“House of Sin”

By: AoifeCross.

Reviewer: St-renaissance.

1-Title: the purpose of titles is to bring out the essence of the plot without giving out too much or spoil things for the readers. “House of Sin” definitely sounds intriguing and unique. The word Sin, suggests a state of challenging morality and ethical norms, and the word House suggests the act of putting on a facade from outside judgment. All in all, it’s interesting, unique, and hints at the foundation of the plot.

Rating: 10/10.

2-Description: The description is a bit on the longer side, but your story is extensive and detailed, so I don’t think the length is much of an issue. The description does include a few phrases that are repetitive in meaning which you can edit out. For example, “each representing and holding...” the semantics of literary language allows us to extract unnecessary words/phrases in order to preserve the quality of the narrative without having to rely on fancy diction. In other words, try to refrain from using words that suggest similar meanings. It offers a glimpse into the character’s life and provides only the necessary information to keep us hooked. However, there’s a grammatical error within the second part of the description, the word Corruptness is incorrect, it should be Corruption.

Rating: 8/10.

3-Plot: the beginning is on track: interesting, consistent, fruitful. The story opens with simple illustrations of environmental aspects, which always helps to paint a concrete image of the chosen settings. The story has not been chronologically confined to a certain time and place; this may bring about later issues such as the nature of class, politics, weather, traditions and culture.

You’ve used the third-person POV to narrate the story, it’s the most common narration technique and relatively, the most rewarding. You’ve also used several types of narrative: Environmental, personal, and biographical. Each narrative covers a different aspect of your story, whether it’s the settings, dialogues, background information or whatever.

The story opens with an introduction into the main character’s life as a successor to the family of many secrets, this already promises the readers that there are several layers to be uncovered, so try to not disappoint. The foundation of the plot is incredible, aside from the lack of concrete settings, it’s delivering generously throughout the first two chapters. There are few details that I wish would be addressed regarding the main character and his back story; how come the character remains sane and cognitively able despite being imprisoned for two decades? How come the character doesn’t recognise his image despite having reflective surfaces: window, spoon, sink faucet?

There are few grammatical issues in the first three chapters; in the third chapter, Yongguk’s shows the wolf symbol to Jimin and refers to it as his household ‘crescent’, the correct word is household crest/coat of arms. There’s also a number of syntactic mistreatment, for example, the sentence “Hyungwon is waiting for Jimin at the door, so Jimin makes his way to him. As they’re about to leave the room, Yongguk calls to him, “Jimin”.

During that statement alone, the name ‘Jimin’ has been used three times, ridding the noun of all meaning and productivity. Instead, you can employ He/Him or even adjectives to refrain from tedious and repetitive words. Make sure that you review the first five chapters and focus on the syntactic (sentence structure) and grammar health. Here’s the thing, I can already predict the stereotypical mould in which each character is going to fall into; Jimin’s the shy, doe-eyed sub and Jungkook’s the smug, dapper-looking dom. Am I wrong? I don’t think so, I’ve reviewed a number of stories with the same character foundation. Don’t rely on the cliché storyline or characters arc, because it will eventually bore your readers out.

You’re losing grip over this story, it’s not even about Jimin and his powers, it’s about handfuls of flat characters being shoved into every event as often as possible as Jimin watches from afar. When you’re writing a plot, make sure that you don’t lose it amidst trivial events and details; you’ve strayed so far from the plot in five chapters that I had to return to the description in order to remember it. So far, this is the introductory phase, and it’s incredibly stretched out and filled with insignificant details, filler events, and minor characters. Introductory chapters are very important, but make sure that you focus on elements that can only help you and your readers in the future, so ditch any unnecessary dialogues and eliminate-or at least delay- the introduction of so many minor characters.

Since the pace of your story has been burdened by too many details and minor events, your story hasn’t progressed at all. Just observe the bigger picture and you’ll notice how the characters are clustered into one scene as the environment around them is still and dull. The main character’s primary function in a story is to assist in moving it forward with the help of the narration. In your case, the main character is sitting around while supporting characters talk us into boredom; there is an insane amount of dialogues in your story, the first five chapters alone took me a week to go through. There’s absolutely no need for that many dialogues because you’ve used it to uncover information and facts which is a common mistake. Don’t depend on dialogues to transfer information and details instead, try to employ the dialogues as a communicative agent between characters. This is why your story is 15 chapters long, there’s no essence or plot, just filler events, and pointless dialogues. Let me give you a tip: don’t infantilise your readers’ ability to deduct facts and details about your characters/plot. Allow your readers to experience suspense and excitement instead of having two characters spoil it for us in a chapter-long dialogue. Avoid using dialogues to progress the story and illustrate actions, all elements of the plot should be exhibited rather than recited. Please, let your characters and their mouths rest for a chapter and use the power of narration to paint events and whatnot.

Stop introducing more characters, there are already 8 characters in the first three chapters alone, please stop and focus on your main character. Your story now greatly suffers from a common case I like to call Character Cluster, that’s where you shove as many characters as possible into one chapter in an attempt to keep things interesting. I’ll let you in on a little secret, don’t introduce new characters unless the main character is changing environments or indulging in past memories because your readers WILL NOT CARE about a poorly constructed character. Of course there a