Calling for meimei_nu

"A Heart of Ice Can Always Be Broken"

Author: meimei_nu

Main Characters: Kai, Chanyeol, Minhee

Genre: Romance, School Life

Status: On-going

Description of Story:
Kim Jongin. More known as Kai. The typical bad boy. He plays, causes trouble and spends money carelessly.
Park Chanyeol. The typical prince charming. He's charismatic, funny, romantic and a girl’s ideal man.
Both of them aren’t friends. But they aren't considered as enemies as well. So to put it, they’re just opposites that just can’t seem to get along.
Then comes a girl. Oh Minhee. She’s badass, rebellious and carefree. But, she wasn’t like that before. She changed… a lot.
She used to be one of those smart, obedient, quiet nerds.
Chanyeol is on a quest to find out why Minhee changed and how to change her back.
Will he succeed? Or fail?
And would there be a story between them? Perhaps... Romance?
Who knows...

    Critique:

Story Title: 4/5

It’s an interesting title. It’s unique and is a title that makes the reader’s brain work a little. To be honest, I feel like your title can become one of those quotes I see people post on social network or something, it’s just so very…deep and poetic, and I feel like I can write a full-on analysis on it. In fact, I might just do one right here and now.

I like the simplistic yet powerful meaning behind your title. After going through hardships and having burdens heavier and tougher than rock weigh down upon one’s shoulder, most tend to numb their once beating heart into freezing ice. Yet despite the ice being cold and seemingly unapproachable, in the end, ice is just ice; a thin and fragile substance that can always be broken. If one would only light up a match and approach the ice with it, then surely, the ice will melt and break away under the warmth of the glowing fire.

Anyway, the reason why I knocked off a point there is because, although I could see the relevancy of your title to the plot and the beautiful meaning behind it, it didn’t stand out that much to me initially. I only really processed your title in my brain after reading it the second or third time, and I don’t think readers will take the time to think about the meaning of your title when they scroll down the page. In my perception, I think it’s a title that could be easily missed in the sea of so many other different stories and titles.

 

Graphics: 7/10

To be honest, I imagined your graphics to be more greyish and elegant when I clicked onto your story, but what I got was full-on black everywhere. Now, I’m not saying that’s bad because it does suit the angsty feeling your title give out, but since I don’t see an ‘angst’ tag anywhere and your description and foreword doesn’t scream ‘angst’ all that much, I get this sense of misconception whilst reading your story. Is your story meant to be angst? Or is it not?

After reading through your story, I didn’t really see anything angsty or depressing in your plot. Although it’s not full-on fluff or comedy either, it just doesn’t scream ‘angst’. Now this is where it contradicts with your graphics, because though your plot doesn’t show me anything ‘angst’, your graphics does. Every single inch of it spells ‘angst’ or ‘depressing’ or ‘morbid’. The black background, the dark poster and the grey coloured font all makes me think that I’m about to dive into a depressing story which will surely squeeze some tears out of my eyes. So there I was, reading through your story and awaiting for that angsty moment to appear.

Who knows? You might really be aiming for an angst type of feeling, but I guess I’m just not receiving it very well. We’ll discuss this part later on in this review.

Anyway, graphics is a really important part of setting the mood for your readers. The first thing your readers will notice upon entering your story won’t be the plot, your description or even the short excerpt from your story. The first thing that will greet them is your...*dun dun duunnn*…that’s right, your graphics. So how you want the readers to perceive your story should reflect upon your presentation of the graphics. Right now, I’m having trouble figuring out whether your story is meant to be angst or not, so here I am, writing this section with a pounding heart, wondering if you actually were aiming for a depressing mood and yet here I am telling you all this junk.

But considering how I’m confused here, I guess there are other sections you need to improve on. We shall go through that later on in the review.

Anyway, if we set aside all that business about setting the mood and all that, your graphics overall is not bad. The background is clean and the poster was made nicely. Your font is readable and everything is set out and spaced evenly so that it’s not distracting to the eyes. Good job on that.

 

Description and Foreword: 8/10

Nothing much to say about this section. It’s organized, clean, neat and easy to understand. Your description was written quite well, and I liked how you spaced out everything. It makes the description more interesting to read, and it’s also a bonus to your graphics section as well. You leave cliff-hangers in both your description and foreword, and those cliff-hangers you left weren’t awkward or anything. In fact, I think it really sparked my curiosity into finding out what happens next.

But although you leave the right cliff-hangers at the right place, after reading your short excerpt, it kind of put me off a little in reading your story. Not because I’m against excerpts or anything, but more because your writing style is exposed in your excerpt. I shouldn’t go into detail on this here in this section, but I just want to point this out since it is a part of your foreword.

 

Characterization: 6/10

You characterization isn’t the best I’ve seen, but it isn’t the worst either. Hmm…How do I say it? Although I can sort of analyse each character’s personality, it’s kind of just based off on my own judgement about what they should be like. I wasn’t given a very clear answer as I read through your story, but it’s not like I’m completely lost either.

Firstly, I assume your title is relevant to Oh Minhee. She’s the one with the heart of ice that Chanyeol is striving to break. So if I were to compare title with character, I would be expecting a cold, frigid and emotionless girl whose actions would reflect her personality, meaning: minimal interactions with others; rarely smiles or make loud noises and absolutely almost nothing would affect her frosty attitude. This is the way I interpret a person with a ‘heart of ice’, but when I was reading through your story, Minhee seemed a lot more ‘alive’ than I had expected her to be.

Sure, there were those times where she ignored people or disregarded others, but she screams and pinches Kai, got interested in gossip when she was eavesdropping on Chanyeol’s conversation and all that. But this is a disappointment to me only due to my own biased judgement about how she should be like, so everything I wrote up there is on a highly personal level. I just want to point out that there may be readers like me who feel disappointed after already creating an image of Oh Minhee in their head, so what you can do, is to strengthen how you want the readers to perceive Minhee as.

Now, you did say in the description that she was a badass, rebellious and carefree girl, but the whole badass, rebellious and carefree girl thing didn’t stand out to me that much at all. I mean, she studies, she shows Xiumin around school and she doesn’t seem all that…bad? I see a hurt, scared even girl who’s struggling through life…but not necessary badass. If badass is what you want Minhee to be, that’s great! But I suggest you elaborate and accentuate the badness in Minhee’s character because it’s not coming through great (at least to me) right now.

About the other characters, it’s all the same case. You have a base and a structure for the characterization of your characters, but it’s just not filled up yet. So right now, your characters seem kind of empty…

For example, how is Kai the typical bad boy who plays, causes trouble and spends money carelessly? And Chanyeol, I need you to give me proof that he’s the typical prince charming. That he's charismatic, funny, romantic and a girl’s ideal man. I can’t see any solid evidence of the characters they’re meant to be, and although you only do have five chapters right now, I should be able to already catch a glimpse about their personalities. In fact, I should be able to already know what kind of characters I will be dealing with in this story from the very first chapter. Right now, I kind of feel like you’re just skimming through the plot without adding life to the characters.

I’m sorry if I sound harsh above, b