Calling for KpopotakuXD

"Her choice"

Author: KpopotakuXD

Main Characters: Exo Suho, A-pink Eunji, Shinee Taemin and SNSD Seohyun

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Status: On-going

Description of Story:
Suho - the leader of the popular boygroup, EXO - lives a cheerful and bright life. He has many friends and loves s and family. He is also loved by so many people. While on the other hand, a girl named Eunji has a awful life. At a young age, she lost her parents in a car accident, and was adopted. You could say that these two lives in different worlds... But who would have thought they were able to meet so unexpectedly?

 

    Critique:

Story Title: 2.5/5

Technically, your title was overrated. I have seen, read and searched multiple stories with the same title as yours. Some even had the same storyline. This situation is a bit critical since it would be hard for the readers to differentiate your story with the others of the same one. Titles are not copyrighted though, but in a reader's eyes, titles are important. See it this way. For instance, a reader had read a story with the title "Her choice", and she enjoyed it. Afterwards, she happened to stumble upon your story, which had the same title as the story she read previously. That may be a turn-off, or not, on your side, especially when the reader differentiated your story with what she knows. That's why as much as possible, your title should be unique, appealing, eye-catching, yet relevant to the story as a whole.

In addition to that, I also had an issue with the proper capitalization of your title. 'Choice' should be capitalized as well since it's a noun. Articles, prepositions and coordinating conjunctions are not capitalized in titles. Anyway, I'll have to give you a half score for this section because of the lack of originality and connection with the other elements of the story.

 

Graphics: 7.5/10

My first impression of your poster was actually nice. I like the ambience that it gives the people who sees it. The colors used were warm, and surprisingly, the editing was done nicely, though there were some faults as well. First of all, I have to issue with the background. It actually looks cute, and the fact that the raindrops on top of Eunji's head made it seem like her life was indeed gloomy. That's definitely a plus right there. Technically speaking though, the clouds beside should not be in that color since normally, the clouds' color changes to a graying color when it rains. That's a bit of a weird comment, but realistically, clouds do change its color when it rains. 

Secondly, I like their expressions, especially Eunji's. She looked pretty yet serious, and her hair was a bit messy (though it was still pretty on her), but the over-all effect of what she looked like in that poster gave her personality right away, and for me, that's definitely a plus. Joonmyun's picture was nice as well as I can portray him as an idol with that. I don't get why Seohyun and Taemin got to be included in the poster though when they weren't even mentioned in the description. Their inclusion kind of made the poster crowded, and at first glance, I was confused. I mean, I do understand that Taemin was Eunji's step brother and Seohyun was Eunji's best friend, but still, I think it would be better if the poster solely included the two main characters. Don't you think that Seohyun and Taemin would be better off if their appearances were due to your surprise?

On the bad side, I had an issue with their complexions as the difference seen made it seem like a collage of some sort. For instance, Taemin and Suho's pictures looked a bit realistic. I can tell that they were taken from high quality pictures. Eunji's picture though was a bit of a medium-quality one, and her face was a bit pinkish, which was contradicting to the other's complexions. It actually looked like a picture cut and taken from a magazine. The same goes to Seohyun, though her case was the worst of the four. Her picture looked like a standee, especially because of her fair. It really looked like it was cut from a magazine as well at first glance. Anyway, their pictures were taken differently, so that's understandable, though I hope that better pictures were included. Over-all, the poster had some loopholes, but you don't need to change it or something. I actually like it.

I'm not a poster reviewer or something, so please don't be discouraged with my words. I know that you didn't make this poster yourself, so I apologize to the designer, too, if he/she got offended in some way. However, this section was included in the over-all grading, so I had no other choice but to grade it. I'm sorry, but I hope you understand. Oh, and get a background as well. It would look better especially when a reader scrolls down. The page kind of looked dull as well without a background.

 

Description and Foreword: 6/10

One of the main issues that I encountered with your description was the lack of connection with the title. The connection between those two is important since they are usually the first two things that a readers looks for, apart from the graphics. For instance, the title talked about Eunji's choice, obviously, because of the pronoun 'her'. However, the description didn't necessarily talked about her choice whatsoever. It was only a brief summary of the plot, talking about both the main characters of the story. It would've been better if the last sentence talked about two paths that she may cross with that made her choose in between. Anyway, your description had some grammatical errors as well. I provide my revision though, but you're not required to use it. Here it is:

(Original Version) Suho - the leader of the popular boygroup, EXO - lives a cheerful and bright life. He has many friends and loves s and family. He is also loved by so many people. While on the other hand, a girl named Eunji has a awful life. At a young age, she lost her parents in a car accident, and was adopted. You could say that these two lives in different worlds... But who would have thought they were able to meet so unexpectedly?

(Revised Version) Suho—the leader of the popular boy group, EXO—lives a bright and cheerful life. He has many friends and loves s and family. Likewise, he is also loved by so many people. On the other hand, a girl named Eunji has a awful life. At a young age, she lost her parents in a car accident and was adopted. You could say that the two of them live in different worlds, but who would have thought that they were able to meet so unexpectedly?

I have noticed that most authors whom I made a review to had this common mistake, and that is the wrong distinction between a dash and a hyphen. Hyphens (-) are the very short ones that we only use sometimes to distinguish compound words, etc. Dashes, on the other hand, like commas, semicolons, colons, ellipses, and parentheses, indicate added emphasis, an interruption, or an abrupt change of thought. There are two types of dashes, which are the en dash (–), and the em dash (—). En dashes require spaces in between, whilst spaces are not needed for the em dashes. In your case, you used a hyphen to designate the pause in thought, which is wrong, hence the revision. I also removed, replaced and added a few words, though they're not really that important.

Anyway, like what I've said before, I don't quite fancy the delivery of the description. It didn't really connect with the title, and it wasn't that appealing enough. Nevertheless, I've got to praise you for organizing your main page with a fancy font, dividers, a trailer, etc. The only issue for me would be the sizes of the pictures placed and the relatively large amount of unnecessary space wasted, especially with the character chart. I'm not necessarily a fan of c.charts, but I do use them. I'd just have to say that they were too big. Try to compress them a little bit but don't make it crowded. As much as possible, save as much space as you can to avoid the burder of the potential readers from scrolling down too much.

The same goes for the credits' section, especially with the posters. You can just place the posters/banners in one line. Oh, and another tip: Try not to place the hyperlinks in a web address format. Try to place the actual name of those shops and hyperlink their addresses to it. I'm not sure if my terms are correct, but I hope you get what I'm saying here.

 

Characterization: 6.5/10

Your characterization was fine actually, but you need to work on some certain parts. For instance, I noticed that you hardly described their appearances. This one's quite important as it's better for your readers to understand their personalities by how they dress themselves. For instance, with a loose school tie and ed blazer, a reader will understand that that person was rebellious. You should also describe their actions and emotions as well. I hardly felt their emotions. For instance, try to elaborate Eunji's pain in a way that reaches a connection with your readers. You can't just say that she was feeling pain. Try to describe her feelings. Like what I've said from my previous reviews, SHOW; don't tell.

Suho's sudden declaration that he and Eunji were not friends at the last chapter was surprising. I did not expect that at all. His action was contradicting with how he previously acted in the past few chapters. For instance, there was those times when he acted like he was only using her. I'm not so sure myself, but I think he did intend that because of his smirks. Anyway, he did get a little bit careless with his decision especially when he declared Eunji as his girlfriend. That was also unexpected coming from the leader himself since he acted like the responsible yet clumsy leader on the first chapter, yet he acted like he was clueless and clumsy afterwards. It was like a different Suho. I do understand that