Warning to readers: This review contains lots of spoilers.

Story: "Sinning For You"

Author: -Eevee-

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Title: 10/25 points

Initial impression: To be honest, when I first saw the title, coupled with the Mature rating, I thought the story was going to be a fic. It sounds like it could be the title of a trashy romance novel (no offense intended).

Note: When it comes to titles, prepositions such as “for” should not be capitalized unless they are the first word in the title or subtitle.

After reading the story, I don’t feel like the title accurately represents your fic. When I see the word “sinning,” I think of succumbing to temptation. I think of the Seven Sins: wrath, pride, lust, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and envy. Sin signifies moral decadence, and Infinite’s decision was anything but morally decadent. They made a deal with the Devil, but they did it as a last resort in order to save someone they loved. That’s not sin; in fact, that’s the ultimate act of selflessness: self-sacrifice.

Description: 8/10 points

Initial impression: It definitely hooked me. However, I would recommend making some changes to it. One is simply getting rid of the bits of dialogue at the beginning. Because of the way AFF works, the only thing people will see when browsing is “She’s back…” and that tells you absolutely nothing about the plot of your fic. If you start out with just that one paragraph, you will better be able to catch people’s attention.

The other thing is the wording and grammar.

What you wrote: Infinite was one of the best.

Comments: There’s nothing grammatically wrong with this sentence, but it’s confusing because it causes readers to ask, “One of the best what?” and I don’t think that your intention here was to create a question but rather to make a statement.

What you wrote: Each of them, gifted with unique powers, was part of infinite as an angel.

Comments: In this case, there’s a pronoun without an antecedent. “Them” is supposed to refer to the Infinite members, but they weren’t mentioned before this point except as a group, a single unit, so it creates confusion. Also, mentioning that they are “gifted with unique powers” seems redundant to me since it’s already implied when you say they are angels. The word “infinite” should be capitalized since it’s a proper noun. Taken as a whole, the sentence sounds a bit awkward.

What you wrote: They had a smooth-sailing life, no disturbance, no failures when it comes to protecting the civilians from the devil when needed.

Comments: Normally, you would use “lives” because the subject (“They”) is plural, but since the members operate as a group, I guess it’s okay to leave it singular and say “life.” “Disturbance” should be pluralized since it's quantifiable. Since you are writing this in past tense, “comes” should be in the past tense. You should probably capitalize “devil” since it’s intended to refer to the singular entity rather than the general kind of being/creature. The adverbial phrase “when needed” is better off left out. The comma after “life” should be replaced with either a colon or an em dash (the longer kind of dash that marks an interruption in a thought/sentence).

What you wrote: That was until she stepped into their life, again.

Comments: The comma after “life” should not be there.

What you wrote: As they fell head over heels for her, they realised, that was just the start of their pathway to hell.

Comments: The comma after “realized” should not be there. Also, you have another case of a pronoun with a missing antecedent. What does “that” refer to? For the same reasons that I mentioned for “devil,” “hell” should probably be capitalized.

My suggested revision (you don’t have to follow this exactly): Infinite was a group of angels with a smooth-sailing life—no disturbances, no failures when it came to protecting the civilians from the Devil. That was until she stepped into their life again. As they fell head over heels for her, they realized they had started on their pathway to Hell.

After reading the story, I don’t feel like this description is very representative of the story. Between the title and the description, it sounds like the story is supposed to detail how Infinite met Kaeri and how she led them into temptation, but what actually happens is something else entirely. That sets the reader up for either confusion, disappointment, or both.

Foreword (if applicable): +2 points

Besides the links to the reviews, everything in that box is unnecessary. The readers already know the title, author, characters, and genre of the story since they’ve been presented already. There is no point in repeating that information. Also, I’d suggest relocating the reviews so that they’re after the excerpt, which is more relevant to the readers.

The excerpt in the foreword definitely catches the readers’ interest, and although it doesn’t occur until later in the story, it actually doesn’t give away important information. That was nicely done.

Side note: Although I understand that you were trying to explain your writing process in your author’s note, I don’t think it’s a good idea to basically say you underachieved on it. Ideally, your foreword is supposed to give readers the impression that you put a lot of thought and effort into your story.

Presentation: 10/10 points

The formatting of everything looks fine. There’s nothing distracting or obnoxious.

