(July 2015)

Title: Playboy
Author: Lovex2254

Reviewer: eleutheromaniac

Title: (2)/5
It’s obvious how your title relates back to the story, but there isn’t anything particularly unique about it that really entices me as a reader.

Description/Foreword: (6.5)/10

There’s nothing in your description that really catches my attention which is kind of a problem. The story about a player finding someone that changes his playboy ways and makes him settle down is used so often nowadays that it’s become a clichè and I’m not seeing anything right off the bat that sets your story apart from the rest of them. You have some missing punctuation as well, so I would be careful with that.

Those comments aside, however, this is a pretty nice way to introduce the characters of your story. Content-wise, your excerpt in the foreword seems like a good pick, thanks to Sehun’s comment at the very end. Stylistically speaking though, the writing style already comes off as bland due to the syntax at the very beginning of the paragraph. In short excerpts like this, you want to make sure that everything is as perfect as it can possibly be and varying your sentence structure a bit is a relatively quick fix.

Plot: (19)/30

I have to start off by saying that this story isn’t the most original that I’ve seen on this site, so most of your marks in this portion were taken off from the “originality” sub-section. However, with the events in your most recent chapter (number eighteen), things look as though they’re about to take an interesting turn, which is definitely a good thing.

The flow of the story seemed a little fast-paced at first, and I found myself a little annoyed at how easily/quickly Sehun changes his playboy ways for Eunji. I can understand him wanting to meet a challenge or thinking that she’s interesting, but this: “The way her voice sounded when she said it made him wish that she wasn't calling it out for his drink order. It was so intruiging [sic] the way his name sounded in . It sounded much more beautiful than he had ever heard it. When she called his name, a sudden pain shot through his chest.” seems like such a dramatization and made me question the moment’s believability.

However, once their relationship stabilizes, the story finds a perfect flow that’s neither too fast nor too slow. Luckily, Sehun and Eunji are together (well, basically) by the end of chapter four, so for the most part, your story’s flow was fine. Sehun and Eunji make for a cute couple, and with your most recent update, I’m hoping that we’ll get some more drama other than the love-triangle-but-not with Baekhyun.

(Also, as a side note, what time does Eunji close her coffee shop? Around where I live, the family-owned businesses typically close at around ten, so I’m just wondering how she’s able to close shop and then still meet Sehun for dinner out afterwards, haha. I’m just curious!)

Characterization: (14)/20

I’m really happy to say that I love the way you characterized Eunji! I always get a little skeptical about original characters, but there are many facets of her personality that you’ve started to explore and I really like that. My only concern in regards to her characters is that we haven’t been exposed to any of her flaws: Sehun used to have his playboy ways, Baekhyun tends to get a little ahead of himself, Chanyeol isn’t good at keeping people in the loop, but there’s no downside to Eunji’s character yet. I’m hoping that it’s something that we’re exposed to eventually.

I kind of wish that you exposed the more problematic sides of your characters more often than you focus on their more positive traits, but at the same time, it’s refreshing to see your characters written this way—we’re aware of their flaws, but their flaws aren’t heavily emphasized within the story. Still, I think that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to play on some of their “bad” sides a bit, since in some cases, it seems almost as though their “bad traits” were included just for the convenience of the plot. This isn’t the case for Baekhyun, since him getting ahead of himself is praised as both a pro and con to his personality, but more the case of Sehun. Sure, the characters talk a lot about his former playboy tendencies and your story is even named after said tendencies, but we’re never actually exposed to it within your story. There are traces of it in the beginning (that didn’t feel well-executed since he has trouble retaining his composure when Eunji doesn’t respond to his advances at the start of the story), but otherwise, it’s not really explored. I understand that he’s changing thanks to Eunji’s influence, but I don’t think I got enough of his “old” character to really appreciate the changes that he’s undergoing for her sake. I think that it also would’ve been nice to get some insight from Sehun about how difficult it is to make such a one-eighty from his former personality: since we don’t, it seems a little unrealistically easy for him to become a “good” guy for Eunji.

