She was Never Yours

A story by iweenafails, reviewed by pastels.

Title:3/5

Your title wasn't the most enticing, but it shows potential on luring readers in to read your story. It gives an insight that the story will be full of angst and, of course, romance. Good news; your title is, indeed, original because no other story on AFF has the same title. You kind of kept the title secret with the pronouns, the reader's intrigued to find out who the 'she' is and who the 'yours' is referring to. 

Description:6/10

Short and sweet, which is what descriptions are supposed to be. The few problems I had with it were the squiggly signs as a divider, and the confusion I had in the quote. In your quote, last line, last two words: "Were we?" I didn't really understand how those two words tied to the rest of the flow. On the other hand, yoru quote in the description is extremely clichéd. I cannot emphasize on how often I have seen descriptions that are utterly alike to yours. Word to the wise; you want to change it so that the story is portrayed as original.

Plot: 13/20

Overall, it was somewhat interesting to read. The coma part was cliché, and the part where the girl still loves him even though he's been in a coma for too long is extremely unrealistic. In the real world, the girl wouldn't have enough time to manage work and seeing her "boyfriend," who's been in a coma for who knows how long. I do realize that these fanfics are not modeled after real life, but it should be realistic enough to be considered realistic fiction. Mina's job is a waitress at some unknown restaurant, and that's expected to pay for Yixing's expensive hospital bills and her living bills. Talk about unrealistic; if a waitress could earn enough to pay for two people's living expenses, the world would be rid of its poverty and turmoil.
 

Flow:7/10

Your flow was surprisingly slow. I really didn't get the feel of the romance part of the story until half-way through the story. I know that taking things slow is supposed to be good for you and all that, but if you drag it along, the readers will get bored and they might abandon your story halfway.

Characterization: 21/25

You did an okay job with describing the characters, though some of them came off as stereotypical. Mina is supposed to be the typical shy, girl-next-door type of girl, and the readers can feel that vibe right when they dive into the story. That part is good, depending on when you want your readers to fully understand the characters. Jongdae is also pretty well described, though there were some parts when I was left hanging. The other characters, not so much. I didn't really get the point of how Jongin, Sehun, and Kyungsoo fit into the story; their roles weren't really underlined and set in bold, so it took a bit of time to catch up to the concept.

English: 16/20

No really prominent grammar mistakes, which is a good start. The only problem is, your sentences are basically the same without any change. "i did ___, i saw ___ , i walked to ___ , " etc. etc. An example of such a problem exists in chapter one, 

"I entered the apartment complex reading my notes. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking as I made my way towards the elevators. I pressed on the button to go up and waited. I heard faint footsteps behind me and paid to real attention. I heard the footsteps stop abruptly next to me as I continued to read my notes. The elevator bell rang, I looked up and entered the elevator. The person entered as well. I absentmindedly pressed on the button for level three and the doors closed as I brought my focus back onto the notes"

As you can see, the sentences all follow the same guideline: subject, verb, direct object. There isn't any descriptive words to paint an image in the reader's mind, which is a feature all good stories have. Also, within that paragraph is a grammar error:

"I heard faint footsteps behind me and paid to real attention." The second part of the sentence makes zero sense. You could change it to: "I heard faint footsteps behind me and paid close attention while pretending to be absorbed in my notes." The change makes the sentence flow better, and fixes the annoying grammar mistake.

Another point, you use a lot of stuttering within your dialogues. "M-Mina?" and "G-good morning, Jongdae-sshi" are only a couple of examples. I realize that you are trying to portray Mina as the stereotypical shy girl who can't speak for her life, but I believe that much stuttering would make even Jongdae go crazy. 

In your Author's Note in chapter 3, you said you would abruptly switch to third person POV because you felt "awkward" writing in first. Although the problem's understandable, you should've thought out your story and written it all in third-person, instead of switching, and making your readers confused. 

Overall:66/100

Author's Note:

Good luck on your other stories! Sorry that it took so long, AP exams are killer. I'm not really one to fix every single grammar mistake, if you really need that help, you should go hire a beta reader then. --