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A Hundred Years' Love by sapiya
Review by coolgirlaamy
The Title (1.5/5)
I don’t really know what I can say about this title. I mean, it’s very generic. A lot f people use similar titles to this and I have seen titles like this being used before so for me, it doesn’t really stand out from the other stories out there which is why I’ve marked you down.
Another reason for taking a few marks off you is that I can’t see how this title is relevant to the story. The title is ‘A Hundred Years’ Love’ but their love doesn’t take place over one hundred years as far as I have read. I feel like you could probably come up with a much better title that would actually be relevant to your story.
Description and Foreword (3/10)
In my opinion, I like how the description is short and it gets to the point quickly. However, I had many issues with the description.
- For one, it’s boring. There isn’t anything very interesting about it. The description just seems very bland, like it’s missing the flavour and that pizzazz which is going to spark interest within the reader.
- There are a number of grammar mistakes, which I will come to in a moment. For someone like me, who is a native English speaker and somewhat a Grammar Nazi, I couldn’t stand it. It kind of ruined the reading experience for me and I wouldn’t really have wanted to read the rest of you story.
- I don’t like how you have put that question in there. It reveals too much information and from that one line, I already know what is going to happen in your story. And I didn’t want to know that yet.
All of these things just put me off reading the rest of your story.
As for the grammar/ sentencing mistakes, you wrote:
“A medieval Chinese tale of a forbidden love between a servant in training in becoming a martial artists, Huang Zi Tao, and a prince in becoming a king, Wu Fan, who find unexpected love that no one must know of. Will their secret become found out causing the arranged marriage of Wu Fan and distant princess, Pingyang, to get thrown off and cause mayhem with the respected elders? Read and see~”
It should have been,
“ This is a medieval Chinese tale of Huang Zi Tao, a servant training to become a martial artist, and Wu Fan, and a prince soon to become a king who find an unexpected love that no one must know of.”
The second sentence just doesn’t work for me and I think you should come up with something else because the sentence obviously tells me that their secret will be found out and Wu Fan will have to marry Pingyang etc. It’s not much of a question.
The foreword also managed to put me off reading the rest of your story. Do you have to mention who is playing your characters? It’s obvious that Tao and Kris were your characters. Do you have to mention that they were playing themselves? Also, did you have to mention the other characters too and who was ‘playing‘ them? No, you didn’t. You didn’t need to tell me any of that. Have you ever read a book where the author told you who was playing the characters? I know for a fact that you probably haven’t.
Another thing I feel that I have to mention is, did you have to tell me all of your characters’ backgrounds? All of the information that you told me in the character profiles could have been mentioned in the story. Character backgrounds, or ‘Reason in the story’, don’t need to be there. They just make you look like a weak writer.
However, I did like the little excerpt that you put in from the story. It made me feel really interested and wanting to read more
Plot and Originality (14/30)
When I first looked at this story, opening the page on my laptop screen, I was pretty sure that this was going to be some kind of generic story. I think after reading your description, I just felt like this was one of those stories that everyone kind of writes about - two people in love but they can’t be in love and then someone else comes between them. There’s also the fact that one of them is seeking revenge from the other character/ other character’s family which is also an overused plot. I’ve taken a few marks off of you because of this.
However, the story isn’t completely generic, after having read 28 chapters. For one, it is set in a medieval setting, which I personally enjoy - I love stories set in the past and the future for some reason. It kind of has a more grand feel to it and I like it. Also, there is so much to the story than just a love between Tao and Kris. I mean, there are like different sub-stories/ sub-characters who are also quite important and interesting in their own way. I’ll mention more about the characters in the next section, but I like how you haven’t completely focused on the two main characters completely and you have given the other characters their own kind of story too. I like the small twists that you make along the way.
There was something that I couldn’t completely get my head around though. I don’t understand how Tao and Kris could have fallen in love so quickly. From what I read, they only like just met and then a few chapters later, they’re declaring their love for each other and kissing and whatever. I just don’t think it came across as being very realistic.
