Calling for aibeast

"Summer Bullets"

Author: aibeast

Main Characters: Ljoe, Chinji and Niel

Genre: Angst, Drama, Fluff, Romance, School Life,

Status: Completed; One-shot

Description of Story:
First love was always beautiful and hot.
Everything looked sparkly, their eyes, the sky and their smiles.
The throbbing need to confess how they felt was boiling over and their heartbeats were on a rampage.
A coy grin was plastered on their face as their fingers tingled with excitement.
But what if their long awaited confession never happened.
What then.
Well in Summer Bullets, words are just a tool.
He never confessed so could it be, that happy ending was ahead.

 

  Critique:

Story Title: 3/5

"Summer Bullets" isn't necessarily enticing for my liking. It does sound unique on its own way as you relayed bullets in summer. However, it did sound too fluffy, contradicting your deep and descriptive writing style. In addition to that, I think the chapter title you used is more appropriate to be your story title instead. "Evanescent" is a simple yet sophisticated word/adjective that means a soon passing out of sight, memory, or existence. It's a very deep word, and I think it suits your story in entirety, especially since that was quite important in the story as Chunji once asked the meaning of that word, and Byung explained that it was "a poetic word, something that fades quickly. Inside our memory or in reality. Like this summer, so quickly slipping away from our grasp that we could barely hold on to them precious memories."

All in all, though Chanhee did give him bullets at the end of the story, I still think that "Evanescent" would be a better choice for a title. Truth to be told, as a reader, "Evanescent" sounds enticing enough to make me read your story. Nevertheless, I am not forcing you to change your title whatsoever. This is purely based on my opinion.

 

Graphics: 3.5/10

Like what I've been telling the past authors of the stories that I have reviewed before, I am not a professional poster reviewer nor a designer. I am simply just a story reviewer, who can try to review posters as well though. Nonetheless, I am not a professional in reviewing this field, so please excuse me if I offend you or someone else of that matter. I am only doing my job, especially since you included this section in the over-all critique, so I had no other choice but to include this in the grading. I hope you understand that. Anyway, let's start.

I'm not particularly a fan of your graphics in general to be honest, though let's talk about your poster first. The background was fine. The set-up was a beach, and we could already tell that the setting of the story was indeed during summer, at the beach. The poster was very bright as well, which gave us a vibe that says the story has a bit of a fluff and romance going on in the actual story. However, if you look at the characters, you'd notice that their outfits were not of summer. I mean, come one, it was summer yet they were wearing leather and flashy jackets and stuff that would obviously kill them with the heat going on during summer. If the story is of fluff as well, then the pictures used for the characters should be at least cheerful, so as to tell us that the story was indeed fluffy as well. Although the two of them looked handsome and all, L.Joe looked really uncomfortable within the poster, and it was really weird.

Apart from that, I also noticed the three bullet holes that surrounded the title. Well, I'm not particularly a fan of the color used for the title either as it was too bright. It would've been better if a semi-dark blue color was used, or maybe a similar color with the beach water, though a tad darker. The quote was also unreadable, and the bullet holes didn't necessarily complement the whole poster. In fact, they seemed to make it messy. I also noticed the mismatching poster and background used. Your BG was really dark and gloomy, which was extremely contradicting with the bright poster you've got there.

I do recommend on getting a new set of graphics, especially since they were mismatching and that frankly speaking, it doesn't attract enough attention. As much as possible, talk to the designer and tell her the details of what you envision your poster to look like. There were a lot of loopholes in your graphics, and even if we say that they're not that important, they are. Those will help you gain more readers in the future as some readers do read a story when they get attracted by fancy posters. That's the painful truth.

 

Description and Foreword: 7/10

I'm kind of neutral with your description. It did sound a bit enticing since it emitted some kind of curiosity out of me, but your description was utterly confusing. At the first till the middle part, I assume that you were talking about two boys (L.Joe and Chunji) who were both likely to confess their feelings with each other. However, that confession never happened and the next scene was a mystery. The last part, however, pertained to only one boy (as the 'he'), which was really weird as your used a singular pronoun instead of a plural one that you most likely used for the preceding lines. What I'm trying to say is that it was confusing since you jumped from explaining a scene involving the two of them, then you jumped into explaining only one of them. It was a bit inconsistent if you ask me.

There were grammatical errors present in your description, which might inflict some effect on your readers once they read it. I highly suggest that you correct those mistakes as soon as possible, especially since you have to make your description as perfect as possible so as to reassure your readers that your story is worth reading. It's basically giving your readers a lasting impression for your story. Anyway, here's my revised version of your description, and below it is a brief explanation of my changes, and it includes the things that I want you to fix and stuff, just so that your main page will look more pleasing to the eyes.

(Revised Version)
First love was always beautiful and hot.
Everything—the sky, their eyes, and their smiles—looked sparkly.
The throbbing need to confess how they felt was boiling over and their heartbeats were on a rampage.
A coy grin was plastered on their faces as their fingers tingled with excitement.
However, what if their long awaited confession never happened? What then?
Well, in Summer Bullets, words were just a tool.
He never confessed, so could it be that a happy ending was ahead?

There were really minor revision and one of two major ones. First of all, you didn't properly end your sentences with the proper punctuation. For instance, some of your sentences were questions, yet you ended them with periods. That is really wrong. You could also use dashes to group some words with regards to the subject/object that you want them to portray to. Apart from that, there were missing words and commas here and there as well, like proper prepositions and stuff. Just try to correct your grammatical errors especially in your description/foreword as creating a great first impression with it is most preferable!

The font colors used for your description was a definite no-no as well. It was too bright, and using that with a white background is definitely one that you should avoid doing. The background was already bright, so overlap it with another bright color? That just made your text difficult to read, and that would really burden some of your readers, so I suggest you change it. As much as possible, try to stick with the plain-old black font. Yes, it's simple, but it's more presentable instead of putting more colors into your text. Try to avoid putting too much unnecessary spaces, too. Your lines were too far away from each other, and honestly, that made your description/foreword section messy.

 

Characterization: 9/10

It's been a while since I last reviewed a story with nice characterization. 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. In particular, good characterization gives readers a strong sense of characters' personalities and complexities; it makes characters vivid, alive and believable.

Personally, I think you've achieved this part quite well. You created characterization by choosing details that made your fictional characters seem life-like and individual. Their appearance, thoughts, actions, emotions, and motivations were well-described and explained, making us, the readers, understand the story even better. I also like how you didn't directly tell us their personalities and let us discover them step by step, and it wasn't difficult to do that either. If I would have to point out something, then that would be the use of your dialogues to allow a character's words to reveal something about his nature. It's not really that big of a problem though. It's just that I think you focused too much on describing that you didn't necessarily acknowledge their lines.

So basically, Byung was really curious and had a bit of a "free will." He was also the first to give in between him and Chanhee as he even unconsciously followed him after classes. The descriptions of what he thought of Chanhee had proven that part out. Chanhee, on the other hand, was a simple man. That's quite understand that as he lives to serve his country, with him being a soldier. There's nothing pretty much more to say, but I am sure that you did well for this section.

Apart from that, I also noticed that you used Chanhee's nickname, Chunji, at some parts of your one-shot, though you only used them two times, and I think you only did that out of getting carried away with the story. I think you should use Chanhee instead as there wasn't any indicated importance pertaining to "Chunji."

 

Plot: 33.5/40

To be quite honest, your plot wasn't that original. There are countless stories with the same plotline as yours, and it was to no surprise once I finished reading your story. I kind of known the ending afterwards as well since you kind of stated it already in the description. However, the way you delivered the plot was superb, and even though the story was already known to me, I still enjoyed it, and it did flutter my heart during the ending. 

The delive