Title: ‘•Baby's Breath 안개꽃•’

Author: Immafanytastic

Reviewed by: BrenRay

*Date/Time of request: 08/09/2012 .. 05:13:27
*Date/Time of completion: 08/13/2012 .. 00:40:46

Individual Scores:

Title (5/5) - I really did love this title. I thought it was not only intriguing, but it also visually appealed to me. I would be compelled to click on your story. Not many authors have the confidence to include a language - in this case, Korean - that is foreign to them and I applaud you for attempting this; however I might suggest you put spaces between the Hangul characters. I’m assuming you meant to say something along the lines of ‘No more flowers,’ but as it is written now, it doesn’t actually mean anything.

Forward/Description (9/10) - I thought that this section was very strong. It was ordered very well and I really liked the format you used to properly describe all the relevant information. I personally try and use this in my own writing, so it’s refreshing to see it in someone else’s! A lot of writers go into unnecessary detail in their description, forgetting that they only need to ‘describe,’ so I would sincerely encourage you to continue this into your future writings.

Your forward was also good. It gave me a small and intriguing look into the story, without really giving any of the plot away. I did think that it may have been still a little too much to intricately describe Baekhyun’s reasoning behind approaching the mother though, since you re-tell this from both points of view in your first two chapters. It would be my advice to avoid putting anything in your forward that you anticipate to feature heavily in the coming chapters. Readers generally prefer to be left with unanswered questions at this point in the story, since it hooks their attention and hopefully convinces them to read on and discover the answers. Perhaps this would be something for you to consider.

Plot (20/25) - From what I have read, I liked the plot and would be very interested to see where you take it. You have a clear writing style and a seemingly original plot at this stage. It’s hard for me to give you any advice at this stage because I feel as though I would need to analyse more of your writing to see if there are any potential flaws here. I don’t really know what to expect from your story right now, so I will simply say that I advise you to stick with how you’re planning your story to go now.

I do have a lot of questions that I find myself being asked at this stage, so I would encourage you to steer the plot in a way that addresses these issues and try to avoid cliché plot twists that might take the mystery and suspense out of the story.

Characterisation (10/15) - I thought that on the whole - at this point - your development of the characters was good. I wouldn’t really expect to garner full marks here at such an early stage in the story, but I can give you some advice on how to progress.

You clearly have an expansive back-story behind Miyeon and Baekhyun, but I felt as though you may have missed this opportunity with Tiffany. You used the phrase, ’19 years passed really quickly,’ which would suggest to me that you were about to go into detail about those years. However you tended to glance over this and simply carry on with the story. This is perfectly fine, but as a reader I thought you had the potential to really add depth to Tiffany’s character here. What is her personality like and how has it become that way? Did any significant events occur in those 19 years of her life? Has she developed a love interest in anyone during that time? Does she ever ask about her parents? You told us briefly what she looked like, but I felt as though - if you considered some of those other questions as examples - you could’ve gotten us much more engaged with her character.

Flow (4/5) - The flow was on the whole very good. I had a very easy time understanding the transition of scenes and chapters and I thought that the pace was appropriate, for the most part. I described how you may have missed an opportunity to describe Tiffany when you implemented the ’19 years passed really quickly,’ and I in terms of your flow, I thought it was perhaps too great a leap to make. There was a lot of potential storyline that could’ve been missed here and it might have been easier on my understanding of Tiffany’s life in the coming parts if I at least knew the basics of what happened during that time. I hope this made sense!

Originality (9/10) - At this stage of the storyline, I get the feeling that your story is very original. I thought that perhaps there were a few instances where the dialogue might’ve been clichéd, such as when Baekhyun talked about his experience in clubs, but other than that it seems very innovative. I see a lot of criticism for vampire fics as not being innovative, but I saw from the forward with the concept of the ‘Baby’s breath’ flower and I was left with questions about Tiffany’s nature concerning her constant headaches and blood, which I probably wouldn’t have found myself with if your story wasn’t creative.  

Grammar (17/20) - Your grammar was very good for the most part and it was mostly lucid and easy to understand. However I did find a few issues that caused some awkward sounding sentences. If you were to take note and correct these mistakes, your grammar mark would likely achieve full-marks and for this reason, there is little point in listing every mistake I found.

Firstly, and most importantly; you had a tendency to inter-change the use of past and present tense - sometimes in the same sentence. This made sentences sound muddled and and example might be:

‘The bright moon glistened in the dark night. It is so quiet that you can hear the wind at your ears.’

In this example, ‘glistened’ is a past participle, so you have already committed to writing in the past tense. However, the next sentence goes into more detail, but is changed to the present tense. It is grammatically correct, but would read much better if it were something like this:

‘The bright moon glistened in the dark night. It was so quiet that you could hear the wind at your ears.’ - All in past tense.

Beyond this, I saw a few issues with ellipsis, such as in the sentence, ‘The smell of blood.....’ The use of ellipsis should be confined to only two full-stops. So the sentence should have read, ‘The smell of blood..’

My last piece of advice would be to avoid the use of asterisks when indicating a thought process. For example, *I’m not thirsty anymore.* - Thoughts are conventionally indicated through the use of inverted commas, simply because that is the accepted grammatical rule. This sentence should therefore have read, ‘I’m not thirsty anymore.’

I deducted one mark for each of these errors, but they are not too serious and could easily be corrected if you went back and did a bit of re-wording or tweaking of sentences.

Vocabulary (8/10) - Right from the beginning, your language was very solid. I got the impression that you were quite confident in your use of imagery to set the scene and so I’d encourage you to carry on with this - if this is indeed the case! I noticed a few spelling errors here and there, but that didn’t really affect my appreciation of the language. I give this piece of advice to pretty much everyone who asks for it; if you use a programme (such as Microsoft Word) that has inbuilt ‘synonym’ features, they can really help to expand your vocabulary quite drastically. Other than that, you might try the more conventional method of a thesaurus, but remember not to over-do this. Try not to over-complicate your language with this feature, if you plan to use it.

Total Score - {82/100}

Reviewers Notes

Thank you for requesting, I hope that the review has been helpful and that you can progress well in the future!

I'm very sorry that this took a few days to complete.

Remember to credit the shop if you choose to include this in your story!

(Reviewed by Brendan)

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A link to this story can be found > HERE <

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