「Faith On Us」⋮ ErinKrystal
The PROM15E dump。
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by ErinKrystal
★practice makes perfect
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TITLE [2/5]
Faith On Us? Why did you choose this word 'faith'? I don't see how 'faith' is involved in your story.
Capitalization wise, you do not need to capitalize 'on'. 'Faith on Us' would be fine.
The title is short and simple but at the same time, misleading. I don’t really get the idea of the title itself. There’s no connection at all between the story and title up to now. Maybe ‘Believing in Us’ would be a better choice? Just a suggestion.
Despite the title being a little special, looking at the title itself, it is not captivating enough to attract readers.
FOREWORD/DESCRIPTION/PRESENTATION [4/10]
The font type for the description and size used are suitable, but it would be better to stick to one font type. Overall, the layout of your story is neat. (But I don’t really like the font used in the foreword. It looks too cartoon-y to me. There's no clashing of colours, good job!
For your description, I do not understand why the quotation marks "" are there. It is neither someone speaking nor a quote, therefore you shouldn't use them.
Original: "People said that sometimes what we wanted we could not get it. Sometimes what we dreamed for never going to happen. But still we always forgot one thing, hopes in our lives."
Correction: People say that sometimes we could not get what we want; sometimes what we dream for would never happen. But still, we have always forgotten one thing. There are still hopes in our lives.
Like I mentioned before, you had misused the quotation marks. I had also changed the sentence structure and instead of using a comma between the two words 'wanted' and ‘sometimes', I used semicolon; . The semicolon is used when you want to join two related points together rather than using a full stop, etcetera. But of course, you can go ahead and use comma but semicolon is a better choice.
Also, what do you mean by 'hopes in our lives'? Did you mean that there are still hopes in our lives? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Personally, I dislike the idea of character intro. It totally turns me off. You shouldn't have the need to introduce the character in the foreword; rather, you should let readers understand the character on their own as the story goes.
Song Eun-Chae
Original: A girl that has everything in her life. She was born with silver spoon in , money all over her and fame that she did not even has to chase for. The only thing that missing in her perfect life is only l.o.v.e... Well maybe her life was not perfect after all just liked the others thought. But, she did not know the fate that going to face her in the future...
Correction: A girl that has everything in her life. She was born with a silver spoon in , money that she would never finish using and fame that she did not have to work hard for to get. The only thing that is missing in her life is love. Maybe her life is not as perfect as others think.
I had corrected your tense, restructured your sentence and now, I will explain.
lavender: Money all over? You are practically saying that she was covered with hard cash all over her body.
blue: The reason I highlighted this part was because it sounds...wrong, to me. I'm not sure if it is right or wrong but I thought that maybe changing it would be a better and safer way.
pink: To emphasize a word or phrase, you just have to italicize it. It is very unprofessional to use full stop to emphasize each letter of the word.
yellow: For this particular sentence, you have phrased it in a very weird way. I can tell that you are trying to say what she's going to face in the future but using the word 'fate' and 'face in the future' is like repeating the same meaning twice. The sentence is not important since readers would not care whether Eun-Chae knows what she's going to face in the future, what they want to see is how the story will progress.
underlined: Repeating only twice is the same as me saying: My stupid brother is stupid because...
Lee Seung Hyun/ Seungri
Original: He lurked himself behind the true identity of his. It's not an easy task to do for a person like him. His black past had taught his a lesson and now he has to follow the flow of his own fate. A friendly person and that's one of the reason why most people did not know the truth hidden behind him. His principle is simple ' Once you be the important person in my life, always remembered you are not alone on the earth.'
I decided not to do a correction for this because I don't really understand what you mean.
In the dictionary I found, the definition of 'lurk' means that someone wait somewhere secretly so they cannot be seen, usually because they intend to do something bad.
Do you mean 'façade'? He puts on a façade to hide his true feelings? He is not some sort of spy that needs to hide his identity.
How is hiding his identity a task? What kind of person is he? Everything is very unclear - I have no idea where you are heading.
By 'black', I assume that you mean 'dark'.
And it is 'taught him a lesson', not 'taught his a lesson'.
'And now he has to follow the flow of his own fate' gives me an impression that he is being forced to do so. How does he after learning his lesson from his past make him have to follow the flow of his fate? It doesn't make sense.
The fourth sentence seems to be out of the world. Who is the friendly person? I guess you mean Seungri but why is he being friendly one of the reason why people did not know the truth hidden behind him? Again, what truth?
The word 'principle' basically means a general belief you have about the way you behave, which influence your behavior.
Thus, the last sentence is redundant and peculiar. The single quotation marks ' had been used wrongly as you are not quoting anything. You should have used colon:.
