(August 2015)

Title: Ah Yeah
Author: galaxybrooklyns

Reviewer: eleutheromaniac

Title: (1)/5

I actually didn’t understand your title at all until Mei let me know that it’s the title of an Exid song. Even then, I don’t really understand what it has to do with your story and it doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

Description/Foreword: (0)/10

The biggest issue with your description/foreword is that I don’t see how it relates to your actually story. You’ve currently written ten chapters (nine, I suppose, excluding your random author’s note in the eighth chapter) and I’ve yet to see any teasing from anyone. Not only is your description/foreword a bad representation of the story that you’re writing, but it’s not even particularly interesting. The excerpt in your foreword isn’t really enough to draw me in and doesn’t make much sense syntactically. Having a huge tense error in your single line description doesn’t really help either.

    “As Mark comes back to Korea, he wasn’t ready to face one of men’s biggest problems- trying to hold back from a series of teasing from the girl he liked.”

Your story is written in the past-tense and the underlined portion is written in the present. I also can’t understand what the latter half of your section (the part after what is supposed to be an em dash) is supposed to even mean.

(I’m also not a fan of color changes within text.)

Plot: (4)/30

Though it seems as though you have a lot of chapters, your plot hasn’t really advanced anywhere. You have some dramatic irony here (since we know Mark and Hani’s identities while they’re completely oblivious), but you ruin it by repeating scenes to change the perspective. We don’t need to see how they both view a certain scene when each of their opinions of said scene are always relatively similar. Not only does doing this come off as redundant, but it also creates a choppy sort of flow within your story because the shared pov between the two characters isn’t even balanced—we see a lot more of Mark than we do of Hani.

I don’t think that the foundation you set up within your prologue was too adequate either. When Hani and Mark first meet, they both introduce themselves, so I’m not sure why you keep referring to Hani as “the girl” instead of by her name. Did Mark not catch it? Did you forget that you had her introduce herself? None of it’s very clear to me. I also would’ve liked an explanation for why Mark is staying with his aunt when he moves back to Korea rather than with his parents. It’s something smaller, but an answer still would’ve been nice.

The plot itself isn’t very original either as I’ve seen a lot of stories like this on AFF and there isn’t any particular element of your story that makes it more unique. At other times, the movements of  your plot seem to only be for the sake of convenience. In the chapter titled “New Spark,” if it’s raining, why would Hani’s sister want her home right away? It would just mean that she’d have to walk out in the rain and potentially get herself sick. It makes even less sense when she chooses to walk Mark back to his house despite her insistence on having to leave because her sister wanted her back at the house. There’s no clear motive and I don’t really understand her actions.

Characterization: (1)/20

Neither your characters nor the relationships they have with one another feel particularly realistic. The most realistic interactions we get are those between Mark and the rest of his friends, but each relationship he has with any of the other six isn’t particularly unique to just the two. I’m not too familiar with Got7, so it honestly feels to me as though you have six people filling in the role that you only need one person for. None of the members have their own personality so all of the relationships that they have with the others comes off as weak. I also thought that it was a bit weird for you to use their stage-names in the story. Having a Chinese-born man in Korea using an English name without an explanation is pretty odd, and it’s even weirder to have a classmate that goes by “BamBam”.

Since your story revolves around the blooming romance between Mark and Hani, it’s important that the interactions and feelings that they have for one another feel genuine and realistic. The problem is that their relationship comes off as incredibly rushed. In the prologue, Mark is around the age of eight-years-old, so it’s really weird that he feels the way that you say he does. This is the first time he’s met this girl, so it doesn’t make sense for his heart to be “fluttering” and identifying her as a “special someone” right off the bat. I also think it’s odd that he’s literally only had one conversation with her but is so desperate to find her again during Chapter One. They’ve barely interacted, so his fixation on her comes off as unrealistic because any sort of solid emotional attachment that could’ve come from their initial meeting isn’t enough to justify his behavior. I mean, even when she introduced herself, he didn’t bother to remember her name, truly signifying that an impression wasn’t really made. It reaches a high in the chapter titled “New Spark” during this excerpt: “Oh, how he could just want to kiss her, but he could not because they’re not together! They haven’t even talked to each other casually, nor hang out and- oh wait. They’re not even friends to start with! Mark felt his heart pierced by a needle as he thought of it.” You’re jumping way ahead of yourself and this isn’t how emotions work at all.

