and before a close quotation mark. For example, it should be “hello”, not “ hello ”.
Also, in some places you haven’t used a space after a comma - please remember to do so!
Your sentence structures on the whole isn’t too bad, but your sentences aren’t always in full and some doesn’t make sense. Try to use connectives or different punctuations to link your sentences together instead of having loose ones that don’t make sense by themselves.
Lastly, although you’ve claimed to be using British English, it seems like you’re using American English instead - you’ve used spellings that aren’t British, such as ‘realize’ and ‘neighbor’.
Structure. 4/5
You’re using paragraphs well, but please do remember to start a new one for when a different person starts speaking!
Readers' response. 3/5
It hasn’t been too long since your story has been up, so your statistics seem reasonable. The couple of comments you have are of quality and are positive, and I can see that you’ve replied to them all - well done!
As you have set your story on ‘subscribers only’, here’s a question for you: why shut out the readers that may not want to subscribe for various reasons? What about the readers who don’t have an account? Please note that this is just a thought, nothing serious, and will certainly not affect your score.
Overall enjoyment. 4/10
To be totally honest with you, I didn’t find myself enjoying this story as much as I wanted to, unfortunately. Although I do like the overall concept of your story, there were too many questions swimming in my head as I was reading along, and I guess I kind of got a little fed up because I knew there wouldn’t be any answers since you only have two chapters written. Anyhow, I think your plot really does have the potential to be developed and I really do hope that you will continue to write this story!
(score from plot section taken away from total score)
Date completed. 30/03/16
Reviewer. Mandy (Saki1017)
Comments. Firstly, I do apologise for the hold up and I do thank you for your patience. Secondly, I’m sorry if my words are harsh - if there are any problems please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Reminder. Please remember to comment when you have picked up. Please also credit the shop AS WELL AS the reviewer. If there are any problems, please contact the owener or the reviewer via PM.
Comments