My Lovely Lee Byunghun

By: kamikazexox

Requested: July 17, 2017

Completed: March 6, 2018

Review Type: Serious

Area of Help:

Flow – Specific pointers will be given below in the “Flow” section. General points on flow will be provided here. Simple things to keep in mind when making a story flow: use description to help explain points about characters and events which can’t be explained well through dialogue. This usually includes family, friends, and personal circumstances. Also, you’ll want to use description to show characters moving between scenes and since it’s storytelling, don’t be worried about trying to make everything “real-time”. It’s okay if you explain things far in advance.

Description – Focus on describing things that might seem mundane. That’s one place to start with a description. Have your character observe and comment on the things around them. Is their classroom dull? Is it modern? Is their friend beautiful? Cute? Shy? What kind of habits do various characters have? Does someone glare a lot? Does someone have a nervous twitch? Does someone avoid eye contact? Ask yourself lots of questions about what’s going on around you in the story.

General coherency of chapters and characters thus far (i.e. Developing characters while maintaining their core personalities) – In your head, you should have an outline of a character’s core personality traits already. The other things they do and say can be flexible. If they’re under a lot of personal stress, they might make emotional decisions that are out of character. But that’s okay. You just have to spend a lot of time describing their inner thought process. That’s where description once again comes into play.

However, they haven’t really demonstrated significant character traits yet. Minju has some static characteristics, such as being physically strong and Class president. Those are the only ones that can really be nailed down. The actual narrative and characters presented so far haven’t been complicated. That means it’s easy to understand and considering you’re aiming for a comedy (based on the tags), you’re setting a pretty easy-going tone.

Over-all feeling and effect rendered by the story – I think it’s a pretty light-hearted school story so far and the lines aren’t over the top. As mentioned above, it’s easy-going and I’m not sure if it’s comedic in the traditional sense, but I see the humorous elements. What would help is increasing the description and also adjusting some of the dialogue to include more “one-liners”. A lot of comedy relies on brevity. Long and complicated sentences or drawn out situations start to take themselves too seriously—often beyond the author’s control.

Title [ 8 / 10 ]

Creativity: It’s a really straight-forward title that tells readers what they’re in for. I think since you’re shooting for a romantic comedy in high school, it’s a suitable title. I do think there are more creative ways to express the “feeling” of the story through the title though. Maybe something more playful, possibly with a pun or metaphor. Again, it’s not that it’s a bad title, it just lacks flare.

Characters [ 26* / 50 ]

*They have potential. It’s too early to give an accurate determination of development. This is also a serious review, so I’m grading a bit more harshly since technically, there have been 3 chapters which means the expectation for more character development isn’t out of the question.

Development: It’s very hard to say at this point. The chapters are quite short, it’s only just starting to crack the surface of the plot, and most of the main characters haven’t actually gotten a chance to shine. Additionally, the main character is “you” therefore the development is happening in kind of a strange way. A lot of the characteristics have to be presented to “you” in very blunt ways. For example, telling “you” that you practice Judo and are the Class President. Those are both details that can’t really be shown rather than told. Strong character development relies on painting a picture, not just giving an itemized listing of what’s going on. But that’s the consequence of a “you” story. It’s part of the P.O.V. choice.

Byunghun, I will admit, is pretty interesting. I think you ought to continue with his bad-boy appearance but somewhat innocent personality. I was pleasantly surprised that he wasn’t a jerk that beats everyone up. His fumbling apology to the friend when he bumped her hard and his subsequent desire to explain himself to Jimbo rather than engage in a fight immediately was interesting. I think you’ve got potential with him as the male lead.

Kevin seems like a jerk thus far. The 3rd chapter seemed to hit at him giving her confession a second thought which was also surprising, but I think there’s too little of him to say more. As it stands, he has room to grow as well, which is great.

Voice: Also a hard call to make with so little story published. I think you’re on the right track. They’re still all pretty similar sounding, but that’s because you’re early in the story. However, their mannerisms and personalities are slowly emerging and as mentioned above, I already see distinct characteristics in some people –e.g. Byunghun.

Grammar/Spelling [ 23 / 25 ]

Correct Usage: I didn’t see any glaring issues. There are a few clunky grammatical mishaps, but for the most part, I could read everything without stumbling too much.

Tenses: Great!

Plot [ 55 / 75 ]

Intrigue: I think it’s the type of plot line that would intrigue people. It’s also a concise description, and I appreciate that. There’s not much over-the-top language used either, corny exclamations, or rhetorical questions. Those are all common practices in this genre.

Originality: You already explained that it’s a cliché plot. That’s fine. Lots of cliché plots are still fun to read. I think your take on it thus far leaves a lot of room for growth beyond just the cliché. It could be a well-crafted cliché story. You seem to have taken a slow build approach to the plot and that helps you a lot. For example, it’s been three chapters and the two lead characters haven’t made crazy declarations to one another or otherwise. But you have foreshadowed via their parents that more will be happening between them outside of school as well. They’re bound to end up in hijinks in and out of school.

