jineulchul : Reset

Characters. Jin Eul (OC), Nayeon (OC), Lee Sungjong

Status. Completed

Description.
Jin Eul wanted to reset. Sungjong wants to rid himself of guilt.
Too bad it can't happen, and it couldn't happen.
 

STORY LINK

Story title. 4/5
The title fits your story very well, especially since you ended it based around that word. Although the word itself is rather simple and plain, it does a good job in representing your story. However, one thing I would say is that the title is not eye-catching at all, and somehow it gave a feeling of a dramatic and cliche plot. Nevertheless, it’s a good choice for your story.


Description, foreword & tags. 7/10
I think on the whole, your description is not too bad. I like the first line - it’s interesting and it draws people into wanting to read your story. On the other hand, I didn’t quite understand what you meant with the second line. You’ve written the same thing in two tenses, but it doesn’t really tell the readers anything about your story. In fact, it only confused me more after reading that like. Perhaps you should revise it to something that’s easier to understand.

Your tags seem fine to me, nothing much you need to change. You can maybe add in the ‘angst’ tag just so it makes it easier for your story to be searched in the site. But, I don’t really see how this is marked with trigger warning, since I didn’t feel that your story contains anything harmful to be marked as that.


Appearance: graphics. 3/5, layout. 5/5
Your poster is very well made, so well done to your graphics designer. However, I don’t think it grasped the theme of the story that well. It’s a little too dark, and the title isn’t all that easy to read. I don’t see any relevance of the leaves and flowers to your story, so I think in a sense, they’re just extra things that don’t really have a meaning to it. However, since you’ve used a nice matching background, the story seems to have a nice aesthetic feel to it.

The general display of your story is very clean and simple, just the way I like it - well done!


Characterisation. 9/15
I think this section is quite hard to write, since your story is told from one person’s point of view and it’s a rather short one as well. But, I will try my best at analysing your character(s).

Firstly, the narrator, who I assume to be Jin Eul. I am assuming that this character is a male (since you talked about coming out, but please do correct me if I am wrong), who is very much in love with Sungjong, though there are many problems with their relationship. You’ve described him to be very rash with his feelings, often getting in trouble for his violent behaviour, but unfortunately you didn’t show that in this story - you only told that through him talking about his past. He also very much loves his daughter, Nayeon, and of course, he went ballistic when the little girl went missing.

So far, from what you have written, there really isn’t a lot I can say for Jin Eul, and clearly a lot less about Sungjong and Nayeon. I understand that you have written a prequel to this, but I think you will benefit more if you showed some character interaction in your story, either through a flashback or something of that sort. It’s a little hard to understand your character(s) because of the lack of words, but I think you have a good start at trying to really show what your characters are like.


Plot. 8/20
Again, like the characterisation section, this section is very hard to write about. Again, I understand that this is a sequel of another story, but instead of a whole plot, which has a beginning, middle and end, your story is more like a section of the plot. What I feel you’ve written here is a sort of extra chapter of another story, a story that has a proper plot from beginning ‘till end.

You’ve talked about Jin Eul’s past experiences with Sungjong and Nayeon, as well as his feelings for them. But again, I feel that it lacks some detail, mostly because your story is incredibly short. The whole chapter was Jin Eul asking himself some questions, and then trying to attempt answering them through some memories of his. I do like this approach, but again, there really isn’t anything I can base on to write about your plot.

What I can suggest you do is to add a little bit more to it. This story is rather simple and plain. There really isn’t anything that got me excited or worked up, and frankly, I started the story with a question mark and finished with a question mark. This could be due to my lack of understanding to your story and that I didn’t read the other story, but I honestly don’t think I’m the only one who felt like this while reading your story. There’s a lot I don’t understand - like, is he really dead? What are some of the things he’s talking about? I do apologise if I sound harsh, but I think your story lacks a beginning and middle, and I really do feel like reading the blurb of a book and then skipping to the last page without reading anything in between.


Consistency/flow. 10/10
The timespan of your story is very short, since your main character is telling the story through his thoughts and memories. This therefore means that the flow of your story is consistent, and there aren’t any confusion in respect to that.


Grammar, spelling & punctuation. 13/15
There aren’t any major issues with your writing regarding grammar, spelling and punctuation. However, I did find a few little things that you should take note on - the first being your description.

“Jin Eul wanted to reset. Sungjong wants to rid himself of guilt.”

Here, you’ve written in two tenses, when only one should be more than sufficient. You should either have both sentences in the past tense, or both in the present. I’m not sure if I’m misunderstanding your intention to use two tenses, but from what I understand from your story, I think it’s better to just stick with one tense.

The next thing is, I’m not sure if it’s a typo or what, but at the end, you wrote: “I can tell that he feels guilt” which I think should be “he feels guilty” instead.

Other than that, I think you should thoroughly read through the chapter and check for anything you might have missed out on.


Writing style. 2/5
Honestly, I can’t tell whether I like or dislike your writing style. I like it because it’s different, and the approach you took to telling this story is quite nice, but at the same time it confuses me a lot. For example, I really don’t understand why some sentences are in brackets - what is the significance in that?

I think you’re trying to write in a question-and-answer style, but it’s not quite there yet, and I think that’s where most of my confusion comes from. Perhaps you should try and retell the story in a simpler method.


Structure. 5/5
Although your story is short, you have used paragraphs at the right places. Well done!


Readers' response. 1/5
Honestly, your readers’ response is very so-so. Your story has been published for nearly two months, but the numbers of views, subscribers, comments, and upvotes are quite low. Like I said before, the trigger warning isn’t necessary, and I think that pushes away some readers too.

One thought - you made your story limited to subscribers only, but what if readers that don’t have an account or don’t want to subscribe want to read your story? This is a thought that I usually put out to those who have their stories limited to subscribers only because in a way, you are limiting the number of people who can read your story. Of course, this is only a thought of mine and therefore will not affect your score.


Overall enjoyment.
I think your idea of this story is quite new and different, but as I’ve mentioned before, there’s simply too much I don’t know and understand. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t read the prequel of the story, but nonetheless, I think there should be something in this story that should make it easier to understand even without reading the prequel. Anyhow, I think if you’re writing this story as an extra chapter, this is a very good approach, and it will obviously make a lot more sense to those who have read your other story.
 

total grade : 67/100

Notes