MUSICAL SWEETS REVIEW (https://sites.google.com/site/graceleeu/)

Title: My Lovely Secret Agent 

Author: god_loves_u 

Link: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/4578/my-lovely-secret-agent-aaronyan-fahrenheit-guigui-guilun-she 

Reviewer: Grace (Musical Sweets webmaster) 



Title: 3/5 
Comments: The title could be more creative. It’s a little plain; perhaps you can choose a more intriguing word than “lovely”? Nevertheless, it still depicts the content of your story well. 


Poster/Background: 3/5 
Comments: The poster looked a bit messy and lacked precision. The color and texture needs some improvement and better blending; the pictures just seemed like they were directly pasted onto the poster without any editing. Also, a background would be nice for adding aura. 


Forewords/Introduction: 9/10 
Comments: I really liked your description and foreword; it drew me into the story easily and built up my anticipation. I thought the scenes and cut-off points were nicely selected and the cliffhangers were really effective. 


Plot: 12/15 
Comments: The story is very interesting, but that’s partially because I enjoyed the content of the profuse dialogue. Reading Aaron and Gui Gui’s bickering was fun since they are just so cute together. However, that is not really the plot. The plot itself, or the general events, moved slowly. You spent lots of chapters depicting events of just one day, and though it was interesting, it doesn’t give me the sense of rising action and general plot progression. After all, the is not usually developed in just one day. So no matter how interesting the dialogue may be, spending a large portion of your writing on speech and actions taking place in a small time frame does not advance the overall plot. I would compress these paragraphs and possibly condense the dialogue to help progress the pace of the plot. 


Creativity/Originality: 9/10 
Comments: Your ideas are fairly creative; I enjoyed the settings you’ve created. It’s not the first I’ve seen that has the “fake marriage” theme, but you story’s specific plot and settings definitely are unique from others. Also, there political elements involved, which I find to be an interesting topic to explore and write about. There is definitely lots of room for your ideas to develop and grow. 


Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary: 11/15 
Comments: You had a bit of trouble with grammar, prepositions, subject-verb agreement, punctuation/sentence fragment, passive/active speech, and misuse of vocabulary. Of all listed, I thought prepositions and sentence fragments were the two big problems. You should definitely familiarize yourself in these aspects; you will be able to if you read the revision and my comments. All of the grammar mistakes I’ve listed are fairly easy to correct if you just review basic grammar rules and follow the guidelines. In the revision copy, you will see the specific corrections I’ve made and comments that follow up. 


Characterization: 7/10 
Comments: I like the interaction between characters, but I also felt like I didn’t get to really know your characters. A lot of your writing describes actions, settings, dialogue rather than depicting each character’s personality and feelings. I feel like there may be a excess of dialogue; don’t get me wrong, as I’ve said, I like the interaction and dialogue because they’re really cute scenes, but there’s not enough writing that portrays your characters’ dynamics. And sometimes, when there isn’t enough support to balance the dialogue, I feel like I am reading a script for a stage drama/play. You need to balance out the dialogue in order to allow the audience to understand and appreciate your characters. 


Writing Style: 8/10 
Comments: This is somewhat tied to the characterization section. Or rather, this part caused the preceding section to decrease in quality. Because your writing contains abundant dialogue, the non-dialogue writing is choppy or too short to serve any purpose other than describing the action in between the dialogue. This is also why I said in the previous section that I felt like I was reading a script for a play. Each of your paragraphs in between dialogues are only a sentence long and serve the sole purpose of bridging physical action. It is styled more like a play though you still used standard fiction writing format, which I thought was an inconsistency. 

But despite the discrepancy in style, I stilled enjoyed the dialogue itself very much. I just wished I could have read more about the characters’ internal thoughts and conflicts. I always like understanding fictional characters as if they are real people. Your style gives me a feeling that someone is retelling a story; but I would rather be immersed within the world you’ve created and feel like I am vividly living through it while I’m reading. 


Flow: 9/10 
Comments: The flow was good; the content progressed logically and dialogue was very clear. The only thing that occasionally hindered me was grammar (especially sentence fragment) since I’d have to think twice before continuing on to reading. I also have a greater tendency to fix fragments as I go, since they disrupt reading flow. So as aforementioned, you do have some fragment mistakes, which did slow me down a bit. Other errors I might just look past and keep reading if they don’t disturb flow; those I will just go back and add corrections after I’m done reading altogether. 


Overall Enjoyment: 4/5 
Comments: I enjoyed reading the abundant dialogue; the speech between characters is very adorable and charming. I had fund reading and was able to finish all the chapters available in one sitting. Despite the imperfections, I find it effortless to continue reading until the end, which is really good. I would have just enjoyed it even more if there was insight into each character and depiction of each character’s distinctiveness. 


Bonus Factors: 5/5 
Comments: Your story is inimitable in that it still remains exceptionally enjoyable even though there are considerable flaws. As you’ve seen in the review, there were some major sections that lacked perfection, which usually inhibits me from concentrating on a story or truly enjoying it. But your story was able to preserve my interest the whole time, even when I’m a person with short attention spans! This quality really astounds me because I rarely encounter situations like this. Therefore, I definitely want to reward you for achieving and I look forward to reading more from you in the future! 


TOTAL: 80/100 
Final Comments: Your writing definitely has appeal; you just need to be careful with technicalities and writing development. Most of the flaws I pointed out in the review are easy to fix, and together with the revision copy, I think you will be able to improve a lot in the future. You may need to spend a little more effort in creating a new style with more writing supporting the dialogue and appeal to pathos.