(December 2015)

Title: The flower with no scent.
Author: sailorstal

Reviewer: eleutheromaniac

Title: (3)/5
Right from the start, I found this title to be interesting due to the proposed meaning behind your imagery. The insinuation of someone who is nothing more than beautiful is something that I found to immediately be unique and intriguing. My only concern with this is that by the end of the story, it seems as though Soojung gains more of a personality due to Jongin’s influence; even if you wouldn’t say that it was specifically a change in her personality, her character definitely changes and so she “gains a scent” at the end. This change in her character is one that occurs pretty early in the story, so it makes the poetic language of your title feel a little off.

Description/Foreword: (9.5)/10

This description/foreword establishes a good foundation for this story by introducing the strong voice of the narrator and properly setting the stage for Soojung’s inner conflict in regard to her lack of personality. I found myself instantly interested in the contents of the story and would definitely be enticed to continue reading based on this description alone.
 

My only concern would be that there’s a moment of awkward word choice (“Four letter word, yet it speaks so much.”) that disrupted the flow of the excerpt, which is why a point was deducted from your score in this section.

Plot: (16)/30

When you look at the plot of your story from a distance, it's not very original: a quiet girl is pining for a popular guy that she likes but doesn't think she can have. However, the strong voice given to Soojung breathes some life into this everyday tale that made the piece more engaging. Rather than having a constant stream of narration, the story is guided by Soojung’s scattered thoughts and I believe that this helps to make the story feel more unique. It's difficult to execute such a method without making the story feel rushed though, and this is where the fic fell short.
 

Though there are multiple chapters to the story, each one was short, so there wasn't much length at all. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as your reasoning for having short chapters centered on certain topics was a good one, since each chapter represented a single aspect of Soojung’s trail of thought. For example, I really liked the shift in Chapter Five in regards to Soojung’s happiness—not only was it really sweet, but it also showcases Jongin’s effect on her in an indirect way. Little bits like this would be nice if they were littered throughout the piece, but after reading it, it felt as though there were shifts like this in Soojung’s thoughts in almost every chapter. Because of this, the reader is exposed to foreshadowing that suggests that Jongin and Soojung will get together as well as foreshadowing that Soojung will remain stagnant in her character growth. I'm not sure if this was meant to be intentional or not, if you were trying to capture the multiple “what if” questions that people ask themselves when they're debating if they're liked back by the person of their affections, but the execution was weak. I think that if you included more chapters to show us more of Soojung’s pessimistic mindset and included the glimmers of hope in less frequency, it would've read better. At the end when it’s implied that Jongin and Soojung get together, I was more annoyed than happy for them because it seemed like such a sudden jump.

Characterization: (12)/20

As I mentioned before, Soojung possesses a very strong, personal voice in this story, which is pretty awesome since the piece seems to be character-driven. As the story is told in her first-person, it's easy for readers to develop a clear understanding of her drives and motives. I also found her to be especially interesting since Soojung is so used to leading a “dull” life that when something bright comes her way, she can't believe that it's real and chooses to take it out on herself, which is a concept that I don't think I've seen before. Unfortunately, I think the text relies too heavily on the juxtaposition of Soojung and Jongin, to the point that the latter lacks some of the qualities that could have made him more three-dimensional, rather than just the standard run-of-the-mill character foil.
 

While there are instances during which Jongin shines in his role as an optimistic, blindingly bright love interest, his character would have been better developed if such occurrences were more frequent. This could arguably be difficult since the story is told in Soojung’s scattered thoughts, but it could easily be done if you were to rely on indirect characterization when fleshing out Jongin’s character. There are moments when such characterization is used in regards to Jongin, such as when he reveals the meaning behind his tattoo, and if this was done more often, his character would've been a lot stronger. While it’s alright to sometimes have the only purpose behind a character to serve as a foil, in this story, there are no characters other than Soojung and Jongin. Foils typically serve as only minor supporting roles in stories (think of Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet) and don't do much other than emphasize certain qualities of the main character. In this case, Jongin is the sole reason why any change occurs in Soojung’s life, so it's appropriate for his character to reach a higher degree of development.
 

I believe that the reason why Soojung’s shift in personality comes so abrupt is because of Jongin’s lack of development. Since Jongin isn't really present in the story, it feels as though Soojung gives in to his optimistic advances so easily, as though there wasn't really an internal conflict present, though there is. As I mentioned in the previous section of the review, Soojung’s changed character by the end of the story felt abrupt, rather than something that came about gradually. To incite such a change in someone else, it would make sense if Jongin had said something uniquely profound that would cause Soojung to rethink certain aspects of her life like she does in the story, but because no instance occurs within the text, it felt like the only reason why Soojung became slightly more optimistic about her life is because the story needed her to.

