･゜ﾟ*･*:.｡..｡.:*･'(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

AFF username: leHyunJae

Story Title: Time For Change

Story URL:  Time For Change

Genre: Romance, Drama

Current Length (No. of Chapters): 14

Main Characters: OC's - HyunJae & HaNeul and Boyfriend - KwangMin, YoungMin and MinWoo

Rated?(yes/no): NO

Here you go!

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♪Opening

●Title- 2.5/5

I don’t really see the title as one to stand out easily among the others. It’s nothing that special, and doesn’t really represent any sort of information of the story (genre, format, characters, etc… with genre being the main one) although it does reveal a tiny glimpse of the plot but overall it just doesn’t seem all that impressive to me. But you did remember to put up the capital letters for the title, and it’d be fine if the first letter of the word ‘for’ isn’t capitalized since it’s not as important as the other objects in that same line... do you get what I mean ?XD

But yeah I won’t say it’s saying that’d catch my eye when I’m scanning down the fanfic list – it’d appeal to mostly Boyfriend’s fans, but it’s still a very limited audience.

●Poster/Background: 2.5/5

I'm going to go ahead and pretend I have no idea what type of genre the story is of yet ( since I always review the Opening section before I start to read the story so I can give opinions based on first impressions) – I had a hard time figuring out the mood by just looking at the poster. Romance? Angst? Drama? Possibly comedy (based on the font the title was used in) Those are the few genres I’ve attempted to pick out from the poster. The storyline appears to lean onto the side of darkness, whereas the poster includes warm colours like faded pink and purple… Some of your characters in the poster seem to be shadowed with reality while some just smiles like there’s no tomorrow… So that’s basically why I had difficulties grading this category.

There’s no background – in which I strongly recommend you to find one. It doesn’t have to be specially made, something soft textured with colours that match the ones in your poster would do- brighter if the mood of this fic is more Rom-Com; darker if it leans towards the gloominess. 

●Description+Foreword- 9.5/10

I love it, as cheesy as that sound, that was indeed one touching section I’d just go through. Beautifully written, without overloading readers with too much information. I love the way you describe life matters- how they especially stand out during our teenage years. You’ve included several repetition in order to further emphasise the points you were trying to convey through the description section – and in my opinion, the character and plot descriptions should be included in the ‘Description’ section instead of the foreword (it’s why it’s named description section after all…O_O) But it doesn’t matter that much. There’s a line I love especially:

"There are so many things people don’t understand about teenagers and there are so many things that they have yet to see. Sure, someone may be smiling on the outside but a smile can hide so much."

I love the italics inserted at the last sentence – it hits me (As a reader) so much on the emotions it acted as a drive for me to click on the ‘next’ button.

You’ve included your character descriptions along with pictures which I appreciate, but with your character descriptions there’s one thing I really admire- the way you put forward their traits. You wrote them in the form of the characters’ thoughts as if they were talking to the readers and I find it really nice and easier to engage with the story. I’d prefer more personality traits to be included as well as giving peeks of the storyline, but either way it’s really well done. :D

LOL there are so many cameos!!! How are you going to include them all??? (or even most of them!! ) I’m hoping you don’t go over-board with it ne!

>>Total: 14.5/20<<

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♪Contents

●Creativity/Originality: 4.5/10

To be honest, I really thought the storyline would be somehow be more special, and specific like how your D+F put your idea forward, but I was hugely disappointed. It has a really typical start- High school, meet the two most ‘sought-after’ boys, be friends with them, usual bullying and girl gangs… I was expecting way more from this story considering the D+F really got me hooked at the beginning.

So far I couldn’t manage to spot any twists or changes that actually knocked the wind out of me. Most of the scenarios described were quite predictable and totally over-used in other fanfics and it was a little boring to read them all over again here. For example:  “Suddenly, KwangMin pushed MinWoo in the direction of where HaNeul was standing. Because of reflex, Minwoo wrapped his arms around HaNeul and they both tumbled onto the snow. Everyone gasped as Minwoo’s lips crashed onto HaNeul’s lips.” (chp8)–  I just don’t get it! Why does every ROM/ROM-COM story have scenes like this? It’d maybe be okay if there was at least a twist (eg. Kiss on the hair, forehead etc rather than the lips) I would have been satisfied. But that scene was just put in there, with a messy description – and I just couldn’t sense the appeal in it.

Your story has great potential to be original, so please don’t go down the path every other story are following!

●Plot- 13.5/20

The plot overall is developed in a… general way should I say it. There are certain obvious development here and there which helps to smoothen readers’ impatience as they are trying to figure what’s really going on. I see a lot of hindering of plot all over the place, like how you keep repeating lines similar to “If only he knew the truth…if only…”(chp4)—it’s decent to stretch out the plot, but don’t overdo it. That’ll just stiffen readers’ interest instead.