To sum up this part of the review, you really need to work on your description and foreword. By looking at your description and foreword, it doesn't even give a summary about the story. Readers would simply skip reading your fan fiction as there is nothing that is able to pique their interest in the description and foreword. For your character intro, it was done badly. I'm sorry for being so straightforward. The errors made only make readers confuse.
My suggestion for you is to remove your character intro and put the description you have currently under foreword. In your description, you should write the gist of your story instead.
PLOT [10/20]
Truthfully speaking, your story is not original. It is just a typical love story with the female and male protagonists slowly falling for each other. With the female protagonist having a ‘phobia’ of man and the male protagonist having a bad past are not so original either. There is nothing special about the whole storyline.
Readers can easily tell that in the end, the two would be together. The story does not make readers anticipate what would happen next as everything seem so predictable. The fact that Eun-Chae and Seungri trust each other so easily makes the story not believable.
The unexpected twist in chapter five helped to pull up the marks. I didn’t see that turn of events coming. I do have some doubts though. Why would Eun-Chae ask the guy she is starting to love leave her? Wouldn’t her in the first place just avoid guys to make things simpler?
FLOW [2/5]
I think that you could have speed up your story as certain parts in the story were insignificant. There was no need to talk about the four friends and the whole Mr Tao matter. The main focus should be about Eun-Chae and Seungri.
In addition, you like to switch scenes abruptly. Taking chapter three as an example, after Eun-Chae said yes when Seungri called her, you immediately jumped into Eun-Chae's point of view and her speaking on her phone. One moment she and the next, she's at home on the phone with Ara. And in that phone conversation, you did not clarify what Seungri said. It was only understood that Seungri asked Eun-Chae out for a date when you moved on to Seungri's point of view.
All in all, the flow of your story is pretty unstable. I think that you should put in more effort for this part.
WRITING MECHANICS [10/20]
I talked a bit about certain mistakes you had made in your foreword and description already so I will continue here. I know that you are not fluent in English so my advice for you is to get a beta reader for your story.
Your sentences kept switching from present to past and past to present. Do take more notice of the consistency of your tenses, especially for your dialogues. In many of your dialogues, you used past tense when it was supposed to be present tense.
For your punctuation, you did not make too many mistakes, but you did misuse them several times. Try not to use ellipsis... too often.
There were lots of awkward phrasing and it was really hard to read. The omission and addition of words made your story not very pleasant for me to read.
Another mistake I would like to point out is that you should not repeat information over and over again. You should not add in redundant sentences in your story.
Also, 'sound liked' should have been written as 'sound like'.
These are some examples of the mistakes you made from chapter one:
►Tenses
Original: "I knew, I'm sorry okay? I got stuck in the traffic just now.” Eun-Chae explained, feeling sorry towards her workmate.
Correction: "I know, I'm sorry. I got stuck in the traffic just now.” Eun-Chae explained, feeling sorry towards her workmate.
Note: Adding in 'okay?' made Eun-Chae sound very sarcastic instead of apologetic.
Original: She then wore her black coat which she usually wore it when there is a formal timing that she needed to wear it on her body.
Correction: She then wore her black coat which she usually wears when she was attending something formal.
Note: In this sentence, you were repeating everything over and over again. The last part about wearing it on her body sounds wrong and unnecessary.
►Punctuation
Original: [...] workmate claimed looking a bit mad at her.
Correction: [...] workmate claimed, looking slightly mad at her.
Example: Eun-Chae just followed [...] boss temper! It such a scary thing!
Note: The over excessive usage of exclamation marks is really not needed. You should only use exclamation marks in dialogues or for the character's thought. The sentence is wrong too.
►Awkward phrasing
Original: [...] towards the person who greeted her firstly today.
Correction: [...] to the first person who greeted her today.
Note: By the way, who was the one that greeted Eun-Chae?
Original: There were also few people in the elevator all dressed formally with their work outfits. One or two people she recognized but rest of them she did not familiar with. Maybe they from other section…
Correction: There were a few people in the elevator and she recognized two of them, but she was not familiar with the rest. Maybe they are from the other section, she thought to herself.
Note: There was no need to use the word 'also' when the sentence does not have any link with the sentence in front. You do not need to say everything specifically - I'm sure no one would go to the company wearing a pyjamas, etcetera. When you said she recognized one or two of the people in the elevator, it's as though that Eun-Chae wasn't even sure if she knew them. The last sentence was Eun-Chae's thoughts, you can't just write it as a normal sentence. You should make it italic so that it is clear to readers.
Original: Maybe that's one of the reasons why four of us had been related in this friendship thing almost five years already and it still on after what we had been through together.
Correction: Maybe that was one of the reasons why the four of us could maintain the friendship for almost five years.