However, I do want to comment on your poster. It’s an edit from Tumblr, and I happen to know the user who made it. “Poster credits to Tumblr” does not properly give the creator credit for the edit because it doesn’t identify the user by name or url. There are millions of Tumblr users, and any person could have made it. For courtesy’s sake, you should have asked the creator for permission to use it as your story poster and properly credited her. Next time you need a poster, you should either make one yourself or request one from a shop. Truthfully speaking, your story can go without a poster. It does not add anything to your writing or the readers’ enjoyment of it; it’s simply a bonus visual.

Spelling/Grammar/Usage/Mechanics: 15/20 points

I didn’t notice any spelling errors except for two: “pinkie promised" instead of “pinky promised” and “awhile” instead of “a while.”

The standard rule for writing numbers is that you write out the word form for any number under 100.

Your grammar is very good for a non-native speaker. The only major problems were that you switched between tenses a few times, and you weren’t following comma rules in various places.

Honestly, in this case, the spelling and grammar of your story are the least important issue, so I won’t go into detail correcting them. Instead, I will spend a lot more time addressing the literary elements of your story.

Writing Style: 22/25 points

Grammar issues aside, your writing style is impressive for a non-native speaker. You used a fair amount of detail, and where appropriate, you used imagery and figurative language that presented more vivid impressions of the action and situation and gave the story a dark edge appropriate for its genre. In particular, I think you did a good job of using parallelism for dramatic and poetic effect. However, there were a few places where it felt like you were describing things that weren’t necessary or didn’t really make sense for the timing and pacing of the scene.

Flow/Pacing: 12/20 points

The flow was fine. Although your story alternated between past and present a lot, the alternation was done tastefully and set up in a way to increase the impact of the moment when the readers understand what exactly happened to drive the rift between Kaeri and Infinite. The pacing, on the other hand, was not as well-done. I feel like the entire story was too rushed. I think there was too much happening in a short amount of text, so it seemed more like a psychological thriller than an angst story.

Characterization: 5/20 points

• of idols

Since your fic was short and it focused mostly on the action and Kaeri’s emotions, I didn’t really get a very deep impression of the Infinite members’ personalities. For the most part, their characters were defined by their protectiveness of and love for Kaeri, so they all kind of blended together, becoming more like one person than seven individuals. The only member I had a more highly individualized impression of was Sungjong, and he seemed too much like a stereotypical excessively childish maknae type.

• of the original character(s)

I’m not sure why you listed the character as “you” when this isn’t a you/second-person fic. I think you should have simply used the OC’s name in the character list and left it up to the readers to decide whether they wanted to insert themselves as this character. Some will do it automatically, but others, like me, would prefer just to leave the character as a character. I guess one way to put it is that making the character “you” is like giving the readers a box. Some will fill and adapt to the shape of the box like a liquid, but for others, it’s like trying to squeeze a solid object with a definite shape into a container that doesn’t fit its dimensions.

The character doesn’t really seem well-developed because she’s mostly defined by Infinite’s attachment to her and her own fear, paranoia, and angst. Emotions are important to communicate, but in this case they felt too generalized, so I didn't have much of an impression of Kaeri as an individual. We don’t really get to see what she’s like before the traumatizing events that happened to her, so it seems more like she’s a shell created to hold and express those emotions rather than a person who happens to have those emotions.

Plot: 25/55 points

• Comprehensibility/Believability: 5/20 points

The larger picture of the story made sense. Infinite loved Kaeri, but she was taken away from them and had her mind screwed with, so in the end, even though Infinite made a sacrifice to bring her to life again, they couldn’t return to the happy days of the past.

However, on a smaller scale, a lot of the events don’t really make sense to me, and the story leaves me with more questions than answers. In short, you have a lot of plot holes.

Here are the particular things that weren’t sufficiently explained (if they were explained at all) or were confusing:

-Infinite as angels; Infinite with powers: They were idols but also angels? You mentioned that they were angels in the description, so at first I thought they would be run-of-the-mill divine beings serving the will of heaven, but then when I read the first part of your story, they were pretty much mundane idols except for Myungsoo’s extrasensory perception, so I was very confused. I can understand leading a double life, but aside from what they did to protect and save Kaeri, it didn’t seem like they were doing much saving the people/world the way you made it out to be in your description.

Also, despite your mention of powers, we don’t see these powers play a notable role in the story. My personal image of angels fighting involves manipulation of energy and elements rather than the more corporeal methods of fighting. Perhaps they might use magical weaponry. Instead of any of this, for the most part they were using common violence. They seemed to be pretty excessive with their violence, too: beheading people, breaking people’s jaws/skulls, etc. These don’t seem like the actions of divine beings. Warriors, perhaps, but angels, not really.

