The Heroine's Best Friend

Story Title 3/5

While your title is not novel, I did think that it fit well with your piece! It embodies all your major themes and it’s cute and quirky – which is exactly this story. However, as I have already mentioned, I do not find it particularly appealing nor creative so for that, I will have to take off marks.

Description, foreword & tags. 10/10

Your description and forward are really interesting!! You leave a lot for the readers to wonder about as you end off the sections in questions, which I think is really effective overall! You’ve also brought in the “cliché” element quite early on, but then introduce your own twist to it – this is me complimenting you because I think you’ve done well.

A small correction: you ended off with “so do I” which I don’t think is quite appropriate. Rather, I’d suggest you to change it to “So am I” if that small quote is indeed an answer to the question you had written above.

A quick browse to your tags… they look perfectly fine to me!  All in all, great job in this section!

Appearance: graphics 5/5, layout 5/5

Your poster is absolutely adorable and fits in with your overall theme well! With the way you’ve titled your chapters, in addition to your poster and layout, it’s quite obvious that you’re going for the television/movie theme from the getgo. You’ve utilized these aspects well straight from the start so well done!

Characterisation. 11/15

This piece has many many many characters (up to a point where I was feeling quite overwhelmed). I was thinking of focusing in on one or two, but instead, I will speak about your characters in general.

The one thing I do appreciate is that all of your characters stay true from the beginning all the way until the end, which I assume is quite tricky because you have so many people to keep track of! However, your characters are also not extremely dynamic. I wish you could have made them more distinct from each other, but rather it they fit your typical roles. As I was reading, I wanted to discover something about the character which I have not seen before, or that I have never encountered based on the stereotype. You do well to explain why characters feel a certain way so there are no loop holes when it comes to that. But as a final general comment, I did find the characters to be mediocre. As a plot driven story, characters play a big role. Your plot is complex and I was expecting your characters to be the same.

Plot. 18/20

The entire piece plays on the fact of how “clichéd” everything is supposed to be. So as “interest”, I would say that it falls a little short since you are reusing typical plotlines and events. That being said, I do think you did well in writing out the plot. It could have been boring and uninteresting because you’re not bringing anything new to the table, but your writing style and just the way things are planned out kept me reading until the end.

As for realism, I think you did well. I’m honestly in awe of how you managed to keep on top of all the different stories you have created for each character while staying true to your overarching plot. Kudos to you for planning it all out!

Consistency/flow. 7/10

Honestly, I think the pace of your story is a little too slow for me. As the central genre is a “slice of life” type of piece, I really was craving more as I was reading. Something that will make me go “oh! What happened?” In terms of this, you do leave some cliffhangers at the end of chapters, but these get resolved a little too quickly. By keeping questions unanswered for a while, you get to keep readers on the edge of their seat. So that they can continue guessing what would be next. Perhaps the above comment goes better in another section, but it’s worth a mention here!

Grammar, spelling & punctuation. 13/15

You have some verb tense mixups. Often, you may start a paragraph by using present tense, but then in the next the action of the character goes into past tense. For myself, this is quite confusing to read as I can’t perfectly picture in my mind “is this story a retelling of the past?” or “Are these events occurring right now and I’m a spectator?”. I suggest you take your pick of which tense you want to work with, and stick with it!

There are also some instances in which I think you could benefit from adding commas! This will help you avoid run on sentences and allow readers to take a quick breath before continuing reading.

You have a good grasp of grammar, spelling and punctuation in general. This is evident as I was reading and no major mistakes caught my attention. I do think you will benefit from using more colourful and descriptive diction!
 

Writing style. 3/5

The way you’ve decided to write this story using multiple POVs is quite interesting! I give you additional points for being creative in your approach! However, I feel like there are times where I’m a little confused as to who is speaking: the author or a character’s thoughts. As you use the same font and italics to indicate both of those, it’s hard to read between the lines. I believe you had started off the piece with the narrator’s personal thoughts before the chapter begins, which is something I really enjoyed! The later chapters have it littered throughout and that style is less effective.

In general, you write in a choppy type of way. The flow is not quite as fluent as it should be. I know you are trying to go for a style where it seems as if the narrator is speaking directly to the readers, but I think you’ll benefit if you make the “speech” a little more eloquent through the use of connected sentences!

I wasn’t too sure where to put this, but I guess this would be a fitting section. Honestly, reading your story was very confusing to me. You’ve got many many characters and you jump all over the place with events. You insert flashbacks in the middle of conversations, one paragraph is for one character then the next is for another… There were moments where I would be reading and I would have to reread it all over again because I didn’t understand what was happening. To fix this, I would suggest you to pick one scene and stick with it – at least for a while. With the multitude of characters, use less pronouns and more names to remind readers who is speaking/doing an action.

Like I’ve mentioned above, your writing style is also very simple – as if it was a teacher doing some storytelling. With a clichéd plotline and character, a way to make your piece more interesting is to use unique diction.

Structure. 4/5

Usually in paragraphs, you have one character doing an action and the same character speaking. Yet in some parts of your piece, there is one character doing an action and another character speaking. This is another small issue as it becomes confusing as to who is really speaking (the actions you’ve made quite clear). As a general rule of thumb, have a separate paragraph whenever somebody is speaking. If that same character does an action after, before or during their words, clump it into the same paragraph. If somebody else is doing the action/talking, separate it!

Readers' response. 5/5

I like how readers are being engaged as they read and leave comments! It means you’ve managed to pique their interest and that’s the most important part about being an author! You want an active audience. You’ve also got a large base of subscribers and views, which are always encouraging. Great job!
 

Overall enjoyment.

Personally, this is not a type of story I would pick up on my own. But I really do appreciate the whole kdrama-esque vibes that you have going on and I thought it was an absolutely adorable idea to execute! This entire piece was entertaining and truly quite enjoyable. So while this did take me an incredibly long time to finish, I did have fun writing this review! I’m happy that you’ve shared this piece with us and from one writer to another, you’re doing a great job! I hope you find this review helpful in some way and that it encourages you to continue doing what you’re doing.