I wouldn’t say there are any particular major scenes that stood out to me yet – that being said means a lot. The story is into its chapter 15 and yet there wasn’t really any events that are linked to the original purpose of the story – Changes. I get that you might be revealing ‘changes’ later but putting a little out there in-between the fliiers and es really wouldn’t hurt~:))

Another thing I would advise you to insert in this fic would be cliff-hangers. You’re great at capturing emotions (which I’ll expand more in below sections) so you should use this talent especially at the end of chapters. Something like in ‘Chapter 5’ is perfect, and sometimes you can just leave readers hanging in the midst of an adrenaline or unexpected event~ It’ll boost the level of curiosity within readers~ ^^

●Chapter Titles: -/5

Not applied here~:)

●Flow: 6.8/10:

You have a good sense of laying out the events in a correct timeline for each, which leads to constant development in the story, and I've  got to give you credits for.

But most of the events or outturns I find in the story are quite… unrealistic. I put this under the section of flow genuinely because the idealistic tempo of the story is bothering me. I understand that it’s a story of fiction, and every author have the right to spend their imaginations anyway they prefer. But either way, I’ll show you some examples of the point I’m trying to convey through here:

“He explained and I couldn’t help but smile. With that, I wrapped my arms around his waist and we continued down the hallway. I wasn’t going to let these foolish rumours affect me.” (chp2) – As far as I know, it was basically the 2^nd day HyunJae had met her new friends and they are already getting touchy?

&

“MORNING HANEUL~” I chirped happily, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. “How have you been?” I turned to face her smiling, bright face”(chp8) – really? They just met yesterday…

So it’s really the interactions between the characters are not practical here. Reasonably if you ask me, no one would go hug a person they’ve known for a DAY just because they’ve just became friends. But once again, it’s your story, I don’t have the authority to change anything.

Another thing I took note of from reading the story would be the tempo the plot is flowing in; quite unusually slow for a fanfic I must say. For example: It’s already chapter 7 and yet it was only the start of Day 4? So much has happened just in those 4 days~ with all the drastic change in characters etc I felt like I was going through months instead of days. With your speedy character development I think you should maybe quicken the pace of your story a little in order to match with all the advancement taking place.

>>Total: 24.8/40<<

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♪Expression

●Characterization- 10.8/15:

I could experience a lot of interactions between each individual character, and yet I have quite a time trying to differentiate them. Every character here (mostly) links to another character in the story which I consider a pretty bad move. Thank god you didn’t include all those characters you mentioned in D+F, or else it really would’ve been a disaster.

1)HyunJae: tomboyish, strong, cheery… on the outside; while on the inside she has this vulnerability attached to her which she just couldn’t escape from. Again, although her character her is so strong and vivid, I strongly disagree your linkage of HyunJae to AeCha, making her stand out less than she deserves to be. Maybe you were actually emphasise their resemblance with each other in order to strengthen the meaning of the plot, but from my opinion I think it could be done in other ways.

2) JoTwins: bubbly, adorable, helpful and attractive. Those traits simply apply for both of them – which was totally a miss. They are twins and that’s an undeniable fact, but why try to make them the same? I love reading the JoTwins fics nowadays because I really admire the way authors use their identities as twins: Although they look the same, they don’t necessary have to be the same, in fact, it would have been way better if they are the total opposites of each other. But in this fic I don’t see that at all. Kwangmin’s personality was so similar to Youngmin I don’t even see the point of them being included in the fic as twins.

Maybe Youngmin’s character is slightly put to accent here because of a potential couple line between him and HyunJae, but apart from that there really was no difference between the two twin brothers. I personally thank Boyfriend for introducing our first pair (maybe not first *cough…t-ara…cough* but certainly the most popular) of twins into Kpop industry, because they can be just so fun and amusing to write about. Use that to your advantage and work your best to put distinctiveness into them.

And for the minors: 3) Haneul – She’s nerdy… and sweet? I don’t know, but that’s what you told me…directly. “We continued walking and the more I talked to HaNeul the more I started to realize how sweet she was. She was so sweet it was as if her parents had dumped her in a barrel of sugar when she was growing up.”- I don’t want to know that Haneul is sweet just because you told me, what’s so sweet about her exactly? What did she do? Actions really do speak louder than thoughts sometimes.

4)Minwoo – nice… and maybe a little of a trickster from time to time. I can’t determine yet since he hasn’t appeared that much; 5) Suzy Gang & Hayoung & YuKyung: just typical high school es I come across nearly every day…

Certain characters need some independence while others require a little of originality. Continue to work along those lines and you’ll have your characters perfected in no time~ ^_^

●Writing Style- 7/10

Your writing is not bad, in fact it’s good enough to keep me going. But likewise, it’s the mechanics that caused a major problem for me. I want to mention it here in writing style because it is included as an element of how a person writes as well. But anyhow, these are some of your writing styles I pick out:

1) Metaphoric!- “Sometimes… the people who deserve the sunshine are only given the rain.”(chp1)- an excellent metaphor there with the words ‘sunshine’ and ‘rain’ in replacement of happiness and grief. I would like to see more examples like that to be included in the future! ^^

2) Capability to grasp emotions: As I have mentioned before, I think the way you attempt to hold onto readers’ emotions is one of your strongest point when it comes to this story. You relate the audience into your story using generalization even though they are not physically presented in there:

“Humans.

We’re all stupid little things, aren’t we?

We come to this earth and what do we do?

We just pile problems one on top of the other, not thinking about the long term effects.

Pollution, global warming, bullying, wars, cruelty, poverty, suicide, depression, racism; they’re all just a part of this huge mess that we have caused as humans; a huge mess that we brought upon ourselves.

Humans are so stupid.

Why couldn’t we just love each other? Why couldn’t we just accept our differences and move on with our lives? Why couldn’t we just stop looking through the eyes of hate and judgment and start looking through the eyes of love and compassion? Why couldn’t we do that?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because we’re stupid.

We’re all, freaking, stupid.

“(chp8)

That’s just one of the many examples I picked out from the story since there are just too many good ones out there! ^_^ continue to work on that in order to really capture those sentiments of the readers. :D

3) Over-dosage of Punctuation? For example:  “She was flailing her arms everywhere, but from afar you could hear them all laughing. Gently, the wind blew against me, sending my black hair across my face.” (chp4)- Commas and full stops are there because they end a certain point, or a sentence. There are lots of lines throughout the story included lots of punctuation that are not even needed. Commas in the middle of a sentence are inserted because they speed up the tempo of readers’ pace while going through the words. It’s nice to have a couple included from time to time, but exploiting it would just have the reversed effect.

4) Repetition of words: I’ve noticed you have a certain habit when it comes to constructing sentences: You love to use words like ponder, headed, smiled etc. They appeared nearly in every chapter and I was a little sick of seeing them over and over again. Don’t be afraid to explore further in vocabulary and use some other unusual words. Our teacher ‘Mr. Dictionary’ really helps a bunch in this section.

5)Absence of Appropriate Description: You described the settings, the scenarios, the surroundings alright. But in order to make those words transform into visuals inside the audiences’ minds you need to be able to describe better. For eg) “Hello, my name is YoungMin, and this is my brother KwangMin. We were wondering if HyunJae was home.” I bowed politely to the girl who was standing across from us. She had long black hair with bangs and stood just a little bit shorter than us.(chp6)- Okay… so the JoTwins are asking if HyunJae was home… but where were they when they asked that question? Where was the girl who was standing across from them? Later on I discovered that they were indeed at the doorstep of HyunJae’s house. Without proper descriptions, one would already be lost if they were only to read that line, am I right?

●Mechanics: 3/10

I, honestly, do NOT have the intention to bash anyone… but I was reading the other review you’ve requested from another reviewer and I saw you got 9/10 for this section. Personally I had no idea what that reviewer was thinking when she graded that section in her review, but the amount of mistakes I picked out was quite tiresome…

*Mistakes:

>“That sometimes, those negative things help us grow.”(chp1)- the ‘that sometimes’ was unnecessary;

>"Yeah, when I grow up I want to be a surgeon so I'm trying to take courses that help benefit me in the future."(chp1)- should have ‘will’ in-between;

>"That's a really hard and long career choice that you chose,"(chp1)- the ‘that’ is not needed, and it should end in a full stop instead of a comma;

>“I pulled my schedule away from YoungMin and scanned it over to see that Mrs.Kwon was my first period, math class.”(chp1)- should have ‘in’ in-between;

>”but in particular, we have a brand new student to come to Seoul High.”(chp2)- sounds weird to me… try: “we have a brand new student to welcome to Seoul High.”;

>“Oh, no it doesn’t. I was just wondering, is all.”(chp2)- doesn’t sound conversational with the ‘is’~ ‘that’s’ sound better with the sentence;

>“Oh but first, I have to call my older brother to tell him that I won’t be coming home today.” I explained to him and he nodded his head.”(chp3)- should be ‘elder’;

>“OOOOH!” She nodded her head, “Anyways, I was wondering if you wanted to eat lunch with me tomorrow?” HaYoung tilted her head and blinked her eyes at me innocently.

