Review for WangZiTao // Reviewed by: loviet

Title and Story link:  

Kai, Meet Jongin (Completed one-shot)

Title: (18.5/20)

Your title is good but not great. There are a lot of titles out there that use the same play on Kai and Jongin being two different people, so if I saw yours while scrolling through the Kai or Jongin tag, I wouldn't think much of it. There isn't anything that would draw me in or entice me. The grammar and capitalization aspect is perfect (bless you for using a comma) so no worries there. I think your title is pretty well connected to your story. Your two characters do meet each other and their introductions sort of sound like "Kai, meet Jongin." They're sort of at each other and I feel like the title conveys that. Your title is original since there aren't any other titles, that I've looked up, on AFF. (congrats!)

I really like your chapter title. It's nice, simple, and vague enough to make me think "What do shadows have to do with any of this?"

So nice choice!

Overall Appearance: (3/5)

You don't have a poster, so I can't grade you on that, but I highly suggest that you go to a poster shop or try to make one. It really isn't a lot of work to request one from a poster shop, so you should really try to get one. Not to mention, I'm sure designers can come up with some really cool posters to match your Kai + Jongin + Shadow plot.

I like your background, it matches your story since Kai always goes out at night, so there's a connection, which is nice. Personally, I just like stars, so maybe I'm a little bias. One of my major pet peeves is when people use backgrounds that are distracting or hurts my eyes when reading so good job on picking one that is easy on the eyes.

Your layout is a little overly simple. It couldn't hurt to throw in some pictures of Kai and Jongin. This way you can show your readers the differences of the two. I know some writers want to leave it up to their reader's imagination, but since there are no OC's, it won't really take away from your story.

Description and Foreword: (17/20)

I want to applaud you. You avoided making a huge mistake and played your cards just right. You didn't expose Jongin being his Shadow in the foreword and description. You could've easily try to rank up the suspense by revealing who Jongin was and his role. Just by mentioning the word shadow, you would've given away too much, so I'm glad that you kept that secret. In retrospect, I'm glad that you didn't mention the word shadow in the title either.

I normally read OC fics, but I was really intrigued by your description, even though it was simple and didn't reveal much. Your description was short, but had enough information in it that made me wonder where the story was going to go.

One suggestion: The last line, I think it would be more effective if you split it up.

So instead of saying:

"Help!" He screamed before he took off running. Kai paused before dropping his beer and chasing after him.

You should format it like this:

"Help!" He screamed before he took off running.

Kai paused before dropping his beer and chasing after him.

Spacing out the two sentences by splitting them up on different lines, stresses the fact that was about to hit the fan (excuse my language). It adds more tension and leaves readers with a little bit of a cliff hanger, making them want to read more.

Plot: (22/30)

You had a very interesting plot. I like the concept of Jongin being a shadow. It's a nice twist and it's refreshing to see a story without any romantic elements that still manages to keep my attention. There aren't any real twists (besides the fact that Jongin is his shadow), but I don't think your story really needed any more.

You said that the oneshot was 1.9K, which is fine, but I feel like you could have benefitted from making it a little longer. There were parts of the story where I wish I saw a bit more content in (see Characterization for more.) You're writing a story with a solid beginning, middle and end within one chapter. You shouldn't have to sacrifice content and quality because of that. You can write well, I can tell, so don't be nervous to make it a bit longer.

I really liked that Jongin changed him name to Kai because he was ashamed at how he was when he was younger, therefore going under a little identity change. It was believable and quite frankly a little sad (in a good way). It was a nice touch that I felt connected the story together. Although I wish there was some "science" to it. I know that sounds weird, but I wanted to know more about the Shadow. Why isn't he doing what normal shadows do? How did he turn himself into an actual being? etc.

You briefly mentioned the Shadow police and how he took a risk to leave the shadow world, but it would've been great if you could've expanded.

When you're writing something with a fantasy element, you're essentially creating a whole new world and sense of logic. Kai seemed surprised that his shadow came to life, so that means that this isn't a normal thing to happen, so you have to create logic to it.

Is it a Shadow's duty to look out for their 'human'? Questions like these should at least be glossed over which is why you might benefit from making your one shot more than 1.9K.

Originality: (13/20)

Your story is very original. It takes guts to write a story without an OC and without any romance on this site. I think you took a risk and it paid off. Sure, you don't have a million subscribers, but what you have is a very solid idea. I'd like to see you expand on this further and maybe create a full fic, because you have a good idea here. It wasn't cliché at all. I don't know about other readers, but this is my first time coming across a story like this and I liked the main idea.

Language: (16/20)

Your writing sounds like you speak English as a first language, and if you don't, your English is really good. Punctuation (you sometimes missed a few commas) and spelling were not that big of an issue, but I had a little trouble with your tenses. You started the story saying "Kai looked." Which is in past tense. Then, a few lines down, you say "Every night he'll leap down." He'll = (He + will), which is future tense. To make it sound more fluid and consistent, you should've said, "Every night he'd leap down." This was my only real issue. Everything else seemed perfectly fine. Your dialogue sounded natural and your writing set the scene well.