Coherency: Given how little has been revealed, there’s no problems with coherency or consistency.  

Story Structure [ 60 / 75]

Point of View Coordination: This is the biggest issue just because 2nd Person is a very difficult perspective to take. In fact, it’s probably the hardest. I’m not even sure if there’s a good example of 2nd person to point you toward. However, your story is doing it’s best with 2nd person. There’s just a lot of structural things that get negatively effected by 2nd Person. For example, not being to show rather than tell details of the story/plot. There’s a lot of just telling readers what’s going on because “You” have to be informed as well of what your character traits or feelings are. That really makes the story’s narrative difficult to write. However, you have been consistent and you’re doing your best.

What might help is cushioning explanatory sentences with more description. The beauty of 2nd person is that you can still describe things in detail from the eyes of “You”. Your readers can still get a very clear picture of what’s happening to “You” if you spend more time with description-oriented paragraphs.

Realism (in terms of story setting): The idea is a pretty simple one and I think it’s on track. I also think you chose well by having people perceive Byunghun as an “idiot” rather than a “cool guy”. Oftentimes people fall into the trap of just making everyone fawn over the new bad boy, but yours was more realistic. Especially in East Asia, someone who breaks the uniform rules isn’t considered cool. They’re just an outcast.

Functionality: Your story is functionally sound. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions, such as how the two main characters are going to become closer. Their personalities also haven’t been fully divulged. You’ve got real potential for a fun story here.

Style [ 28 / 60 ]

Personality: The nature of the POV and plot mean the style isn’t the focus of your story. Your tone is meant to reflect other romantic comedies and it does. However, that means your personal style and voice don’t come out.

Description: There’s honestly not a lot of description and you did mention that was an area you wanted help in. As I explained earlier, keep asking yourself questions about what’s going on around your characters and then writing out the answers to those questions. Get so detailed that you might even be going overboard. At least then, you have the option to cut things that are irrelevant.

Currently though, your description is used just to reveal necessary information. It doesn’t build up the world your story is set in. For example, chapter one opens with a short, concise, and utilitarian description of the lamp post where “You” want to confess. It provided all the information necessary to understand the significance of the confession location, but it didn’t stick out as a meaningful description. A reader would either skim over it or forget about it a few chapters later. Although it doesn’t have to be dramatic, in this instance, it needs to be emphasized more to convey the emotion behind the confession spot. There are feelings involved and those need to highlighted more via richer explanation. You could possibly include more description prior to that which just talks about the two of them walking back from practice, maybe exchanging a bit of light chatter and smiles. Something like that to give readers a sense of their relationship.

Dialogue: It’s formatted well. The characters are exchanging interesting and natural lines as well. Your dialogues are probably one of your strong suits.

Clichés: Again, you’re aware of what these are.

“Flow”: The parenthetical explanations that appear are for things that either don’t need the explanation or should’ve been explained elsewhere. For example, the teachers meeting that’s mentioned in Chapter 3, or the lengthy description of Minju in chapter 2 that interrupted the main plotline. Neither of those were necessary. They could’ve been included in other places, feasibly a paragraph earlier on. As mentioned before, it’s okay to describe things well in advance of an event. Readers will remember the detail even if you don’t mention it immediately before or after an event. Even though the perspective is 2nd person, there’s room to include some more description to help improve the flow of events and character development

Formatting: Looks great.

Literary Devices [ 1 / 5 ]

Metaphors, similes, alliteration, aphorisms, repetition, etc. : A bit.

Extras/Bonuses [ 3/ -- ]

Readers Enjoyment: You have interest and the readers will come if you keep writing. I think it’s worth updating soon. You have a really supportive comment and I think a lot of people are interested in your style of story and narrative telling.

Particular Snippets of…: I definitely stuttered over “Jimbo”. That caught me off guard.

Improvement: Potential. There’s a lot of potential for improvement as the story continues being told.

Enjoyment: It’s not my preferred reading genre, but I think you’re doing well in your respective writing area. I like seeing how much potential this story has and that you’re taking 2nd Person as a serious challenge.

Total [ 204 / 300 ]

68%

Reviewer Comments:

I went back and forth on changing the scale of this review to a Fanfiction one because of the 2nd person POV, but then I decided that it’s worth it to just do the serious review. Your writing isn’t problematic. It was easy to focus on the finer details of your writing because it was easy to read your writing. You’ve also acknowledged the glaring issues and I think that if you already know, then I ought to take your work seriously within the parameters you’ve set for yourself. There’s no point in marking down a story’s worth when the author intended for certain elements to be cliché or silly or whatever.