heartfelt voice

greengardenpop

reviewed at ✰ Wishing Star ✰ Request Shop (ღ )

Title

Beautiful title. It relates well to the plot and the tone of the story. Although it doesn’t really captivate my interest, good job for choosing a title that is not cliché.

Foreword/Description

You summed your description in merely one sentence, which is not a bad idea at all. I like how you managed to write such short and related description.

Same goes to the foreword. You have a short poem that I believe you wrote by yourself. As a poet myself, I can’t say that your poem/lyric was the best, but it wasn’t the worst either. There’s an aspect of contrast in between the lines. What I see from the poem is that she referred the voice as ‘sweet’ and that she, sometimes, liked the things she heard. However, contrasting to this, she said that she’d run away in fear and despite the sweetness given from the voice, she – sometimes – would want it to disappear. The good thing about the poem is that it doesn’t reveal the plot – it questions the readers even more: Will she ends up liking the voice or she’ll fight it instead? It’s a good point that the poem doesn’t disclose what might happen in the story. However, due to the contrasting aspects that you included, the poem gives an effect to your characterizations. I will talk about this in the according section. Overall, the foreword and description were really good, very well done!

Appearance

As a person who is fond to simplicity, the appearance of your story marked the right boxes for me. Perfect font size, type, and color. Beautiful posters. Good job!

Plot

The plot is really original. I can't say it's fresh, but in term of originality, you have successfully come across something that isn't cliche. However, I do have to say that the plot is lacking in some aspects.

You have the tendency to put many events in on scene without considering their effects toward the story. Sometimes, the events seemed like they were merely used as transitions - affecting the flow and story line. I do believe that many writers out here, including yourself, would want to drop some hints before the conflicts ascend. One of the methods is by putting random events onto the plot. In your story, though, the events that you dropped as hints weren't significant and it seemed like you wrote them without having any specific intentions - like they were there for no reason at all. I understand that you wanted to give the readers an overview, like how Yoona suddenly sang and cried in her balcony; or when the student was locked in a room; or when the characters kept on bringing up the topic about geckos - it gave off an impression that you wanted to use those events to drop hints concurrently, but unfortunately, they were lacking of compositions and didn't fit to their places. You might want to re-read your chapters and into these events (not only the one I stated as examples), add better transitions and/or connections with the scene. This way, the random events wouldn't look like they were there for nothing.

Moreover, there were a lot of scenes that are lacking of descriptions. When I read the story, most of the time I found myself understanding how Jiyeon felt, but I couldn't understand what was happening in her surroundings. I do believe that descriptions of emotions and actions were meant to be written in the proper amounts & in balance - therefore, to know that you could describe emotions better than actions/situations, it put me off by much. With this kind of writing style, you'll confound the readers because they won't completely understand what's going on in the scenes. My only advice is for you to brush the two aspects I have just mentioned. Keep on writing and that itself would do.

Grammar

First of all, thank you for showing us your skill and confidence to write with a language that isn’t your first. Your English is pretty good, but some words were out of their places and some punctuation weren’t used correctly. I’ll spot some mistakes from the first few chapters.

“the wind lightly blowing against the misty white curtains.”

Correction:  “…, the wind was lightly blowing against the misty, white curtains.” | “…, the wind lightly blew against the misty, white curtains.”

 

“He wore a white long sleeve button shirt under a long black overcoat with jet black round shades.”

Correction: “He wore a white, long-sleeve, button shirt under a long, black overcoat with jet black round shades.”

Ø  You need to put commas in between two adjectives. This isn’t the only mistake, so proofread your chapters to spot the missing commas.

 

“my mom questioned, who was standing at the end of my bed.”

Correction: “my mom, who was standing at the end of my end, questioned.”

 

“I brought my students to study on a tour to Japan.”

Correction: “I brought my students to Japan for a study tour.”

 

“…, and I suddenly felt a cold chill run through the back of my spine.”

Correction: “…, and I suddenly felt a cold chill ran through the back of my spine.”

 

“Then I saw a girl approach him from the park.”

Correction: “Then I saw a girl approached him from the park.”

 

“His voice rang in my ear, causing him to stop laughing and shoot up off the couch in a flash.”

Correction:  “His voice rang in my ear, causing Myungsoo to stop laughing and shoot off the couch in a flash.”

Ø  ‘His voice’ referred to the voice in her heart, while ‘him’ - who shoot off the couch - was Myungsoo, so it was not correct to substitute his name with ‘him’.

Ø  Double prepostions. ‘shoot up off’ sounded wrong, I think ‘shoot off’ would be more suitable.

 

These weren’t the only mistakes, but I couldn’t write and correct them all for you. Proofread your chapters or apply for a beta reader. Work more on the placing of words and commas. Keep on writing, I’m sure it’ll slowly improve your grammatical skill.

Flow

Like said, the flow was affected by the use of many random events in one scene. Somehow, the pace was too slow and the transitions weren’t as smooth as it should’ve been. Right now, the conflict is ascending but the hints are yet to be found (or if you have dropped them, they weren’t significant). You don’t need to change the pace, though. All you need to do is to brush off what we’ve discussed in the Plot section. If you manage to do so, the flow will be just fine.

Characterization

Park Jiyeon - she appeared to me as a childish and timid 22 years old woman whose job was a math teacher with students who didn't respect her at all. After a study tour in Japan, she started hearing voices in her head, and the voice claimed to be the voice of her heart. Now, what I'd like to discuss is about the obscure feelings that she had for the voices. Like I said, there was an aspect of contrast shown in the poem in your foreword. Unfortunately, it affected your characterization in a bad way. It only showed how inconsistent Jiyeon was. At one moment she liked having the voices around, but every time she talked back, she was always being rude - and it wasn't stated as an act, it was stated that she really disliked the voices. She had been seeing a blonde guy in her dreams, too, hadn't she? And the blonde guy was said to be the owner of 'the voice of her heart'. Why, though, when she met Myungsoo - the one who looked exactly like the guy in her dreams - she was completely drawn and interested? She knew that 'the voice of her heart' belonged to the blonde guy in her dreams, so why did she seem so captivated by Myungsoo, knowing that he owned to same voice and same face? It didn't make sense to me. If Jiyeon liked the voice or if she did not; I couldn't relate. Like I said, it only showed that she had no consistency. It would be better if there was a development about her feelings toward the voice. You could've made her feel completely annoyed by the presence of the voices, but as times went by, you could write the change of feelings that she had. In your story, though, such kind of development didn't exist. From the very start I couldn't relate as of how she felt toward the voice. One moment she liked it, one moment she did not. Inconsistent.

Kim Myungwoo - he claimed himself as 'the voice of Jiyeon's heart' - how so? At this point all I could conclude is that he was once a living soul who encountered Jiyeon somewhere and fell in love with her but he died, and then suddenly he was inside Jiyeon's head. You might want to explain later about how he was 'the voice of her heart'. Also, his personality here, to me, was the typical, loving guy - contrasting to his twin Myungsoo. I couldn't really relate to him, though. He seemed sweet and caring, but other than that, the underlying moods weren't found - like how he felt toward his twin and toward Yoona, etcetera.

Kim Myungsoo - now this is the confounding part. Like Jiyeon, he appeared to me as a childish man who was lacking of traits as an adult. He was very dependent to Yoona but soon after, his childishness was nowhere to be found. Again, inconsistent flairs. Also, there's something about him and Myungwoo that distanced their relationship. I hope you won't miss this part in the upcoming chapters. Myungsoo's undisclosed relationship with Myungwoo would explain their characters more, because as of now, I couldn't relate to the two at all.

Im Yoona - many things about her weren't told as much as the other characters. She also appeared inconsistent to me, like, I couldn't really know what kind of person she actually was. More touch-ups on her, too.

Now, I do believe that every character - even minors - deserves large spaces to be described in the story. You need to deepen more about Jiyeon, Myungsoo, Myungwoo, Yoona and even Jiyeon's mother. Your characters are lacking of depth and consistency. It was rather difficult to relate to them. I'm sure, though, you would be able to discard this flaw. Make a plan and draft would probably help.

Comments/Enjoyment

It’s a nice and original story, although personally I didn’t enjoy it as much. Take note that I’m a very picky reader, so don’t be discouraged. Work more on your characterizations, grammars, and descriptive skills. You’re a very good writer and I’m sure you’ll make many improvements in the future. I apologize for sounding too harsh, I hope my review helps! Don’t forget to credit the shop and thank you for requesting!

 

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