”Oh, sorry HaYoung. But since HyunJae is new here I decided that I was going to eat lunch with her until she gets a good group of friends.” I explained to HaYoung and she frowned.” – should be ‘if you would like’ & ‘I’m going to’;

>”You see the direction which this is heading to, right?”(chp3) –‘which’ is not needed;

“They were like older brothers”(chp3)- ‘my’ is missing;

“I added in, curious about if my thoughts of her friend being dead were true or not.”(chp5)- Sounds off to me… try: “I added, wondering if my assumption about her friend was true.’- having thoughts of her friend passing away was already mentioned, there’s no need to mention again;

>”“Hurry up, I bet you that she’s waiting for you.”(chp5)- no need for ‘you’ and ‘that’;

>“Was she warning?”(chp7)- should have ‘me’ at the end of sentence;

>“And for the second time I’ve met her, I could finally see the grief and sorrow in her eyes.”(ch10)- wrong expression, should be something like:”And for the second time, I witnessed the grief and sorrow that were displaying in her eyes.”

>“HaNeul sang cheerfully and HyunJae couldn’t help but to forget about her negative thoughts just a few minutes ago.”(chp10)- should have ‘which she just had’ in-between;

>“But the thing was, was that HyunJae wasn’t the only one who had a secret to hide.”(chp10)- the 2^nd ‘was’ & ‘that’ are not needed;

>“Its 25 dollars for all you can eat Sushi and Korean BBQ.” She continued to explain and my eyes widened.”(chp12)- DOLLARS? DOLLARS? O_O But they are in Korea…

*Spelling mistakes:

>”We could hear him mumble under his breathe. “(chp2)- should be ‘breath’;

>”Well let’s just say that KwangMin spilt his water all over his… crotch area.” & “HyunJae made me laugh while I was drinking water so I accidentally spilt it on myself!”-(chp3)- should be ‘spilled’;

>“It’s rare to find guys these days who would give their mother’s kisses on the cheek,”(chp4)- should be ‘mothers’;

>“KwangMin?” She asked, and I shuck my head.”(chp5)- should be ‘shook’;

>”I just wanted to come here and keep it a secret. I wanted to keep my depressiona secret.”(chp9)- should be ‘depression’;

*Tenses: 

>”“Well, if you wanted him to be your boyfriend then this is not the direction you should be headed in.”(chp3)- should be ‘want’ & ‘heading’;

>“If there was only some way that I could go back in time… and told you how much you really meant to me.”(chp5)- should be ‘tell’;

>”All of a sudden, we heard a girl scream and we all turned to see one of the boys in our school sprint into a girl, knocking her down”(chp7)- should be ‘sprinted’;

>““I wanted to apologize for yesterday.”(chp7)- should be ‘want’;

*Punctuation:

>"If I couldn't tell that you guys were siblings then that would be pretty idiotic. of me."(chp1)- should be in periods (like : …), rather than just a dot, or else the ‘O’ should be in capital;

>“Quickly I fixed my clothes and hair and took another, reassuring breath.”(chp1)- the comma is not needed;

>“Guys shut up.”(chp3)- should have a comma in between;

>“I remember; everything.”(chp5)- the semicolon is unnecessary;

So just a few points I want to make here:

*Do not end paragraphs with commas.

*Beside and besides have totally different meaning. “Putting on a smile, I pushed the doors open and found my seat besides KwangMin and YoungMin.” (chp7)- Beside means next to; while ‘besides’ would be included in a sentence like: “I don’t feel like going to school this morning. Besides, it’s a Friday anyway~” Do you get what I mean?

*Wrong expression: I’ve noticed too you often uses words in a wrong way which conveys a totally different message from your initial one: “But suddenly I realized that I didn't want anyone knowing about my depression and anger began to boil from within me.”- HyunJae didn’t want anyone to know about her depression ALL ALONG. So why would she SUDDENLY realised she didn’t want anyone knowing about her depression? I think what you’re trying to say here is that she got into a stunned trance after knowing her secret was exposed, but suddenly realised that instead of standing there, she should do something about it…?

But yeah, 14 chapters should have less mistakes than the ones I picked out above~ I know that you do indeed proofread, but please correct the mistakes~ So readers can actually enjoy the story without having to grimace over a misspelled word every minute or so.

>>Total: 20.8/35<<

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●Bonus- 2/5

As I said before I actually expected more from this story~ but I like where it’s going right now so don’t give up!! 

>>>TOTAL: 65%<<<

(out of 95 marks)

C

Like I said I’m kinda liking the direction where this fic is going towards so it might get better with more chapters! Continue the story and don’t let your readers down!! Fighting! ^^ 

And wow...I really wrote a lot for this review...