“Sincerely, Me”

By: Purplerain-

Reviewer: St-renaissance

1-Title: “Sincerely, Me” sounds interesting, it’s definitely an indication of personal retelling of past stories. It offers a look into the main character’s intentions of parting and reuniting with something special—perhaps old habits, lifestyle, or even lovers. It can attract the audience with hints of promises and communication and I believe it will deliver soon enough.

Rating: 10/10.

2-Description: the synopsis introduces our main character, whose struggle with romance and friendship signifies her journey into a contemporary context. This little detail offers us an important fact; your use of narrative and employment of characters must be purposeful, and excellent storytelling and retelling of certain events will be the most important aspect.

The general length of the description is modest and sensible, the grammatical and syntactic structure of the paragraph is well enough—you’ve used punctuation marks correctly which made this much easier to read.

Rating: 9/10.

3-Plot: The beginning of the story takes place at a school’s classroom, where we meet our main character, Seulgi, and her friend Seungwan. They launch the first chapter with a dialogue regarding romance, infatuation, and more effectively, a third character named Irene. You’ve used the third-person-narrative; focusing on both characters to lead the first chapter, we’re introduced to the first minor event in this series. One character, Seungwan encounters heartbreak which opens the door to Seulgi’s self-deprecation principles on love, confidence, and ual identity.

Whenever we open a story with a specific character, it’s always helpful to start building the setting (time & place) so be careful as to not neglect constructing an environment that can both nourish your characters and audience. Building the setting can be an easy task, assign a certain time period to a specific location, and try to immerse yourself in that environment. Start describing what you can see, hear, and feel. Any minor element will help us become part of your characters’ world, and that is the very first step towards creating an emotional connection with your audience. The only description of nature or surroundings I’ve seen is during the end of the first chapter where you describe the clouds and sky. Keep doing exactly so, it can be so easy and just as rewarding if you’d take the time to draw a connection between Nature and Character. For example, something as negligible as the temperature can tell us so much; did you know that kind, emotional, and attentive personalities are more likely to get cold? Climate and weather are perfect metaphors for political unrest and societal conflicts, like how winter and fog are used to reflect anxiety and cruelty, spring and warmth can reflect healing and new beginnings. I think for such an introverted and shy character; so many natural elements can help us understand her better without abusing the dialogues and conversation.

Another problem that rose rather prematurely within your writing is your overuse of names and labels. One primary rule for exceptional narration is achieved by refraining from mentioning names and labels so often. If you’re mentioning a certain character, for example, Seulgi, then you must think of different ways to address her character without repeatedly mentioning her name within the same paragraph. It can come off as robotic and less genuine if you keep writing this way, however, there are ways you can mend this flaw; employing the narrative to do the investigation and monologue will deliver the same results—even better—without relying on dialogues.

Let’s talk about the exposition here: you’ve used the third person-person narrative to direct this story and though it is going smoothly, there is a minor issue that ruins the state of immersion. The way you set-up to introduce major events can lead to disappointment, it’s due to the fact that your description of events is slightly different than the actual physical events. The heading or Rising Action conflicts with the actual description of the event, making it more confusing to follow along, not to mention, tiring and exhausting. It’s relatively a simple issue; you can fix it by going back to each important event and making sure that the description matches what actually happens. Unfortunately, beta-readers might not be well-equipped to fill in the gaps, so you might have to do fix this issue yourself.

So far, the story is sensibly paced; it’s neither rushed nor reluctant, it’s interesting, and mainly follows a chronological/linear narrative. Try not including too many minor characters as early as the second chapter, taking your time with introductions and keeping your focus on your MCs until you’ve established a concrete foundation. For example, during the second chapter, you’ve introduced up to five minor characters in three paragraphs alone: Yuri, Yoona, Taeyeon, Joy, Jihyo, Jisoo, and more. In literature, we call that Character Cluster; where several unimportant characters cluster together while being equally insignificant to the story. Your narration is quite entertaining and it really shouldn’t be weighed down by unnecessary divergence of attention towards minor characters. Focus on exploring your main character and help us understand her motives and aims—you can talk about minor characters as long as you please, after establishing a concrete world/environment in which your character can exercise new limits.

Right, the story is definitely pacing slower and slower, the narrative is deviating from Seulgi’s development as a protagonist and focuses more on achieving minimal accomplishments. Don’t think about how you’ll conclude the chapter before you think abou