At the same time, Hani is reaching borderline Mary Sue territory and the way she behaves seems kind of nonsensical. Writing her as the most popular girl in school with perfect grades and a gorgeous face/body as well as making her an orphan are typical traits of these “way too perfect” characters. At the same time, Hani has literally rejected every guy that’s made an advance on her, and since she doesn’t recognize Mark for who he is, why does she allow him to take her out so easily? It makes her characterization feel weak and susceptible to plot convenience. In her introduction scene, you have her biting her lip and raising a brow at the same time, and both of those elements say very different things in body language. It doesn’t fit, so be careful with things like that.

Grammar: (4)/15

There are a lot of grammar issues in the text that relate to your punctuation, word choice, and tenses. This is a pretty easy guide to basic punctuation and I think that reading through it could really help you out.

There are multiple instances that I noted for tense mistakes, but I’ll only list a few of them since it’s your job as the author to go back and fix these yourself.

“He did choked.”

This should be: “He did choke.”

“He didn’t pretty much remembered.”

This should be: “He pretty much didn’t remember.” Here’s a pretty simple guide to using the various tenses of the English language complete with a lot of examples to show you what’s right and what’s wrong.

Word choice is also a severe issue. Statements like “A girl of same age with Mark,” “After a few bunch of talks,” “You’ve grown so much tall,” and “Mark was now in regret” are all badly phrased and there are a plethora of them within your text. I would also be careful with your pronouns because in the Chapter titled “Ah,” you referred to Mark as a “her”.

Different characters should never speak in the same paragraph. As soon as the dialogue changes ownership, it’s important to create a new paragraph in order to avoid confusing your readers.

Make sure to always spell out the actual number that you use instead of using the digits (i.e., “eighteen” instead of “18”) as doing otherwise is considered a convention error.

Writing Style: (1)/15

It’s pretty difficult to have any sort of writing style when you don’t really understand the laws of English grammar and I think that’s what the case is here. Using images in the middle of your story’s text (like in “New Spark) and splitting sentences up into a lot of small paragraphs in order to create a “dramatic” effect comes off as incredibly immature. Your syntax is also kind of boring, as is your diction, and both are quite repetitive. Be careful with your word choice as well.

Your characters also repeat “Call.” a lot and I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean.

In Chapter 1.1, I would be careful with including random numbers in your story. Even if the phone number isn’t yours, it could easily be someone else’s and it’s important to keep that kind of stuff off the internet. I also think that the “not an update!” chapter can be removed as soon as you update the next chapter of your story so you don’t clutter your chapters with things that aren’t really important or relevant to your plot.

I wasn’t a big fan of the inconsistency of the chapter names, so I’m really happy that you mentioned in your most recent author’s note that you’re going to go back and change them.

Personal Enjoyment: (1)/5

There wasn’t much of a plot here and it was hard to read with the immature nature of your writing style. I didn’t really enjoy this.

Total Score: 12/100

Reviewer’s Comments: Reading through a couple of grammar guides would probably be the easiest way to improve your writing so I recommend that you do that in your free time if you’re not already learning about English grammar at school. Once you get your grammar down, a more mature writing style should come along naturally; don’t force it though, because in most cases that only makes the style worse. Plot-wise, focus on fleshing out your characters more so that they come off as realistic and three-dimensional because right now they all feel like flats or stocks. It’s okay if you take some time to develop your plot as long as you develop your characters more since this story seems to be character-driven. It’ll take some work, but I promise that it’ll make your story a lot better than it currently is. c: