(August 2015)

Title: 缘分 [Yuánfèn]
Author: endless-sonata

Reviewer: eleutheromaniac

Title

I’ve always been a bit of skeptical in regards to stories that have titles in other languages. However, I always find myself clicking on them because I’m always curious as to what the title actually means and expect a definition on the story’s description/foreword. I’m glad that I got an explanation here—and in a nicer form than just a simple definition too!—and I can definitely see how it ties into your story. I’m not in love with the title and think that you might have been able to come up with a better one, but overall I think that it’s okay.

Description/Foreword

Most of the negative things I found in your description/foreword are related to grammar, so I won’t deduct too many points in this section. However, it is the introduction to your story and so many grammar mistakes right off the bat can be very off-putting to some people. I would pay special attention to your word choice and tenses and re-edit this. (Though according to your author’s note, I guess you didn’t edit this at all, so doing it a first time would be good, for starters.)

Some of the grammatical errors that I was particularly bothered by are listed here: in the beginning of your description, you had one of your two characters say that they are the binding force between two people, so please watch your word choice; it should be “breathe” instead of “breath”; it should be “worse” instead of “worst”; punctuation errors; Sehun’s character profile has a tense mistake, as it should be “desperately wanting” rather than “desperately wanted”; titles of a novel or major work should always be italicized or underlined, so please be careful with your formatting; make sure that you know the difference between “unconsciously” and “subconsciously”.

There are a couple of other things that I didn’t mention, but again, I would always be on the lookout.

That aside, I’m interested in the story based on your content. As I mentioned before, I like that you defined your title in your description through what looks to be an excerpt rather than simply putting a definition on there—it adds some originality, I think. However, I’ve never been a big fan of character profiles, and while yours here are a bit more subtle, I think that the description/foreword would be a lot better without them. It’s always best for you to show your readers the information rather than telling them everything right off the bat, and the information included in your character profiles was either redundant or could have easily been intertwined within your text in a much more natural way.

Plot/Characterization

Despite your story only being in the early stages of exposition, it comes off as incredibly rushed and I think this has to do with the one-dimensional personalities of your characters and the plot feeling obscenely forced and fabricated. Sehun is literally the flattest character I’ve come across in a very long time and I’m pretty sure I actually cringed when I got to the end of the prologue. You open up your story saying that “Sehun was undeniably scared of disappointing him [Luhan],” yet, as soon as he reads a note in which Luhan specifically states (and I quote) “...the decision to run away is unappropriate,” Sehun is immediately like “Whoa, running away will solve my boredom! My life isn’t even that bad, I just feel like everything is boring, and instead of asking my parents if they can send me on a summer trip like many rich parents do, I’m going to steal their money and run away to Jeju Island!!1!”

No. God, no.

I can get feeling trapped in your life. That is very much a very real feeling. However, if it wasn’t for the character profile you posted in your description/foreword, I would have just assumed that Sehun was just really bored with everything. Boredom and feeling entrapped are two very different things, and I think that one of the reasons why Sehun’s actions seem so over the top is because his motive is so weak. As far as we know, Sehun hasn’t voiced his feelings to anyone—not his parents, not even Luhan, it seems—so what is it that’s trapping him exactly? His obligations to them? That’s not a reason for someone to just allow others to walk all over him. It’s one thing for his parents and Luhan to not listen to his pleas, but it doesn’t seem like Sehun’s even made an attempt at such a conversation. You make him out to be what seems like an intelligent kid, but he shows zero rationality. At least he acknowledges that he’s being a selfish prick, but seriously, running away is such an extreme measure and he didn’t even try anything less insane before jumping to the conclusion that abandoning his family was his only hope.

I literally have no respect for him whatsoever, which is super problematic since he’s one of your story’s main characters.

(That being said, don’t jump to the conclusion that throwing in a scene of his parents putting him down would fix things either because then you’re approaching a clichè that you may not be able to work yourself out of. I also wanted to point out that I saw what you did with color symbolism in making Sehun’s room black and white, but with imagery like that, it’s best to keep things subtle and here it felt way too obvious that you were trying to emphasize the “trapped” feeling of his life; realistically, his room is something that he should be able to personalize and decorate for himself, so it makes me wonder if it’s his life that’s boring or if he’s just boring. And it’s probably the latter, to be honest, because it seems like he has zero personality.)

Kai seems to have a little more potential than Sehun, in my opinion, but I really do have to point out that seeing you write his name as “Kim Kai” made me laugh. I remember back around Exo’s first debut where Jongin messed up and introduced himself as “Kim Kai” and it was this huge fandom joke at the time. It made me hard to take him seriously when I was first reading about your characterization of him. Fandom humor aside, even if he’s residing in Korea right now, he’s using a Western name, so his name should properly be referred to as “Kai Kim”. It’s kind of like how Krystal (Jung Soojung) of f(x) is referred to as “Krystal Jung” when her stage-name/Western name is being used.

Other than that, I don’t think that I’ve really seen enough of him to form a proper opinion.

Not much has happened in the story yet, but I’m not sensing any real hints of originality. Writing Kai as a troubled writer is instantaneously reminiscent of changdictator’s Anterograde Tomorrow, so that alone shows that you have some pretty big shoes to fill by stepping into similar territory.

Luhan introducing Sehun to Kai’s book a month before this story takes place and Sehun stating he’s in love with it, just hours before he almost gets run over Kai feels a lot like plot convenience and I’m definitely not a big fan of it. And on Kai’s part, almost running over a stranger and then immediately thinking about love—of all things!—is insane. I get that the whole premise of your story is that of destiny, but even then, it’s important that you allow your characters to retain their unique traits and that you allow your story to obtain its own unique sense of originality. Kai hasn’t been in love for ten years, so him immediately registering the feeling of “his first love story” upon meeting Sehun seems to be thrown out of nowhere.

Sehun and Kai can have a connection at first meeting, sure. But if Kai is as broken as it seems you’re making him out to be, a reaction like what you had here doesn’t seem realistic at all.

Grammar

I mentioned that you had a lot of grammatical errors within your description/foreword, so it’s not too surprising that you have a lot of mistakes in your actual story as well. I’m honestly not sure if you’ve ever revised your work before, but I highly, highly recommend that you do so since you have a lot of (what I’m going to assume are) typos that really detract from the credibility of your story. Little things like punctuation and capitalization errors pile up really fast.

As I’m a reviewer and not a beta reader, I’m not going to point out every single one of your mistakes but rather tell you the general areas that I believe you need the most work on.

There are a couple of tense issues that I noticed throughout your writing, but they were definitely overshadowed by some of your questionable word choices. Sometimes it felt like your phrasing was off, such as in the prologue. “How could he?” should actually be “How could he be?” Another example comes from Chapter One in which Kai asks Sehun, “Did you hurt somewhere?” This question doesn’t actually make any sense. A corrected version would be “Are you hurt somewhere?” or “Did you get hurt somewhere?”

There are other times, however, when it seems like you don’t know which word you should be using and you tend to mix up your adjectives and verbs (“different” versus “difference,” “breath” versus “breathe,” etc). Here’s a pretty simple guide that should be helpful in teaching you the differences between the two parts of speech.

And then there are the times when it seems like you’re just simply using the wrong word. I mentioned previously that in your description/foreword you used the word “unconsciously” (meaning that the action is occurring when the individual is literally devoid of consciousness, i.e., when they’re knocked out and unthinking) rather than “subconsciously” (meaning that the action is occurring beyond their consciousness, i.e., when they’re completely awake but not aware of a specific action that they’re doing), but another mistake I noticed was in your prologue. “...Suho knew that Kai’s decision could not be refrained either way.” For a person to refrain from doing something, it means that said person is consciously choosing to not commit an action, and so it doesn’t work in this context. I’m not sure what word you were meaning to use here, but regardless, please make sure that you know the definitions of the words that you’re actually using.

I know that some people rely on a thesaurus to find synonyms to words that they overuse, and if you’re one of these individuals, I would advise you to tread carefully: it’s great to have diverse vocabulary, but it’s absolutely dreadful when you’re using large words in the wrong way.

Writing Style

It’s pretty difficult to have any sort of writing style when you’re not properly utilizing the mechanics of the English language, so I wasn’t too surprised to see that you’ve yet to develop yours. Don’t be discouraged though: developing a writing style can take years and years of writing, and it’s something that you can’t force since it occurs naturally.

Reviewer’s Comments: Alright, the biggest problem that you have is definitely related to grammar. In my opinion, understanding of the English language is the basic foundation to a proper story, and without it, developing a coherent, intriguing storyline is incredibly difficult. You mentioned to me specifically that you were concerned about your story’s plot, so I hope that the “Plot/Characterization” section that I included here was helpful. Even the most creative plot can prove to be a boring read for people if the characters aren’t realistic or relatable, so I think that my I would advise you to reconstruct your character models for Sehun and Kai into something that feels three-dimensional rather than something that falls flat of any expectations.

You’ve got a long way to go, but I’m confident that with some hard work and determination, you’ll be the writer of a story that you can feel proud of. c: