iblackstar12
❁Crimson Twilight Review Shop❁ {PAUSED/Finishing requests}
An Angel's Smile
About: Kim Cheon Mi(OC)+Suho/Kim Junmyeon(EXO), angst, family, exo, romance, orginalcharacter
Bleu
Finished on 7/7/2014
Title 4.5/5–Your title is absolutely perfect. Not only is it relevant to the story, it's also quite eye-catching. The only thing I would have against your title is that it's a little bit cliché. There is just so many titles with the word “Angel” or “Smile” in it. I just wish the word choices were a little bit different than the crowd.
I really like how interacted your title was in the story. You made sure to constantly bring it up, and you really knew how to add symbolism to your story. Great job. I have absolutely nothing to complain about your title.
Foreword 9.5/10–Whenever you use something that's not your own, such as song lyrics, a book title, or anything that is copyrighted, you must always have it underline and in quotation marks. By doing so, it clearly tells the readers that what they're reading isn't necessarily written by the author. If you don't do this though, you might get in trouble for using copyrighted materials illegally. I enjoy that you at least told Passenger sang this, and you changed the color showing that it's copyrighted.
I think that you should be more careful with your tenses. I noticed that sometimes, you tend to change from present and past tense. This can be quite confusing to your readers especially when you do it constantly. If you keep doing it, it'll make your readers confused on what's the setting, time period, etc. I think that overall, you should proof-read your stories every time you post a chapter, and then you try to figure it out if you've made any tense mistakes.
Usually, I'm not a fan with having your foreword as an author note, but I don't know, maybe it's just because of how you wrote it that it'd made me feel more interested in your story. I really love how you kept a professional tone even when you were writing an author note. I've seen so many people just go crazy at author notes thinking that they can just type like how they can type regularly.
I like how you make you made words that you want to emphasized bold. I think that's a really great thing to do, and you're able to pick out which words are supposed to be emphasized and which isn't. It's like picking the most fresh strawberries out of a strawberry field.
Personally, I wish there was just a little bit more information about the characters itself. From what I've read, all I figured out is that this story is going to be about something that we're all used to, and then it suddenly disappears. But, I don't know about the characters though. I wish you gave at least an excerpt from the story, or anything really. Maybe even a monologue?
I feel like the spacing and formatting for your description and foreword is a little bit too identical, I wish there was like, something distinct between these two. I mean, you both have the same spacing, alignment, and there really isn't anything unique between these two. Maybe you shouldn't left-align both of these? Maybe have one left-align, and have the other either center or right aligned.
I'm not taking any points out of this, since this is just my own preference, but there is a spacing error in your “credits” section. Between the first two request shops, there is a space missing compared to others.
Lastly, remember that when you're using an ellipses, you should never have any spacing before and after the ellipses. Ellipses is (…).
Correction(s)
1) Mistake–“We only notice them... when they're gone.”
1) Correction–“We only start noticing them...when they're gone.” or “We only start noticing them when they're gone.”
2) Mistake–“Just like what the song said, “Only know you love her when you let her go...” - Passenger.”
2) Correction–“Just like what the song said,”Only know you love her when you let her go...”–Passenger, Let her go”
3) Mistake–“Sometimes, only when we lose someone who is dear to us do we realize how precious they are.”
3) Correction–“Sometimes, only when we lose someone, do we realize how precious they actually are.”
4) Mistake–“One year Ago”
4) Correction–“One year ago” or “One Year Ago”
Plot 20/20–I don't enjoy how you began your story with “Let me tell you a story”, I expect an elementary student doing that, not you. Using that is like starting a story with,”One day”, can you really not do any better? I think you could do a lot better and be more creative. Make sure you try to pass your limits and go above expectations. Don't just choose the safe pass because it's more stable.
I really enjoyed your plot, it was really organized and neat. I think you did a great job at planning it all out, overall, I feel like you did a great job. Another thing I would like to say is that I think that although your story was quite short and straight to point, it was still really fun to read.
I really felt like you wrote in a way that really brought your readers in. When I was reading your story, it really felt like I was in the characters shoes itself. I really love how deep and compelling you made this story. Great job.
Overall, your story wasn't cliché or mary-sue, you really brought out the theme in your story and your concept. I think you really made your story really compelling to your readers. Since this concept was quite important to you, I could really feel your emotions through the words you typed. It was just so deep and compelling and it really spoke to me too since my father and I also have these complications.
Characters 20/20–I think your characters were really well compelled. I really enjoyed how you didn't say the brothers name. The brother wasn't supposed to be a major protagonist, he was just like, one of the back-up dancers. You don't really need to put his name, since he isn't that major of a character. He isn't going to make much of an impact to the story–so there really is no need to put his name.
Your characters were really vivid and their personalities had a lot of variety. Overall I feel like your characters were exactly on-point. And you knew exactly which characters you should focus more on and which you shouldn't focus as much on.
Grammar and Spelling 17/20–Whenever you're using ellipses, which I notice you do quite frequently, you should never have any spacings before and after it. This is the same thing as when using hyphens and semi-colons. Remember that these punctuations are supposed to connect two phrases together, so, it wouldn't make sense if you put spacings before and after it.
Don't overuse ellipses or else it would look childish. Make sure you know your limitations and don't overuse anything. Same thing with pronouns, hyphens, semi-colons, etc. Just because it looks nice, doesn't mean you should keep using them.
You have some problems with run-on sentences. Run-on sentences (sometimes called a “fused sentence”) has at least two parts, either one of which can stand by itself (in other words, two independent clauses), but the two parts have been smooshed together instead of being properly connected. It is important to realize that the length of a sentence really has nothing to do with whether a sentence is a run-on or not; being a run-on is a structural flaw that can plague even a very short sentence. Run-on sentences can be quite annoying to read, since after all, it's like reading a long long paragraph without stopping. Ways to find out whether it's a run-on sentence is by simply reading it, and if you feel like it's been a while since you paused, then it's a run-on. To fix a run-on sentence is easy, you could add a comma splice, or, add a hyphen; semi-colon, parentheses.
Correction(s)
1) Mistake–“Let me tell you a story... A story about me and my father... Why am I telling you this? It's just because I want to show that every day, every hour, every minute and every second matter...”
1) Correction–“Let me tell you a story...a story about me and my father. Why am I telling you this? I want to show you that every day, every hour, every minute and every second matters.”
2) Mistake–“He always told me about the things that he did with his 'brothers' when he was still in the music industry.”
2) Correction–“He always told me about his days in the music industry, I was always entertained by the things he would do with his “brothers”.”
3) Mistake–“It's so early and my father was already waking me up. My older brother is not living with us. He's staying at a dorm since the university that he's going is far from our house.”
3) Correction–“It's so early, and my father was already waking me up. My older brother doesn't live with us. He stays at a dorm near his university, which was quite far from our house.”
Enjoyment 5/5–I really enjoyed your story, it was really easy to read and enjoyable as well. I really felt your emotions when I was reading this. You did an amazing job at writing this with all your emotion. Your plot development and character development was spot-on. Everything was perfect.
Structure 3/5–When you had a time skip and you used something like,”One year Ago”, I don't think italicizing it was good enough. I want it to be more distinct, I think you should also bold it as well. I just want these time skips to be more emphasized so it's not blended in with the actual story.
Remember to understand when you should start a new paragraph. If not, then you'll just get a long paragraph that has way too many elements in it. You should always make a new paragraph when you have a new topic, new time, new place, new speaker, and for a dramatic effect. I think you really need to focus on new speakers, I've seen some paragraphs that have more than one speaker in it.
Specific Advice Wanted:
Requester Commented–how the emotions are expressed
Reviewer Reply–I think your emotions were expressed perfectly. I was really compelled by how well you persuaded the daughter and father personalities to me. I don't have anything negative to say about how your emotions are expressed. You did a very great job.
Overall 79/85=93/100–I think your story was really great, it was really compelling with the emotions. I really feel like you literally threw every single emotion you had inside of you into this story. It was really nice and easy to read. The characters personalities and attributes were spot-on. I have absolutely nothing to complain about. The only thing I would prefer is your title is a little bit common. Just the words “Angel” and “Smile”, I've seen those words so many times, isn't there any synonyms you can think of?
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