Calling for Saki1017

"Blame"

Author: Saki1017

Main Characters: OC (Sena) and Kai (EXO)

Genre: Drama, Friendship, Romance

Status: Completed

Description of Story:
Sena and Jongin were the best of friends but when a certain person entered their lives,
everything between them and around them changed.

 

  Critique:

Story Title: 3.5/5

A title is a story’s first impression. People make a first impression with appearance, wardrobe and body language. Stories do it with a title, that's why titles are extremely important. A title creates anticipation and expectation or, perhaps, disinterest. Often the title is what will determine whether or not someone reads a story. Remember that titles have always been important. Everyone knows that. The problem is deciding just what constitutes a 'good' title – keeping in mind that fashions for titles change at least as frequently as fashion for shoes. Furthermore, a good title must fulfill multiple functions. It must have some relationship to the content of the story it designates. It must be notable, comparatively unique, attractive to potential readers, and nowadays, it must also work-well for on-line search engines.

Actually, I don’t quite fancy your title. Although it was a lone yet meaningful word of a title, it doesn’t really that appeal that much. For instance, a reader would get attracted to more unusual titles, right? Well, that’s me though. I couldn’t help but feel like your title’s a bit dull. On the good side though, the title was easy to remember since it was only of one word. It’s not long and complicated, and the simplicity of the title can make a reader remembers your story, although there’s a bad side for that as well. There are a lot of stories with the same title as yours, sadly, so it might be hard for others to differentiate and even remember your story after a few weeks or so, moreover if your counterparts have good stories as well. Titles are not copyrightable. If your title is fairly common, and doesn't deal with the same subject matter as another story with the same name, you shouldn't run into any legal problems. But that should not be done intentionally. Why run the risk of confusing a reader into thinking your story is someone else's? Besides, you don't want the reading public to think you're unoriginal. Actually I expected a very deep and sophisticated title for your story since they feelings were really deep and emotional.

Likewise, I’m not telling you to change your title or anything. It’s not really that inappropriate; rather I’m saying that there are other titles that could be better, especially those suited for series like yours since you made a sequel, right? It’d be nice to see the titles related with each other. Anyway, it’s your decision. Again, I’m not forcing you to do anything, okay? I’m just voicing out my observations and opinions.

 

Graphics: 5/10

As for your poster, well I don’t like nor hate it. It’s rather simple, yet the animated curtains as the background kind of weirded me out. First of all, the poster resembles a brick wall with a large hole at the middle, right? And then there stood Kai whereas the girl was seated. And then there were curtains at the back. The first question would is what are the significance of those elements? Another issue for me is the pictures used for the two, as well as their expressions. Kai had a bag slung at his shoulder whereas Sena in front of him was sitting at a chair with a semi-smirk plastered on his face. First of all, it’s hard to incorporate the title with that poster. I mean, where’s the ‘Blame’ in the poster? It would’ve been better if you had a really angsty poster wherein the girl used looked really sad or depressed, even crying maybe; and then Kai could be somehow looking distant or anything.

As for the background, well you don’t have any though. I think it’d be better if you had one so that your page would look more attractive. I mean, as good as you poster looks, your readers won’t be staring at that all the time whilst reading your chapters. By putting up a background, it’d remove the dull, while background, and it would somehow create life in your page. You could try requesting to the same shop you requested for your poster. Just make sure that they complement each other. Again, I’m not forcing you to change anything, although requesting for another poster would be good.

 

Description and Foreword: 4/10

Descriptions and forewords are important factors since you are mainly marketing/attracting your potential readers into reading your story. A description is your chance to speak directly to your readers about why you wrote the story, what it’s about, and why it’s important. As it is an introduction to your story, a description should include information about the plot. For instance, you should give a brief description of the story; the main characters, or themes. In all honesty, I was deeply disappointed with your description. You can do a lot of lines to entice your readers to be honest. I mean, your story was really deep, and there are a lot of twists and scenes wherein you can base your description. That one sentence though was deep as well; however, it didn’t sound appealing. Actually, I was confused when I first read it. I thought you had a lot of introductions as well but the rest of your text were some author’s note and whatnot only. There were grammatical errors as well; primarily due to commas.

(Original Version) We were best friends but then she came and everything changed.

(Revised Version) We were best friends, but when she came, everything changed. |OR| We were best friends, but then, she came, and everything changed.

For this revised version above, I just put some commas on the places where they’re needed. Remember, use a comma + a little conjunction (and, but, for, nor, yet, or, so) to connect two independent clauses. Contending that the coordinating conjunction is adequate separation, some writers will leave out the comma in a sentence with short, balanced independent clauses. If there is ever any doubt, however, use the comma, as it is always correct in this situation.​

I’ll be honest with you on this one. Your main page is not really attractive. First of all, the proper arrangement was messed up. First of all, you should give out a brief summary of your story, then state your author’s note afterwards. That’s why we have the foreword for that. Commonly, we put the brief description along with the character chart and whatnot in the description section. Such things like author’s notes, acknowledgements, credits, and copyrights should be put in your foreword instead. You could even start your foreword with sneak peeks and some elaborations regarding the story, but never ever state your author’s note at the beginning. It kind of ruins the mood to be honest. This of it as arranging them based on importance. You could just state your author’s note and credits at the end all of them since they’re not really that important. Moreover, not all readers are concerned as to what inspired you. Most readers I know here on AFF are only concerned with interesting stories, which they decipher through interesting descriptions, which bring us back to that topic.

I think you should really change your description. Well, not exactly change it literally. You could just add a few more things, like indirectly describing Jongin and Sena, and maybe you could state the general conflict of the story, but remember not to state too much though as it might ruin the surprise. Also, I think it’s best to put pictures for the characters you introduced. Honestly, I'm not a fan of putting up introductions for characters like that, but since your story is chaptered, then I guess it's fine. You didn't really gave of a lot of info anyways. I think it’s best if you limit the characters to Sena, Jongin and Sehun as well since Nara was a very interesting twists in the story, and by introducing her at the foreword will ruin the element of surprise. I think you should remove Haera and Joon as well since they weren’t really important in the story; plus, they’re not even idols. I mean, what’s the point in including them when they won’t even attract readers through introducing them. Anyway, do put some pictures to make it look better since your main page looks a bit dull. You could also request for a character chart from graphics shops as well. Also, why not try using picture dividers? Try searching up in Google and use them to make your main page a bit more lively.

 

Characterization: 6.5/10

Characterization is a crucial part of making a story compelling. In order to interest and move readers, characters need to seem real. Authors achieve this by providing details that make characters individual and particular. Good characterization gives readers a strong sense of characters' personalities and complexities; it makes characters vivid, alive and believable. In your case, it is very important that your the scenes coming from your story are believable since there was a lot of drama. I was extremely confused of the main characters’ feelings. Seriously, they went from one boat to another. It was a bit hard to keep up. I couldn’t determine the real reason as to why he & she feels like that since their reasons change on the proceeding chapters.​

Let’s first talk about Sena. At first, she was the typical dependent girl wherein she gets a lot emotional and everything when someone leaves her. There were a lot of scene wherein her emotions were displayed too. Some of her emotions were understandable, whereas some, I think, were a bit exaggerated. Actually, I got a bit skeptical with her personality at first. She was the cliché and typical shy and gullible girl, and I knew that she’d get bullied and such. I mean, she even agreed to help Nara with Jongin as well. I think it would’ve been better if she fought for something really hard instead of letting them just pass by. It makes the scenes unrealistic for me. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a girl as gullible as her these days. I don’t know. I just think that people have a lot of flaws, and Sena was just too perfect apart from being gullible, I mean. She’s smart, pretty, and she’s obviously attractive as many guys drooled over her. I don’t know. She just came out too typical for me. On the bright side, I was glad that she slightly changed eventually, specifically when she went to college. She was still an emotional-wreck, but she became more outspoken and a bit independent, which is a good thing of course. I would’ve loved it more if she really changed more drastically, to the point that we can really say that she matured; that she’s not the gullible and dependent Sena from before. She did mature though at the end of the story; however, she was still oversensitive of Kai. I would’ve preferred if she moved on from him instead, but it’s your story so…

As for Kai, well his character was the most confusing for me. For one, I was really angry at him for his change of feelings. It was clearly evident that he liked Sena from the very beginning, yet he agreed to Nara asking him out, and he didn’t even opposed. First of all, it didn’t look like he was irked or something. In fact, it was as if it’s fine for him, like he didn’t care for Sena at all. And then, his personality because more typical by the second. Before that, I remember that there was this scene where Kai and Nara were sitting beside each other on the couch, and they were clearly awkward with each other. But then Nara confessed, and Kai accepted. I was like ASDFGHJ, what happened? It would’ve been better if you started it with Kai and Sena be