Writing Style: (15/20)

You mentioned that you wanted to figure out what your writing style is. This story has a bit of an angsty vibe, so you might want to try writing with a more stream-of-consciousness mindset. This means that you, as a writer, empathize with your characters and make us feel their pain or sorrow. This fic would be perfect to use to really get inside Kai's head since he's the only human character. Your narrative sounds very neutral, which is totally fine, but it helps if you add more emotion to your writing to really make me feel bad for Kai. Especially since there are some angst elements in this story.

You have a knack for writing moments of clarity (aka, the last scene at the restaurant), that whole discussion was pretty solid to me and I enjoyed reading it.

Characterization: (19/30)

Your characters are good and solid, but they are lacking something. In my eyes I wish Kai was more troubled. Reading this story, I didn't really understand why Jongin thought that Kai was unhappy. Sure, his past was sad, but in the present, he seemed happy and carefree. When he sneaks out every night, he doesn't really do anything bad. He drinks, he smokes and he goes to a shooting range. He doesn't break into people's houses or anything. I think it would be more powerful if you displayed, before the two met, that Kai was unhappy. He joked around with Myungsoo and seemed light-hearted. If that was your intention, I don't think it worked. Instead of making him look like he was faking his happiness, you made it seem like you changed your mind mid way when writing his character. You really need to show your readers that his past was still effecting him in present day, because the way I saw it, he was just a regular boy.

Since Kai is your primary character, he should've had a little more background on his present life. The one thing that annoyed me was that he genuinely seemed happy. The shadow was telling him not to waste away his life, but what proof did we, as readers, get to show that he was wasting away? He talked about doing exams so he clearly cares about school. He only goes out at night which means he isn't skipping work or school.

"You don't care about school, yet you still can go to an ivy league college."

I had no idea what this line meant. Was Kai's dad loaded? He doesn't study? Is he a jock on a scholarship? I realized at this point that I really knew nothing about Kai so that whole last scene at the restaurant was filled with new information but there was no proof in Kai's behaviour that he was like that.

Jongin called him a drunk, so maybe Kai should've mentioned in the beginning that he likes to be in a permanent drunkness.

Also, why did Jongin ask Kai about himself? If he's his shadow shouldn't he already know from following him around his whole life? This is what I mean when I said you need to create a sense of logic behind your supernatural elements.

Kai's reaction to meeting someone who looked exactly the same was pretty mild. He was rattling off questions at first, but that was it. It would be more effective if you showed him resisting a little bit and being super freaked out.

And the hug was pretty random. I expected Kai to pass out or something, but I thought the hug was kind of weird and held no purpose. Kai is completely okay with the idea of his shadow coming to life and looking exactly like him just because he was hugged? He has no more questions?

I don't understand his bullying issue. He explained his life to be a pretty happy kid with friends that made him laugh his off, but suddenly he became public enemy number 1 just because he almost died? That doesn’t really make sense. Kids are brutal but that's not a real reason to do a complete 180. Why would he be picked on or even treated as an outsider if he almost died? He wasn't disfigured nor did the accident leave him disabled. A suggestion would be to say that after his near death accident, his parents fought more over who was responsible and they got a divorce, therefore kids picked on him for being from a broken family or being the cause of a broken family. That would make more sense.

I like his whole monologue about him in highschool and how he grew up and was loved by everyone. It was sort of heartbreaking. But you know what would've made it perfect? If he cried while talking about how amazing his life was, because we know that even if he sounded happy, he really wasn't. I'm also a fan of Jongin's spiel about telling Kai to get his life together. It was inspiring without being overboard.

"Find a dream. And when you find one, chase after it. [If] that dream doesn't work, then it [and] find another one."

Best line. Loved it. Read it over a few times because it was that good. (the paranthesis are grammar edits you should make.)

The ending was fine, I was a little surprised that he was willing to change his ways so quickly but it wasn't that bad, it didn't take away from the story.

I suggest you combine the last sentences into one. You used a period and it is unnecessary, use a comma instead. It flows better and rolls off the tounge which is important for the last line of any fic.

Also: "And my name is Jongin." Sounds a bit awkward, since he's talking to friends. Try: "I go by Jongin, now."

All in all, Jongin's character needs to be restructured at the beginning and you should add more narrative to show that he isn't as happy as he believes he is.

Flow: (25/30)

For the most part your writing was smooth. There were a few moments when it seemed like you split your sentences up too much, but it wasn't overwhelming. There were a few times when the story felt too fast when it didn't need to be, I think you're trying to keep the word count low, but that shouldn't be what you're keeping your eye on. If your story takes a few more words to be more thorough, then so be it.

Reader's Scope/ Overall Enjoyment (4.5/5)

It was an interesting read. I never read anything like your fic but I did enjoy it. You'rea great writer, but I feel like you hold yourself back a bit. This has the potential to be an amazing story

Bonus (+1)

Final Score/ Total (160/200) = 80%

A/N:

Sorry if I went off in your Characterization section. It's not because you did a bad job, it's because you have so much potential in your writing, especially in this story and I wanted to point out the things that were missing because if you manage to fix those gaps/holes, you'll have a very good story on your hands. The only real reason you don't have a lot of subs is because this isn't the typical story you find on aff since there's no or not OC, but that shouldn't effect you. You have a really good story and I think it should be turned into a full fic.

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