dancing daisy

curious crimson and his charcoal eyes by douxsoleil

Posted by: dancingdaisy • request info — Last Edited: 14/03/2016

Author: douxsoleil

Story Title: curious crimson and his charcoal eyes

Main Personas: Yoona, Jongin, Krystal, Mingyu

Story Genres: Drama, Realistic Fiction, Romance

Story Status: Completed

Story (projected) Length: Short Story (not longer than 20,000 words)

Story Description: beauty is not about ocean eyes, satin clothes and iridescent skies.

beauty is not the first breath of spring, the sun smiling its brightest smile on summer, the leafs falling in love with the ground on autumn, and the coldness of winter seeping in to remind people that warmth is a precious little thing they should treasure.

beauty is not kids chasing each other as they play hide and seek, striking features and soft skin brushing each other.

beauty is him chasing her down the street.

beauty is her running to places she should not enter(like his heart).

beauty is her, im yoona to kim jongin, when she holds his face in her palms and make him feel whole and himself whenever he would fall and stop and too broken for life.


Reviewer: ae-sthetxc

Comments: While doing this review I took into consideration that English wasn’t your first language even though it is quite fluent. Reason is that I can see you aren’t familiar with point of view rules, irregular verbs as well as some conjugations. Therefore, I will be pointing out more about where you are lacking and try to explain the corrections to you, since I know you are reticent of using betas.

Story Title (4/5)

Posted by: DANCINGDAISY • grading — Last Edited: 14/03/2016

I have a love-hate relationship with prose-y titles, it can end up just sounding really cheesy. Like a medley of fancy words that don’t evoke anything. Although, like I always say, titles can’t be objectively judged, or at least not entirely as it’s a matter of preferences I do think short and concise titles that embody the theme of the story is way more impactful. 

Objectively, when you think about it hard enough, it has some connection to the plot. Yet, it was quite hard for me to get it so I had you explain it to me instead. 

I don’t think you want to go as far as to publish your book yet, still I will tell you this. The longer the title, the bigger the odds of losing someone’s attention, it feels heavy. When someone skims through a list, their eyes instinctively skip the long and heavy sentences. It’s a reflex. A title has to be light as well as to have the capacity of grabbing someone’s attention. It’s a rule in marketing. 

A title is a symbol, and as easy as it is, it can work against you.

Description and Foreword (8/10)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading— Last Edited: 14/03/2016

• Description (3/5)

Right after I saw the title, I knew you would be the type to write in prose, as well I knew English wasn’t your first language. It’s a pattern I’ve seen over the years: non-native tend to write either prose, or anything that will instore a kind of emotional atmosphere. I will dissect this matter later in the plot section. 

So the description itself was fine. The problem is that the role of it is to build expectations for the readers to rely on. More often than not, people put something completely unrelated in that part, or again, something that is just pretty. Then, the audience is disappointed by the lack of relation with that they were expecting, and they just stop reading.

We did get a glimpse of Jongin’s relationship with Yoona. The thing is, you put emphasis on beauty and the setting when the story isn’t strong on neither. 

Left alone however, it was a very pleasant poem to read, with beautiful words. There are a few mistakes I’d like to point out:
 ► “[…] the sun smiling its brightest smile […]” Here you have a repetition or a simple erroneous sentence structure that can interrupt the reading flow. This grammatical mistake is called an “Overlap Semantic Pleonasm”, something closed to redundancy.   You can twist the sentence a little bit, there is many choices so just have fun.

e.g.

‘The sun showing its brightest smile’
‘The sun brightly smiling’

 ► “Beauty is her running to places she should not enter(like his heart).” Here there is a discrepancy of the style, or poem. It’s not a big mistake, just to keep things consistent, changing the parentheses with a comma will do the job.
 

e.g.
‘Beauty is her running to places she should not enter, like his heart.’

 ►“Beauty is her, Im Yoona to Kim Jongin, when she holds his face in her palms and makes him feel whole and himself whenever he would fall and stop and too broken for life.” In this case the end of the sentence is missing (since it’s an enumeration) a comma, the use of the wrong conjunction and there is a word missing.
 

e.g.
‘[…] he would fall, stop or be too broken for life.’

• Organisation (5/5)

I won’t take out points for this part. My only advice would be to separate the sections more… clearly? It can seem like a bunch a words mixed all together, and you don’t really know where to look.

Appearance (8/10)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading — Last Edited: 14/03/2016

• Poster and Background (3/5)

I’m sorry, I really hate to grade this part because posters aren’t something I look at. But since I have to, I’ll make it brief. 
It’s alright, and fits the overall theme, so no complaints. I can’t give you more points because then I would have to do the same for everyone.

• Font-size and Readability (5/5)

I was originally going to deduce a point here because when I first read it, I noticed you didn’t capitalized the first letter of the word starting sentences which irked me. I read it a second time and saw you corrected that so it would be out of place to take out the point.

Plot Development (29/40)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading — Last Edited: 14/03/2016

• Originality (7/10)

I won’t lie to you, you did manage to surprise me with the memory loss. I usually predict really easily but that was a bit of a setback; good job. Sadly, after that was revealed I knew exactly how it was going to unfold afterwards. The girl that changes the player; who suddenly becomes a hero. Although the characterization was interesting at the beginning it started to drift towards the more cliche as it unfolded.

• Setting, Theme and Mood of the story (7/10)

It was a short story, so building a complex setting would be unnecessary. I was able to visualize the scene just alright, therefore I will not be deducing too much.

I think what disrupted the reading more than anything was the theme. I am guessing you write based on how you feel rather than outlining it? A theme is a moral the story is based on and sadly in this case the moral isn’t there. You did name a few but never went in details into it. I’ll give you an example:

Your storyline: A broken young woman tries to protect her past lover from remembering her following the trauma that had cost his memories.

The theme I could think of while reading was “Healing/self-love” which lead to the “Broken young woman finding a way out of her misery” but she didn’t. It ended in a place that wasn’t a real ending.

In other word every story has a goal the characters have to go towards to.

So I thought about it for a long time, about what didn’t work… and that was when I realized a huge thing.

The plot is platonic, it’s a setting; it’s what causes conflicts but it doesn’t have conflicts. It’s the background story that leads to an actual story. I can’t talk about how important conflicts are; they are the foundation that makes everything stand together. Without them, everything seems like random information being thrown to the reader.

Without conflicts, es and resolutions, it’s a simple background story. A particle of a bigger plot. I don’t want to bore you with my teacher like talk but here goes.

There is two types of scenes in fiction (I’ve talked about it in my previous review) proactive(have a goal + conflict + setback) and reactive (reaction + dilemma + decision). You had some scenes that did respect this, that is why I enjoyed my reading. However seems to be there only to throw, like earlier said, information to the reader.

The golden rule when writing is that information should be thrown in the midst of a conflicting situation. You had a but no resolution which is why the ending feels so empty. He got his memory back and then we jumped back to the past. So when we finish it’s just like “but the story just got started”. (which brings me back to the point up there)

• Scenes Transitions and Overall Flow (11/15)

I think this might be your strongest part. You are a natural, like I call, a sequencer. You know how to logically connect the scenes and make it interesting which is rare for those who don’t master the language (as well as for native because not everyone is gifted). You told me you’ve been writing and practicing english for 5 years so let me tell you it wasn’t time wasted. You are talented. It made me get attached somehow to the characters even when it converged towards the cliche. Which is good.

The only thing I really need to talk about are the prose that mostly became problematic later. In every writing workshops I went, literature classes I attended and literature books I read, there is one thing that’s always been coming back, over and over. That thing is called “balance”. If one branch of that story tree overgrows, then it will break and fall. At the beginning it was fine, only later it became overly prose-y. What that does is that it ruins your character's individuality.

No matter how good you write, they will all feel like the same person, sharing the same brain and thoughts. And that’s without talking about how irrealistic and unrelatable they will feel like. You can escape from it a few times, but as you keep writing stories you will notice that all your characters sound the same. A good story balances prose and descriptions. I hate descriptions, but they are needed. 

• Consistency and Point of View (4/5)

There are very strict rules regarding point of views. And they need to be respected. What I talked about up there are more of a stylistic matter with some grammatical errors, but they won’t be too much of a problem while reading.

Point of Views rules on the other hand can’t be cheated.

 
What a lot of non-native (as well as some native) don’t know is that there is different 3rd person point of view. What you used is called a “Head-Hopping POV”, the advantage of it is that the readers get to know about what everyone is thinking. However, the reader also no longer identifies as stronger with any single character, so it is very discouraged to use it. And it overlapped, making both seems like the same person. That bothered me a little, jumping back and forth in the same paragraph.

The normal 3rd person POV is when we follow one character in each scene. This one enables the readers to connect and go deeply into someone’s head. I think the issues was you tried to get deeply into both heads at the same time, which lead to an overlap and decreased the emotional experience (as well as some confusions)

Character Development (10/15)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading — Last Edited: 14/03/2016

• Point of View Used (7/10)

Referring to what I said earlier, you started really well, but at the end it slipped and the realistic side was completely cut out (the flashbacks). Suddenly they were over-idealistic. Cliche. And hard to relate to.

I do love both Yoona and Jongin and I think the relationship was heartwarming. Yet, this seems too idealistic for something that’s actually pretty dark. They lacked flaws, you made them broken, but they lacked flaws. The thing is that this trend of “love overcomes everything” has morphed into delusions in literature. But then, this is a fanfiction, I don’t think it’s right if I critique this the same as I critique the novels I have to review in classes.

So my only say will be flaws are very important to make your character realistic. Flaws don’t mean stupid. It’s not all black and white. Everyone on planet earth is a shade of grey. 

However, I think characterization is one of your strength also, because as cliche as it may have seen, I did like the couple and even the other characters a lot.

Responses and relationships were great. I liked the interactions, I like reading them speak to each other. Putting the idealistic aside (I think it was only in the last chapter), the responses were well thoughts, down to earth and entertaining.

• Evolution of the Characters (3/5)

You stopped the story when the development was at its peak. Sadly, since it was mostly setting and backstories, I can’t give you full mark. Yet, I did see some changes in Jongin (him figuring out his feelings as well as his memory loss) and Yoona (dolling up for the one she loves).

Grammar and Writing Style (10/15)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading— Last Edited: 14/03/2016

• Grammatical Errors (2/5)

There is one thing I noticed throughout the whole story, that is you tend to forget inference words that connect both parts of sentences together. I blame it on the non-first-language. Let’s dissect the first sentence as an example:
 

“Jongin is imperfect. He had tried, hurt his hips, broke his arm, and then he would mend himself and keep trying and trying again, until the flaws become invinsible to people's eyes.”

1. Let’s correct the verbs first. Bolded means I added the word, striked through means I removed that part.

“Jongin is imperfect. He has tried, hurted his hips, broke his arm, and then he would mend himself back and keep trying and trying again, until the flaws would become invinsible to people's eyes.”

•  If you only put “He tried” that tells the reader that this is happening now. As in, the story will be written in the past - which it isn’t. It’s present tense, therefore you have to make it ‘Present Continuous’ by adding the “has”, which will tell us the action has been happening a before the story started, without making it the past. If you get what I mean.
•  “To hurt” is an irregular verb, so it won’t conjugate the same way as regulars. In present, past and future tense, “hurt” stays as “hurt”.
•  Lastly, there was a verb auxiliary missing to connect the noun with the action.

2. Now let’s correct the conjunction.  
 

“Jongin is imperfect. He has tried, hurt his hips, broke his arm, and then he would mend himself back and keep trying and trying again, until the flaws would become invinsible to people's eyes.”

•  There is a strict enumeration rule in English that says the conjunction in a list always and only appears at the end. Unless you master the language and knows how to use a semi-comma.

3. The last mistake is a simply spelling mistake: ‘invinsible’ becomes ‘invisible’

Now I will list a few mistakes you’ve done on the first chapter.

It's still there, he whispers to himself as the claps get louder and louder, the red curtain coming to a closure, and shadowing him from the astounded audience.

•  You tend to misuse or forget about the coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but, etc) a lot throughout the whole manuscript. You will have to familiarize yourself with them. They are fundamental.
•  Repeating a word for dramatization is also okay, but when it’s overused it’s a pleonasm and a repetition. So don’t use it too much.

The flaws, they are still there. Jongin doesn't listen to people and so keeps hurting and blaming himself, that he didn't practice enough.

•  Another conjunction used wrongly. Here you need a word that brings out the “cause and effect” impact you want to give. By using “and” you’re dissociating both ideas, creating two different sentence. When you add “so” or “therefore” it links them. A causes B. Jongin doesn’t listen to people and that’s why he’s been hurting himself.
•  The comma is splitting the same idea in two, changing the meaning of the phrase. 
 

Jongin is just like that, constantly finding flaws in each every thing that he does.

•  ‘Each’ and ‘every’ are similar, but not identical.  
‘each is referring to an individual as one, while the term every is referring to a group lumped together as one.’ - Grammarly handbook
 

"You did a great job, Jongin," a hand lands on his shoulder as and his dancing partner pulls him into a hug.

 
•  “As” means it’s happening at the same time. Literally it said that two people were touching him at the same moment. Again, “and” tells us that they hugged after the hand thing.
In conclusion connectors are what I suggest you to study. When you get it, anything else will be easy to learn.

• Choice of words and use of language (8/10)

“Can, Will, Shall” versus “Could, Would, Should”
 

The latter is simply the past version of the former.Sometimes you mixed them up, be careful.

Generally speaking you have a pretty good vocabulary range, there are words that might be more appropriate sometimes, but it wasn’t drastic.

The last thing I want to talk about, that I ALWAYS talk about (with the scene structure) is “telling” vs. “showing”. I always talk about it because most reviews I’ve done were for stories where authors didn’t have English as primary language, therefore I need to explain it

You’re pretty good at this, but you don’t do it all the time. I’ve gotten the feeling like it depends of the chapter really. You don’t write everything at the same time, so it makes sense.

You “told” more on chapter one, then you started “showing” on chapter two. I think maybe, editing it through to make it consistent would be a good thing.

General Evaluation / Overall Enjoyment (4/5)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading— Last Edited: 14/03/2016

Like you said, despite the flaws I enjoyed the story. I am really strict, but never will I bash, or discourage a writer. It was lacking in some area, but it has solid foundation to work with. Since you are so passionate about writing I took hours to research and write this review, so I can pull out your full potential.

Praises can stop someone from progressing, that is why we should always work on the sides we have yet to master. I like the way you write and the characterization. Therefore, I want to wish you luck on your journey.
Keep studying the language and you’ll do great in a few years.

Total Grade (73/100)

Posted by: dancingdaisy • grading — Last Edited: 14/03/2016

► 73%

Thank you for requesting! Do request again! It was a pleasure to review your story, it definitely has a great potential.

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Upvotes are absolutely welcomed! c;

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