Grammar: (9)/15

The biggest grammatical issue I saw within this story was awkward word choice that hindered my understanding of what was written by the author. Minor mistakes were noted, such as typos in spelling (“backstabing” in the first chapter should be backstabbing) and the omission of a comma or two (for example, “short dark curly hair” in the second chapter should be “short, dark, curly hair”). You stated in the foreword of this story that English isn’t your first language, and with the low quantity of grammatical mistakes that I noticed, I wouldn’t have been able to guess!
 

A common mistake that I noticed within this story was the writing of numbers in their numerical form rather than spelling them out. In the third chapter of the story, for example, you wrote “past 100 years”. This is a convention error, as the number “100” should be referred to as “one hundred.”
 

There were also moments during which there was some tense confusion evident in the story, but the mistakes were rare, so I don’t think that it’s a recurring problem that you have. In Chapter Two, you wrote:

    “I was happy that someone finally appreciates her.”

In this single sentence, the first underlined word is in the past-tense, while the second is in the present-tense. Make sure that when you’re writing, you maintain consistency within each sentence. The corrected version would be as follows:

    “I was happy that someone finally appreciated her.”

Some chapters are written in a different tense from another, but I didn’t deduct points for that since each chapter represents one of Soojung’s isolated thoughts and can serve as a stand-alone short. It’s more important that you focus on maintaining consistency on a smaller scale.

Now I’ll elaborate on your bigger grammatical issue: word choice. I noted several instances during which your written sentences seemed confusing, and for each example, there’s a different reason as to why it’s wrong. I’ll list a couple of them here and then correct them so hopefully you’ll be able to use this as a loose guide when choosing your diction in future works.

    “Sometimes the things we talked about were as taboo as the weather and other times we shared our thoughts on the most controversial of subjects.”

“Taboo” is defined as “prohibited or restricted by a social custom,” so talking about the weather would not be described as a taboo topic. Taboo and controversial can be considered close synonyms to one another, so the comparison in this sentence doesn’t really make sense.

    “It doesn’t matter that a girl with an obnoxious laughter ruined the movie for me.”

This correction is a little more technical, since the proper substitute here (“laugh”) and the word you chose to use are very similar in their definitions. “Laughter” is a mass noun, while “laugh” is a countable one. Since Soojung is annoyed by a single girl’s noises that only occur during certain parts of the movie (I really doubt that the nameless girl laughed throughout the entire thing), “laugh” would be the appropriate substitute. Here’s a more thorough explanation of this concept.

    “Since when someone else’s opinion has become so important to me?”

The corrected version would be here:

    “Since when did someone else’s opinion become so important to me?”

Interrogative words (like when, who, where, why, etc.) should always be followed immediately by a verb, and “has” is an unnecessary article within this sentence.

Writing Style: (7)/15

It’s clear that you’re well on your way to developing a writing style, based on the strong voice with which Soojung narrates the story. Though it’s something minor, I would be careful with your line spacing and paragraphing. Each only affects the cosmetic presentation of your story, but consistency in these matters reads better for your readers. I felt that you overused bolding words for emphasis throughout the story, and would suggest that you try utilizing some italics instead in order to mix it up a little. Think of italics as the less intense version of bolding.

There are moments when the story contains gorgeous imagery, such as Soojung’s dreams about Jongin in the seventh chapter and the juxtaposition in the final chapter in regards to the heater. I think that if literary devices like this were used in more frequency throughout the story, the tale would’ve felt less dry and more fluid for readers, so I would suggest that you try to use these devices more often.

I’d be careful with using fragments as often as you do, since it also disrupts the fluidity of your text. Although they technically make sense since the story is composed of Soojung’s fragmented thoughts, relying on them makes your text choppy and less exciting to read. Try to mix your fragments with sentences that are longer in order to balance things out.

Like I mentioned in the Grammar section of this review, your biggest weakness is your diction. Even if some words weren’t used in a grammatically incorrect way, try not to use them in a repetitive manner since that can turn readers off from your story.

Personal Enjoyment: (3)/5

For what it was, I found that I enjoyed the piece a lot more than I originally thought I would. While I found the premise of Soojung’s character interesting, I would have liked if her character growth occurred in a way that I could find believable and natural, rather than rushed and out of convenience.

Total Score: 59.5/100

Reviewer’s Comments: It’s clear that you have some interesting ideas for storytelling, and you’re well on your way to having a solid foundation in the conventions of the English language! Keep practicing and you’ll get better in no time. c: