Calling for Lady_Ainee

"A Piece of Eternity"

Author: Lady_Ainee

Main Characters: Jung Yonghwa (CNBlue) and Seohyun (SNSD)

Genre: Fantasy/Supernatural, Romance

Status: Completed

Description of Story:
A story about an old woman given the chance to go back to youth and live life for one last time.

    Critique:

Story Title: 4.5/5

I have nothing much to say at this point. I absolutely love your title. Originality-wise, I'd say not that much as I'm sure that there are other stories with the same title as yours; Google proved that one. However, the title really suited the story in entirety. I mean, wow. It even sounds enticing yet intriguing in a way that I already wanted to read your story after seeing that title. Anyway, the title's nice. It gave off the romantic and angsty feeling from the title. In a nutshell, it was absolutely a perfect choice for your story. Good job!

 

Graphics: 5/10

I kind of didn't fancy the poster that much. I do admire it for being animated, and those animations made sense, by the way. However, those effects weren't really appealing. The main picture portrayed in that poster was Seohyun looking at the mirror and there were pictures of her being young then old, right? It would've been better if the picture of her looking at the mirror is the same with the picture placed in the mirror so that it would be obvious that she 'is' indeed looking at the mirror. Moreover, it would've been better it those pictures in the mirror matched the background of the poster so that they'll both complement each other. I also did not understand the flickering effect at the bottom page with Yonghwa. The picture above and the one below didn't complement each other that well either.

In my opinion, I think a poster with only Seohyun and the mirror would do. I don't really see the point of putting Yonghwa there since it's more important to execute the main idea of the plot, which was Seohyun returning to youth and experiencing life once more. The background was fine as well, though it didn't look that enticing either as all I could see were mirrors, but maybe it's just me. Anyway, I do suggest that you request for another poster and background, but that's completely your choice. I'm not forcing you or anything.

 

Description and Foreword: 7.5/10

Your description was great. What I liked the most was the fact that you didn't use the typical type of point of view. Instead, you used the Spirit of Time's point of view. Moreover, The way you executed your description was really intriguing and mysterious. I really like it. It's not everyday that I get to read descriptions like that. My only issue would be the grammatical errors present, particularly your use of tenses. To be specific, below is your original version and my revised version. There will also be a brief explanation of the changes that I made afterwards.

(Original Version) In one of my daily strolls here in the word of the livings, I came across this human. Her name is Seo Joohyun, a sixty seven-year old woman. She had this unsatisfied heart because she thinks that time neglected her. She's a soul in misery....I feel sorry for her that I decided to give her a chance.....to return to youth and experience life once more.

(Revised Version) In one of my daily strolls in the word of the livings, I came across this human. Her name was Seo Joohyun, a sixty-seven-year-old woman. She had this unsatisfied heart because she thought that time neglected her. She was a soul in misery. I felt sorry for her that I decided to give her a chance: to return to youth and experience life once more.

First and foremost, I removed 'here' from the first sentence. I mean, there was no point in placing it since she was relaying something that had nothing to do with where she was at the moment. Did that make sense? Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it would sound better if she was relaying something that happened beforehand that had nothing to do with where and when she is as she's relaying something. If that still didn't make sense, just try removing the word and you'll see how much change it does. Secondly, you should use past tense for the entire description since the Spirit of Time was relaying that description from the past. That was proven with the very first sentence with the word 'came'. Moreover, present tense wouldn't suit that description.

Thirdly, for the phrase 'a sixty seven-year old woman', there should be hyphens between those words. Remember that you should hyphenate when the age is an adjective that comes before the noun and modifies the noun, or when the age is a noun. Other than correcting the tenses, I also removed the excessive dots for the ellipsis and simply put periods and/or semi-colons.

Will she learn something from this new journey? Will she find the thing that would complete the emptiness she's feeling? Or will love blossom in her heart in the presence of Jung Yonghwa, the youngman who lives next door?

Like you, I'm curious too. So let's both watch over her....

There's nothing much to change in this part; however, I feel like it doesn't suit the first paragraph. First and foremost, like what I've said before, it seemed like Yeongwon was saying something from the past. I don't know. I just felt it. However, at this point, it was as if the scene was only happening right now, which made me a bit confused. Anyway, if you get what I'm meaning, then it's best to make it a bit mysterious in a way that you're portraying Yeongwon as someone who already knew what was about to happen. Did that make sense? Teehee. Anyway, the phrase 'the thing that would' should be replaced by 'someone who would' since she wasn't looking for a thing. She was looking for someone, am I right? 'Youngman' should be separated by a space as well.

(Original Version) Who am I, you're asking? Well.......Just call me, Eternity (Yeong Won).....The Spirit of Time.

(Revised Version) Who am I, you're asking? Well, just call me Eternity (Yeong Won), the spirit of time.

For this one, I only removed those excessive dots right there and placed the proper punctuations. Ellipses are used like that. An ellipsis proves to be a handy device when you're quoting material and you want to omit some words. As a tip, try to prevent yourself from using too much ellipses.

 

Characterization: 7/10

Okay, let me start this with spazzing. I mean, I loved how the cast of Running Man was included in your list of characters. I mean, I saw Gary's name on Chapter 2, so I got a bit of a hunch from there, but my theory was proven right once I saw Sukjin's name. Teehee. I'm a big fan of Running Man; that's why. Anyway, let's talk first about the Spirit of Time a.k.a Yeong Won. I was very glad that he/she wasn't the typical fairy godmother/father type of person. That would be very cliche, and oh boy; how I hate cliche scenes. Moreover, he (let's just stick with he even though he's not male nor female) seemed like he wasn't a biased person, though the fact that he chose Seohyun out of all people got me questioning his persona. You see, Seohyun's case wasn't that really deep, in my opinion, so I don't think her past had a solid foundation as to why out of all people, the Spirit of Time himself chose her. I don't know. Maybe it's just me yet again, but that's exactly how I felt from the very first chapter.

First of all, characterization is the drawing of the personalities of the characters involved in your story. This often starts with the discussion of how those people look like, or by how they act to certain situations in the plot or in many ways. Let's start off with the appearance. I may have felt like you lacked at some point for this one. Your description with regards to their appearances were too simple and short in my opinion. I was actually looking for a more descriptive lay-out of how they look and whatnot. Rather than simply saying that one is pretty or gorgeous, you should've at least gave maybe not all but more details. For instance, Yeong Won gave Seohyun a mirror after she drank the water from the Fountain of Youth, am I right? However, you just stated that Seohyun felt overwhelmed and amazed at the same time that she couldn't say anything. Rather than saying that she only felt overwhelmed and amazed, you should've explained and compared her young self from her old self, at the very least. At some point, even if she was speechless, she should've mentally compared herself from before seeing how a miraculous thing happened. After all, it all happened all of a sudden, right?

On the other hand, they reactions were pretty evident, showing off their personalities more. For instance, based from Seohyun's actions, she was pretty much clumsy and clueless of a lot of things considering the fact that she isolated herself from the world after building up her hate for her failed, first love. Although I like her character, she seemed to be the typical clumsy and clueless girl in most books or stories. She had flaws, fortunately, but they were too typical that I started to question her characters. For one, she grew up for most of her years alone, to which she should've became more independent, right? Moreover, based from the proceeding events, she acted a lively than necessary. I mean, she grew up with hate and sorrow from her failed first love (Taehun), so she should've been a bit depressed; if not, then maybe a bit down and stoic? Nevertheless, her parents would've died at some point, leaving her alone. You did mention something about her parents dying and Seohyun firing all the employees, right? I don't know. There were so much questionable things for her character that I can't really enumerate at the moment. I hope I'm making sense though.

I think it was chapter eighteen or nineteen, but I absolutely loved the scene where you compared Taehun from Yonghwa. Other than the fact that it cleared a lot of things, it was fun to see how the comparison enlightened Seohyun that she realized her feelings even more. However, the scene where Yonghwa confronted Seohyun of who she really was got me a bit confused yet again. To put it simply, I was shocked that Seohyun took the confrontation easily. I mean, she didn't seem nervous or anything. In fact, she seemed ready of the said confrontation. I do understand her if she was indeed ready, but I needed a reason. Why? Why was she ready? Has she prepared for this occasion beforehand or anything? Simple things like this can build up confusion.

Also, there was this minor issue that I'd like to discuss with you. I noticed the way your characters call the other characters. For example, there was this line: "Husband, he just arrived....let's talk about it later...." Don't you think it was a bit weird to call you husband like that? I do understand that in Korea, 'husband' is called 'yeobo', right? So if you romanize it, it is indeed 'husband'. However, it sounded too stiff and robotic in my opinion. I didn't feel any sort of endearment from that. This case would be understandable, but let's take a look at another line:

"What is it, village head?" he asks.

This one was still a bit awkward for me. I do understand that this can be romanized yet again. However, we are using the English language here, and we don't usually call someone like this, now do we? Commonly, you should've put it like Mr. ___-sshi or simple Mr.___. That would've sounded better, in my opinion. Other than that, all is fine for me.

Oh. I would also like to discuss something regarding Yeong Won, or any other spirits or gods there. In chapter two and onwards, you used gender-neutral pronouns for those spirits or gods, right? Personally, I have no issue with gender-neutral pronouns, but 'ne' and 'nim' were just... confusing a bit that they kind of irked me. You could've simply used 'he'. Anyway, they did confused me at some point. Sometimes, I forgo