(July 2015)

Title: Our twisted destiny
Author: eudoramp

Reviewer: eleutheromaniac

Title: (1)/5
This title isn’t something that really stands out to me. The capitalization of your title is also odd as well, as it should read: “Our Twisted Destiny”. In my opinion, I didn’t really feel like it fit with your overall storyline either. Calling Seunghyun and Jiyong’s fate “twisted” seems kind of like a stretch, but that might just be because after reading your story, I didn’t feel the emotional pull that something that was “twisted” should have made me feel.

Description/Foreword: (4)/10

Your overall description/foreword has a certain pull to it that makes me want to read your story, but what you’ve written doesn’t really make any sense?  I can’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish with the commas after each line of your description because they don’t really add anything to the sentence. When I first read the sentence, I didn’t think that it made much sense. However, when I rewrote the sentence and added proper punctuation, it flowed a lot better and had much more credibility.

You wrote:

When I lost my way,

I found you,

And I fell for you,

But then,

Our destiny is quite twisted,

don't you think so?

Corrected version:

“When I lost my way, I found you and I fell for you—but then, our destiny is quite twisted, don’t you think so?”

I’m also not too sure what you gained by giving the pictures of Seunghyun and Jiyong so much space. It kind of bothers me, but points weren’t deducted for it.

Plot: (7.5)/30

You have a lot of pacing issues and they detracted a lot from your story. Everything happened so quickly that it felt unrealistic and unbelievable. Jiyong falling in love so quickly with Seunghyun didn’t make any sense to me at all because it went from him thinking that the other man was attractive to him almost crying when he had to leave him. They’re so touchy with each other right off the bat, and regardless of whether or not they’re attractive, they’re still strangers and this isn’t how strangers would act around one another. I’ll talk about this more in the next section of the review.

The twist of Seunghyun actually being dead made things a little more interesting, but it was the execution of the plot that ultimately made the story fall flat. I also felt that the explanation for how Seunghyun died was incredibly vague and I don’t really understand it; at the same time, the ending confused me—at first, I had thought that Seunghyun had been reincarnated, but that wouldn’t make sense unless they had a large .

Characterization: (1)/20

The big reason why your characters felt so bland was because of the rushed flow of your story; there was no time for them to develop into three-dimensional people and at best, I would consider them to be the shadows of stock characters.

There are a lot of emotions within your story, but none of them feel real—it’s like they’re only “feeling” the emotions you make them feel because you’re writing them to have it. For example, when the group first starts to play hide and seek, Jiyong goes from being excited, to being scared, to sobbing in a single paragraph.

Let me put it this way: when you look up at the night sky with no knowledge about the constellations, all you see are individual stars in a haphazard pattern—yeah, they’re beautiful, but until someone teaches you about Orion or Ursa Major, you’re unable to see the picture. All you can do is take someone’s word that the pictures exist. When you’re writing a story, the stars are your plot points and your characters and their emotions, and you’re the only one that knows how to connect the dots in order to create the story. Your readers can’t see the connections until you point them out slowly and with care. What you did here was take us out on a starry night, gesture vaguely to the plethora of stars in the sky, and say, “Look, tragic, isn’t it?”

But the gesture is so quick and so undescriptive that we can’t see the constellation and we can’t feel the way you want us to feel, so it ends up not being very tragic at all.

With the way your story is written, it seems as though it was meant to be character-driven, but your characters lack any real substance to make the readers connect to them. Slow down and use more imagery to show us the beauty of this journey instead of just telling us about it.

Grammar: (3)/15

Your story is plagued by run-on sentences, wrong tenses, mistaking singulars/plurals, and typos.

This particular paragraph sums it up fairly easily:

Inside the car, musics are loud followed with screams and hand claps, they sure enjoying their jourmey so much. As usual Taeyang is driving today, everyone is clapping their hands, singing along and clapping hands, but not Taeyang, he is to concentrate on driving that he started to stress out from the loud music that is keep playing, so he turned the volume down, earning a glare and whines from TOP who is sitting beside him.

I tried to underline most of the mistakes, but the second sentence is so convoluted that it’s difficult to do without underlining the entire thing. I would suggest you read up on your grammar by googling a website so that your writing isn’t obstructed by mistakes like this (a pretty simple one can be found here). Here is an example of a possible corrected version of the previously excerpted text:

Inside the car, loud music is followed by screams and clapping hands—it’s clear that they’re enjoying their journey. As usual, Taeyang is driving today; while everyone is busy making noise, he's forced to concentrate. Becoming stressed by the booming speakers, he turns the volume down, earning a glare and whine from TOP who is seated beside him.

I wasn’t sure if you were shooting for present or past-tense since you switch between the two a lot throughout the story, so I just went with present.

(I personally can’t imagine someone glaring and whining at the same time—the actions don’t really make sense when put together, but I digress.)

Also make sure that you spell our your numbers instead of just using the digits since doing so is considered a convention error. It should be “three” instead of “3”. There are also a number of instances when you forgot your commas, so do be careful.

Writing Style: (1)/15

You can’t really create a proper writing style for yourself until you understand the laws of grammar, so it’s not too surprising that you scored low in this section. Your sentence structure is overridden with run-on sentences so it’s difficult for you to have any meaningful syntax. You also have a habit of being very redundant in your word choice. For example, in the second paragraph of your story, you don’t have to keep repeating that people are clapping their hands—we get it, that’s already been established.

It bothered me a lot that you kept referring to the characters as “mom Taeyang” and “maknae Daesung” at the beginning. Instead of repeating those words before the names of the characters, describe the traits they’re displaying that make you want to use them in the first place. Relying on tactics like this is an example of you telling us things about your characters rather than showing them to us. Talk about Taeyang’s nature of being easily worried or Daesung’s confusion. It would help add some more dimensionality to your cast.

I would also stray away from saying things like “*knock* *knock*” in the middle of your text. It’s more professional for you to simply say that Jiyong knocked on the door.

Personal Enjoyment: (1.5)/5

I didn’t really enjoy what I was reading due to the rushed storyline, unrealistic emotions, and various grammar issues, but I saw some potential with the plot twist of Seunghyun being dead—the execution was just kind of weak.

Total Score: 19/100

Reviewer’s Comments: It’s clear that you have some unique ideas, but it’s hard to fully appreciate them when your story is ridden by awful pacing, bad grammar, and flat characters. I would start by reviewing the rules of the English language before working on creating a writing style that is unique to you. In my opinion, once you understand the mechanics of grammar, writing becomes much more natural.