Note to MissAubrey: Since your story has just begun, I can't give a complete and comprehensive review of it as of now. The rating on this review is only tentative. If you want to request a review again when you finish this story, I would be more than happy to review it for you.

---

Title: "How To Screw Up Your Love Life"

Author: MissAubrey

Title: 20/25 points

Your title is capitalized properly except for the "to," which should remain uncapitalized, and while it’s on the long side, it’s not a sentence that summarizes the fic and leaves nothing to the imagination. However, the feeling I get from it is one of comedy because usually the “how to” kinds of titles are intended to be ironic/sarcastic. Your story sounds like it's supposed to be more on the dramatic side, so it doesn’t quite fit.

Description: 10/10 points

Your description does a good job of being concise and to the point and avoiding unnecessary details, and it also leaves various questions in the readers' minds. One is what way of screwing up your love life that Seohyun has mastered and the other is whether or not she can fix the damage she’s caused.

Foreword (if applicable): +1 bonus point

The dialogue is a bit confusing because we don’t know who Seohyun is talking to. Also, the way you alternate the two speakers makes it confusing to readers. It looks like the first three lines are spoken by Seohyun, but the fourth is by another person, and then the fifth is by Seohyun.

Despite this confusion, the dialogue does contribute to the readers’ curiosity, so I’ll give you some credit for that.

Presentation: 15/15 points

You don’t have a poster a background, so nothing looks cluttered. You haven’t customized the font in distracting ways or inserted images randomly, so everything looks very neat and professional.

Spelling/Grammar/Usage/Mechanics: 10/20 points

My corrections below will focus on the things beyond spelling since spelling errors are easily fixed with a spell-checker. This is not a list of all the errors you made, only examples of the most common ones that I saw.

You have a few spelling mistakes here and there, but they’re not all over the place. The ones below are just a few that I caught or were repeated several times.

You use “bestfriend” several times. It should be two words: “best friend.” You also spelled "until" as "untill."

Original: And liking a boy who have ignored you for a gajilion months?

Correction: It should say “gajillion.” It’s not actually a real word, but following the spelling pattern of million, billion, trillion, etc., there should be two l’s.

Original: “Oh, shuttup.”

Correction: “Oh, shut up.” If you want it to me more informal, you could use “shaddup.”

The biggest problem I see with your grammar is in your verbs. In a few places you use the wrong form, and you keep switching between tenses. Most of it seems to be in past tense, but there are random places where it becomes present tense. You should go look up tense differences, but for the most part, past tense verbs will end in “d.”

Original: Hyoyeon was alredy far ahead of me, since she doesn't want to be seen with her little immature sister. 

Correction: Hyoyeon was already far ahead of me since she didn't want to be seen with her immature little sister.

Original: He doesn't even thinks I exist anymore.

Correction: He didn’t even think I existed anymore.

Another problem is that you use the wrong preposition or simply the wrong word in certain phrases, or you leave out a preposition that’s supposed to be there. The phrasing in certain places is wrong or awkward.

Original: It was Donghae, panting and gasping his breath, trying to catch up with me.

Correction: It was Donghae, panting and gasping for breath, trying to catch up with me.

Original: But then, he avoides me.

Correction: But now, he was avoiding me.

Original: “Well, jumping off to your friend in the morning is kind of weird too.”

Correction: I’m not sure what exactly you mean here, but I think it should probably say something like “Well, jumping at your friend in the morning is kind of weird, too.”

Original: I was grinning too, ear to ear.

Correction: I was grinning, too, from ear to ear.

Original: But since the teacher seems to be even late-er than me, so technically I'm not late.

Correction: But since the teacher seems to be even later than me, so technically I wasn’t late.

Original: There's a thing that makes her even hate-able in my POV.

Correction: There was something that made her more worthy of hate, in my opinion.

Original: “So I decided to drift my closest friends away.”

Correction: “So I decided to let my closest friends drift away.”

You also put commas in places where they should not be used and leave them out in places where they should occur.

Original: I dodged the gun in Hyoyeon's hands, than make the run for the bathroom.

Correction:  I dodged the gun in Hyoyeon's hands then made a run for the bathroom.

Original: “It's just a notebook Wookie.”

Correction: “It’s just a notebook, Wookie.”

You don’t capitalize the first word of certain sentences.

Original: is that a crime, too?

Correction: Is that a crime, too?

Original: even though he doesn't like you back.

Correction: Even though he doesn’t like you back.

You pluralize certain words that usually are not pluralized.

Original: “Someday, I'll kill all the people who invent homeworks.”

Correction: "Someday, I'll kill all the people who invented homework.”

Original: Doing extra credits never felt so good!

Correction: Doing extra credit had never felt so good!

You aren’t following the conventions for dialogue and thoughts. For the rules about dialogue, see here.

Original: This I thought was the best day of my life.

Correction: This, I thought, was the best day of my life.

Original: "Fat chance." was her reply.

Correction: “Fat chance” was her reply.

Diction:  7/10 points

Your vocabulary seems pretty good for a non-native speaker. However, there were a few places where you misused words (see above).

Flow/Pacing: 10/20 points

Overall, the flow of your story isn’t terrible. It doesn’t randomly jump around in a way that doesn’t make sense. However, the constant changing between points of view doesn’t seem necessary to me, and it makes things more confusing because the reader has to reorient themselves for each new point of view. Unless you have a really good reason to do it, you shouldn’t change points of view, especially not that frequently. If you want to let the readers know what’s going on with all of these other characters, you should simply write the story in an omniscient third-person point of view. You can find information about points of view and how to show changes in them without obnoxious “POV” labels here and here.

Another issue is the pacing. Your chapters are pretty short, and I feel like several of them could have been combined into a single chapter. Nothing much has happened or changed in your seven chapters, and the reader has barely gained much new information. The problem has been established, but that’s pretty much it: Seohyun likes Donghae, but he’s been ignoring her for unknown reasons. She has a rival in Sunny, and she’s also attracted to Kyuhyun. I feel like if you can summarize seven chapters in two sentences like that, your chapters aren’t content-heavy enough.

Characterization: 10/20 points

Most of the girls’ personalities kind of blended together for me. There wasn’t that much to set them apart, in my opinion. However, since your story has only begun, so it’s understandable that the side characters are less developed.

One of the things I noticed is that you characterized both Seohyun and Donghae as being “sarcastic,” but I didn’t see much evidence of them showing this trait. Seohyun comes off as rather indecisive, avoidant, and shy. Donghae sounds manipulative and guilty.

However, I think you did a pretty good job of portraying Sunny’s character, even if it’s a bit of a stereotypical “” role. Overall, I didn’t get the vibe that any of your characters were particularly 2-D and built solely off of stereotypes, whether specific to the idol’s real personality or not.

Plot: 39/65 points

Comprehensibility/Believability: 12/20 points

There were a few details about your story that made it less believable. One was the inclusion of Facebook. Koreans make use of social media, but most do not use Facebook. Another was the thing about lockers. Most schools in Korea do not have lockers the way they do in places such as America. Students usually don’t switch classes; instead, the students stay in one classroom while the teachers switch classrooms.

There seems to be a lot of unknown factors in this story, but it’s hard to say whether it’s because of your writing or because you want to reveal what everyone is really thinking later on. First of all, I’m not exactly sure why Seohyun is attracted to either Kyuhyun or Donghae. She doesn’t necessarily have to come out and say “I like this, this, and that about him,” but I think you could make it clearer through your descriptions of their interactions or Seohyun’s thoughts about them.

Originality/creativity: 15/30 points

Although it’s not one of those typical AFF storylines where there’s a kingka or a gangster or a cold, emotionless person, I don’t see that much in your plot that is extremely original, either. It’s still a love story with a love triangle, and the way it’s playing out isn’t particularly creative.

Unity of the work: 12/15 points

I felt like the flashback when Seohyun chatted with Kyuhyun could have been omitted and replaced with a quick summary of their discussion. Other than that, with what you’ve written so far, the scenes all seem to fit together.

Emotional Reactions: 0 points added or taken away

To be honest, I didn’t have any considerable reactions to what I read. Perhaps it was because I was approaching this from a critical standpoint, but overall, the storyline wasn’t gripping. However, I didn’t react inappropriately to anything, so I won’t take any points away.

Overall Impression: 6/10 points

I personally don’t really like stories that are purely love stories, but I think this story has potential. However, you need to be more conscientious of things like grammar and spelling since those errors will distract readers from the story itself. You also need to flesh the story out a little more and breathe a little more life into it.

Total: (127 main+1 bonus)/195 points=66%

I hope this review was helpful, and good luck with your writing!