I have to admit that chapter twelve annoyed me considerably. While the fun facts were kind of cool to read about, I would’ve really preferred if you had incorporated some of that information into your actual story itself instead of just listing them out like you chose to do here. It’s really important to me that authors “show” their readers the story rather than just “tell” it to them. Including some of these facts in small increments throughout your story isn’t that difficult and I know that you could easily do it if you tried to. An example of this is the chapter in which Suho is introduced to the story: you stated in chapter twelve that Sunmi’s older brother was in America, and lo and behold, Suho’s introduction mentions that he’s Sunmi’s older brother and that he was studying in America.

(As a side note, I would be a bit careful with that fact about Eunji knowing seven different languages and being a genius. You’ve given her so many positive traits with nothing bad to cancel it out, so adding too many things like that to her character will make her seem more and more like a Mary Sue.)

I’m really excited about the drama that Kai’s introduction has brought into your story though. I’m kind of hoping that there’s a bigger reason for why he doesn’t like Eunji instead of him just feeling like she’s taking Sehun away from him, since that seems like a bit of a stretch since Kai and Sehun have been out of contact for years? It would be cool if he’s just had a lot of hidden feelings for Sehun’s character that he was too nervous to explore, but I don’t really know, it’s ultimately up to you as the author, haha.

Grammar: (12)/15

Your grammar, for the most part, is pretty spot-on, which is awesome! There are a couple of infinites when you had a couple of typos (such as saying “intruiged” rather than intrigued), but these are relatively easy fixes—just be sure to re-read your work for editing purposes before you post and pay special attention to possible typos like this one. There are also moments when it seems as though you forgot to capitalize something, so look out for this as well.

If anything, the most improvement can be done with your word choice. You sometimes use words with similar meanings to what I can assume you originally meant, but in the context of the sentence, they don’t serve as adequate substitutes. An example of this would be “...a moment of quiet.” in chapter eight. “Quiet” is an adjective and therefore can’t be used here. “Silence” would be the proper word. Another example of this is in chapter thirteen when Eunji says, “I’m starved.” Because “starved” is in the past-tense, it doesn’t make sense for her to say this word when “I am” indicates that she’s speaking about the present. “Starving” would be the correct word.

Writing Style: (8.5)/15

You have the foundation of a writing style here, especially in the vivid imagery that you include, but it could use some work. Your chapters tend to come off as dialogue-heavy, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, the flow of the story could be bettered if you at least took the time to change up the way you insert your dialogue into the story. For example, rather than starting off most of your paragraphs with your dialogue, you could put it at the end of a description or in the middle of a paragraph. It’s something small, but a little variety can go a long way. Since you do use so much dialogue, I think that it would also be a good idea for you to italicize key portions of the text in order to add some emphasis to certain parts. It helps the inflection of the characters come across better, especially if you intended for something to be read a certain way.

I’m not really sure what the point is in you writing a character’s name at the top of certain sections because it seems pretty unnecessary to me. Your story’s already written in third-person, so adding in someone’s name doesn’t really change anything.

As I mentioned before, your story has a lot of lovely imagery within it. My favorite would definitely have to be this metaphor from chapter fourteen: “He knew that there was no way Sehun would be able to stay in a comitted [sic] relationship for long. Eunji and Sehun were a grenade; Sehun was the pin and Eunji was the body. When everything exploded, Eunji would be in pieces and Sehun would be safe far away. Baekhyun didn't want that to happen.”

Personal Enjoyment: (3)/5

I actually didn’t think that I would like this story very much when I first looked at it, so I’m very happy that you proved me wrong! I like the way you portrayed your characters in such a positive light (though I hope that we’ll get to see more negative traits from them later) and your creative use of of imagery was very refreshing for me. Although I’m still waiting for a more unique twist to occur in your story, your portrayal of the events comes off as sharply novel, which I enjoyed.

Total Score: 65/100

Reviewer’s Comments: I really have to admire you for being able to maintain such a daily update schedule because I know for a fact that it’s something that I would never be able to accomplish, haha. As you move forward with your story, I would suggest that you try to highlight the flaws of your characters a bit (especially in the case of Eunji) and add a bit more variety to your syntax. Other than that, I think that you’re on the right track. c: