RE-UPLOAD

Review Shop Criteria

Title [ 10 / 10 ]

Creativity:That title is really lovely. There’s not much more to say, especially since I read it at first, expecting a historical story and instead got a modern story twisted into a historical story.

(Note: I do not take off points for grammar most of the time, but I would like to point out that the “..” that follows “Trapped!” should have three dots instead of two so you can be grammatically correct.)

Characters [ 45 / 50 ]

Development:The speed at which you’re developing your characters is admirable. It isn’t rushed and so far there’s still quite a bit of room for readers to guess what Hana and Sunggyu will be like as the story progresses.

Based on Chapter 1 though, your characters are well thought out but still somewhat lacking in originality. They play the near stereotypical tragic lovers but since you were trying to mimic a tragic love story I can see why you would take that route.

Since you have only written a few chapters, I will say that your pacing of development is good. If you continue as you are now, then there’s nothing particularly worrisome.

Voice:Their voices are distinct but their voices are also a bit predictable. Hana speaks in clichés and Sunggyu does too. They’re clearly different but everything feels oddly familiar and therefore lacks a refreshing voice.

Grammar/Spelling [ 24 / 25 ]

Correct Usage:I have nothing to say except that you are the first person I’ve seen to so thoroughly use semi-colons. I’m not quite positive why you use them so frequently since their usefulness is rather limited. Also, once you begin noticing how many semi-colons are used, it’s rather astonishing.

Tenses:Your tense in consistent.

Plot [ 59 / 75 ]

Intrigue:It’s a common yet uncommon intrigue. The idea of bringing the past and present together and the continuing of an ancient curse is very curious and rather exciting.

Originality:This often happens. The interest level of a story does not match the originality of it. Your story isn’t the most common plot, but it has been used many times. What’s special about your approach is the way in which you’ve organized the story – that is, offering the past at the beginning instead of leaving it as a mystery to hang over your readers’ heads.

From a completely plot based standpoint though, your story lacks uniqueness. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s nearly impossible to find an unused story line these days. There are only so many plots in the world. However, your over all, thus far, execution of the plot can be improved by cutting down the growing number of clichés that emerged with each new chapter.

Story Structure [ 64 / 75]

Point of View Coordination: For the life of me I cannot fathom why you chose 2^nd Person POV. The story was at its greatest writing potential during 3^rd Person Omniscient. There was great diversity in language as well as visualization. Also, if you created your character “Hana” why do you insist on having a “You” story?

Hana as a character all her own is thoroughly independent in terms of character development. The 2^nd Person POV just throws off the reader a bit due to the sudden emersion of us into the story.

Realism (in terms of story setting): So far, so good.

Functionality: I didn’t know what was going on until you started leading the story in a different direction with Chapter 3 so yes, the story leads the reader on.

Style [ 53 / 60 ]

Personality:You style is a good mixture of description and dialogue however you often fall back commonly used phrases or ideas. This may be exclusively true for this story, though. There’s nothing to say since you have a good grasp of how you want readers to picture your story and you proceed as such.

Description: For the most part your description is sensible and related to the situation on a moderate level. As stated above, you are a mixture of dialogue and description, therefore it is understandable that your description isn’t explosive.

Dialogue: Your dialogue formatting is accurate and genuine a majority of the time.

Clichés: Above, I stated that your dialogue is genuine most of the time. The problem is that the majority of your clichés rise out of dialogue. You reveal details of their lives in the dialogue and there are far too many overused situations, feelings, words, vows, etc.

“Handsome class president”

“Three years [of liking Sunggyu]”

“[They first met because of a dropped] Eraser”

“Our seats were next to each other”

“If I can’t have her, then neither can you.”

I do realize that you’re aiming for a familiar style of fairy tale telling but you blended modern times and historical times. Therefore, a refreshing take on some of these situations should be present to emphasize the modernity portion.

In terms of establishing the concept of “fate” which is very evident by these “coincidental” situations of meeting, sitting next to each other, etc. could be done or taken from a new perspective.

However, if you’re purposefully doing all of these things to increase the fairy tale like story, then ignore me.

“Flow”: This is excellent up until the abruptness of their transportation into what I presume will be the historical time period. It’s expected, but at the same time, there should be more build up to it. We only caught a glimpse of Sunggyu and Hana’s modern relationship before they were hurled into the ancient world (again, only a guess, I wouldn’t be sure).

How you write the overall scenes are greatly paced though.

Formatting:Perfectly alright.

Literary Devices [ 5 / 5 ]

Metaphors, similes, alliteration, aphorisms, repetition, etc. : There’s quite a bit.

Extras/Bonuses [ 3 / -- ]

Readers Enjoyment: Your readers seem as if they’re enjoying your story. The comments were thoughtful and perhaps I’m just getting mushy for some reason. Anyway yes, your readers are well attuned to the goings on of this tale.

Particular Snippets of…: I wanted to punch that stupid Magician. I also wanted to hit Hana, but that’s just because I’m very picky about female leads.

Improvement:Oddly enough, you may have tripped up a bit. Again, it was the oddity in using 2^nd Person POV when your story was running so smoothly in 3^rd Person. It just appeared to be randomly done, as if there were no rhyme or reason for making the reader a part of the story by making Hana synonymous with “you”.

Enjoyment: Ah, if only read Fanfiction between a boy and girl. From a non Fanfiction point of view, I really did enjoy reading this mainly because I feel as if we write in a similar manner – not to sound as if I idolize myself.

Total [ 263 / 300 ]

88%

Reviewer’s Comments:

I truly did like the flow of this story. It reminded me of my childhood for whatever reason.

Anyway, there was something that I wanted to bring to your attention that I couldn’t seem to fit into the review.

There’s quite a bit of redundancy when you’re attempting to enrich your description. Adding adjectives to deepen the beauty of a scene is fine, but at some point it would be good to notice how many of those adjectives have become simple synonyms.

The first case of this was “…its luminous glow lighting up…” which is basically saying “…a glowing glow was glowing…”

Since luminous and lighting are virtually the same thing, if you were to remove one or the other, the sentence would still make sense. At first glance I will admit that I thought the phrase was nice, but then I realized what was off about it.

As for the comment I made on the title of your piece: These days people are using only two dots when trying to show “trailing off from thought” but you really need three since those three dots are called “ellipses” and are mandatorily stuck together.