Characterisation (20/20)
I love your characters and I feel like I’ve had the chance to get to know each and every one of them along the way, through the 28 chapters. You have given each one of your characters the chance to shine and you haven’t focused only on your two main characters so kudos to you. I know from my own experience that it is difficult to write many characters in one story but you have managed to do it quite well.
Like I have mentioned in the above section, I love each one of the characters individual backgrounds and stories. I like how you have given each one of them their own kind of traits and made them stand out from one another. Pingyang, for example, doesn’t really want the life as a princess. She wants to make her own choices.
I also didn’t think Yunnie was going to be a very interesting character at the start but you made me change my mind through the story. I like how you’ve gone in depth into her life and her association with the Wu family and her relationship with Chanyeol. I also like how you’ve introduced Chanyeol through him meeting Tao too and now it seems like all of the characters are linked to each other in some way.
Writing Style and Language (14.5/25)
At first, I thought your writing was quite weak. However, as the story continued, your writing did improve and I started to really enjoy your story. I like how you started putting in bits of imagery here and there and your vocabulary expanded slightly, so good job with that.
However, I don’t like how you changed POVs throughout the chapters. It made you seem very unprofessional to me and I feel like if you are going to keep changing POVs so frequently then you should probably just write in the Third Person.
Another thing that I feel I should mention is the fact that when you’re writing dialogue, you write some of the words that they are saying in Chinese. I know you give the meaning of it at the start, but people are going to forget what those words actually meant. I think that the majority of your readers won’t be able to understand Chinese so I think you should just stick to English the whole way through.
As for your language, well, spelling is fine. I think there was like the occasional spelling error which just seemed like some kind of typo so that was okay, nothing too serious. The grammar and sentencing, however, was quite weak and I am going to go into that in detail.
1. “Almost tripping to get up the stone steps into the main kitchen area I am.” I assume you’re probably trying to sound stylish by writing the sentence this way but it doesn’t really read right. It just sounds clumsy. “I almost trip as I try to get up the stone steps into the main kitchen area.”
2. “In my father’s arms hold my bleeding mother.” This is another sentence that sounds quite clumsy. “My father holds my bleeding mother in his arms.”
3. “Standing his ground he is as he orders me to run, since he yield no sword, but is cut off mid sentence to a stab to the gut.” This is just like the previous two examples. This time, however, the second part of the sentence doesn’t make much sense and I just get confused trying to process all of that. “He stands his ground, ordering me to run but as he yields no sword, he is cut off mid-sentence with a stab to his gut.”
4. ‘“Ah…,” I fiddle my hands in my lap.’ The mistake that you have made here is that you have used two forms of punctuation at the end of this dialogue before the inverted commas. If you are using ellipsis, there is no need for the comma to be there and it should be deleted. ‘“Ah…” I fiddle with my hands in my lap.’
5. “Whatever I encounter on this journey…whether death of love..I’ll accept.” The error that has been made here is something that I have mentioned a number of times before. You don’t really need the ellipsis in there. It’s acceptable when you are using it in dialogue because you are suggesting a pause in the characters words but you don’t need to put it there amongst your normal sentences. Most of the time, you can end/split the sentence with a comma or a full stop.
These are quite common errors that you happened to make through your story. There were also a few places where your tenses changed. For example, one moment you would be writing, “He walks forward.” or something along those lines, which is in the present tense, and then a few sentences later, you would have written, “He held my hands.” which is in the past tense. I think this is just something that you have to just watch out for.
If you are concerned about your grammar, there are many beta-readers that can help you fix the grammar in your story.
Flow (10/10)
There’s nothing that I can really say about the flow of your story except that it flows at a good speed and the events don’t happen too quickly or too slowly. So good job!
Total (63/100)
[Reviewer's Note]
I'm sorry if I may have came across as being quite harsh but I don't like to sugar-coat things so the review came out like this. Thanks for requesting ::)
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