Moreover, I don’t see why they had to use beat Jin to a pulp in the first place. By that time, it’s true that they had become under the Devil’s thumb and were no longer angels, but their personalities didn’t seemed to have changed, so it seems awfully unprincipled of them to do something like that. Furthermore, shouldn’t they have been able to defeat him using their powers alone? Such as knock him unconscious without laying a finger on him or something? After all, he’s just a normal human being rather than a person with superpowers.

-Infinite’s relationship with Kaeri: So they’re idols and angels…. How does Kaeri come into the picture? Why is she special? How did she become close to them? This is never fully explained. The story basically operates with a tautological reasoning that she’s special to them just because she is. Of all the billions of people on Earth, what sets her apart enough that they’d fall for her?

-Their enemies: I didn’t really understand why they targeted Kaeri. Was it just for fun? Was it to get back at Infinite for something? Who are these people, anyway? You called them “illusionists,” but they weren’t explained beyond their mind-controlling powers. They essentially had no identity and seemed to exist solely for the purpose of having an antagonist. Also, if they had these psychic powers, why didn’t they bother to use them at an earlier point than they did?

-Jin: I’m guessing he was supposed to be a human trafficker, or at least someone who worked on the other side of the law, so I find it interesting that Kaeri never questioned why he was always out at night. You’d think that given his line of work, it would show on him. People usually don’t do those kinds of things without getting some sort of scars, not unless they’re one of the higher-ups who don’t get their hands dirty with the lowly work.

I can understand pretending to be nice to Kaeri in order to gain her trust, but it seems like he had her in his house for too long for it to be realistic. It costs money to feed a person, and people in his line of work should be all about maximizing profits and minimizing liabilities. He didn’t seem at all worried about her running away. If he really worked in human trafficking, I doubt he would take that chance. Plus, he’d have connections and customers, and he’d probably get her off of his hands pretty quickly.

-Summoning the Devil: Since they were summoning the Devil, it doesn’t make sense to me that they would go to a place that’s sacred to do it. That would be a place where the Devil cannot set foot. Also, prayer would not summon the Devil. Prayer is supposed to uplifting, morally sound, and directed to God/gods or some higher beings. Thus, they should have been chanting something else. Also, while you definitely did a good job dramatizing the part where they were entering hell, it created an anticlimax. One of the key parts of the story was supposed to be the deal with the devil, and yet that part got only one line. The conditions of their bargain, the actual encounter with the devil, the specific consequences of this agreement…none of these were addressed, and I think they really should have been to maximize the dramatic impact of their decision. After they made this deal, they seemed relatively unchanged.

• Originality/Creativity: 15/20 points

The specific elements of your story aren’t original: Infinite as angels, antagonists who have mind-controlling powers, kidnapping and subsequent rescue, and a deal with the devil. These are all things that have been written before to varying extents. However, I think the way you combined them was fairly creative.

• Unity: 5/15 points

It seemed to me that you were trying too hard to merge together two different genres and storylines. One was the angst and the other was the supernatural. The two are not impossible to blend, but I don't think it worked in this case. Depending on how you look at it, you could say that your story was angst that happened to be packaged with supernatural bits, or a supernatural story that contained hints of angst.

I think if you wanted the angst to be the focus, you shouldn’t have made your story a supernatural fic because the supernatural elements distracted from the emotions by creating suspense. The readers will want to move on to see the action play out rather than dwell on the inner turmoil Kaeri and Infinite are going through.

If you wanted to focus on the supernatural part, you should have made this story much longer because the supernatural parts didn’t feature prominently enough to be satisfying for fantasy fanatics (like me).

Emotional Reactions: 0 points added or taken away

I didn’t react inappropriately to anything, but because the characters are a bit shallow, it was very hard for me to become emotionally involved with them enough that the events and angst feel compelling. In addition, the plot holes detracted from the impact of the story.

Overall Impression: 2/10 points

While it may seem like I’ve been tearing your story apart, I will say outright your story has a lot of potential. It has a good writing style and good idea going for it, but it flopped in the execution. The problem is basically what you said in your own author’s note: you were trying to squeeze too much into a oneshot. There was not enough character or plot development to make this a truly quality and satisfying story, and whether intentionally or not, you definitely misrepresented the content of your story in your title, description, and foreword. I recommend putting more time into planning and figuring what exactly you want to do with this fic and then rewriting it as a full out story rather than a oneshot.

Total: (109 main + 2 bonus)/195=57%

I hope you found this review helpful (it was 6 pages in MS Word, by the way), and good luck with your writing!