Note: I don't get the last part of the sentence and friendship is not a thing.
►Miscellaneous
—Extra info
Original: She stepped into the elevator and pressed the number eight button then.
Note: We already know that she was heading for the elevator to go to the eighth floor, so you don't have to repeat this part.
—Wrong usage of word
Original: I cynically said slowly munching on my food. (chapter three)
Correction: I said sarcastically, munching slowly on my food.
Definition of cynically: distrusting the motives of others.
Note: I don’t think you used the word ‘marginalized’ correctly either – she was not discriminated.
—Show, don’t tell
You should show your readers rather than just telling them what happened. I tried my best although this is a failed example...
Original:
Correction: Still wearing a smile, she walked briskly along the hallway, heading towards the old-looking elevator to get to the eighth floor of the building. Some people along the hallway cringed hearing the sound produced by her black stilettos. She was wearing a simple yet elegant light cream dress that showed her long, white legs, matched with a short yellow cardigan. Her hair was neatly tied up to a ponytail that swayed from left to right as she walked, with her short bangs covering her forehead.
Note: You can't say that 'her long, white legs walking along the hallway'. If her legs are walking, where's her body?
CHARCTERISATION [3/20]
I was disappointed about the fact that you didn't characterize your characters well enough to bring them alive. Throughout the whole reading process, I felt like I was simply looking at pictures of different scenarios. The characters feel so dead - there is barely any emotions and personality of them showed. Unless you count Seungri and Eun-Chae asking themselves questions like: “Why am I feeling like this?” as a feeling displayed.
The characters are not original as they can just be like a passer-by on the street. You could have given your characters a little of this personality and another. Doing a mix and match can transform your plain characters to something new. Try to imagine yourself as the character him/herself, how you would feel if you were him/her, etcetera. This way, your characters will be more unique and believable.
Eun-Chae – My first impression of her was that she is a brat. I didn’t really like her attitude. And when you did that flashback part, I thought that she was a rude and unreasonable brat. But afterwards, she started being shy around
Seungri. In my opinion, she is not a realistic character. I mean, how would anyone agree so easily to go out with a guy that she only met once. Not to mention, their first meeting was not really good. Besides, when they met each other afterwards, they both did not even bother to ask each other questions, get to know each other more.
Seungri – As much as you have written in his point of view, I don’t really understand him. His personality was never really shown. I can only describe him as a gentleman but also a flirt (since he said Eun-Chae is as pretty as her name) from his actions and nothing else.
Yeejin and Ara – I would label these two as the ‘busybodies’. From my point of view, the only role they have in the story is to tease and make Eun-Chae spill things between her and Seungri. They are like the people pushing Eun-Chae towards Seungri and wanting her to realise her feelings for him. They are not developed at all and I think that Yeejin is more unnecessary than Ara.
Karilyn and Jihee - I really have no idea why they even made an appearance in the story in the first place. They only appeared for that small part of chapter one and no longer appear again. Of the four friends, Ara seems to be the only more important one so you should just focus on her more. I know I shouldn’t start judging since your story has yet to be completed but this is really what I feel.
WRITING STYLE [6/15]
Your sentence structures were awkward to read... Readers can understand what you mean but it is phrased in a not-so-English way. To be blunter, it's broken English.
I don't think that you should switch the point of view from the third person to the second one. The moment you changed from narrative to Eun-Chae's point of view, your tenses got messed up. There was not really any usage of descriptive words in your story as you are not a native English speaker. Your story is just like a two dimensional movie, here wasn't much excitement reading your story.
When you changed to Seungri's point of view, the story became unclear. Throughout his point of view in chapter three, you only mentioned 'she'. Who is the 'she'? Whenever you use substitution, you have to mention the person name at least once in the sentence before.
OVERALL ENJOYMENT [1/5]
I had a hard time reading through your story as there were many parts that are unclear, adding on with the missing and extra words, awkward phrasing and misuse of words. The need to scroll up to re-read the part of the story at times was quite frustrating. And also, the plot that is lacking just can’t make me want to read on.
BONUS [4/5]
One mark for the poster as it is pretty, but maybe a little too dark and the girl in the poster is quite blur.
Two marks for having the confidence to write in a language you still not fluent in yet and additional one mark for encouragement.
TOTAL SCORE [42/100]
GRADE: E
REVIEWER'S COMMENT:
I’m sorry for being so evil… I hope that this review is able to help you. If you don’t understand anything, feel free to ask me. Work harder and I'm sure your writing will improve!
I'm sorry for this late review. I tried my best to finish it before 12 October but I know it's still late to send at this timing. Anyway, good luck for the writing contest if your fan fiction is for the contest.
-onlysj
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