"Meant to be"

Author: MorrocanBlackDragon

Main Characters: Kim Minseok, Luhan, Lim Jun Myun, Kim Jong Dae, Oh Sehun, Zhang Yixing (3 main couple)

Genre: Action, Angst, Drama, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Romance, ,

Status: On-going

Description of Story:
Everything started in a summer break in Busan. Luhan went there to change air and ended by falling in love with someone he bumped into. However, the someone in question won't get hold of this beautiful feeling until he buys a beautiful house near his shop.

 

 

  Critique:

Story Title: 2/5

Personally the title didn’t really capture my attention. It’s a cliche title, really. If it were something more attention grabbing then I would be immediately in, but I wasn’t.

 

Graphics: 4/10

The graphics are quite simplistic. They aren’t particularly eye-catching. I literally just took a glimpse of them and continued on, but don’t be disheartened!

 

Description and Foreword: 4/10

I would have liked slightly more detail in the forward, while short sentences are usually quick to catch the eye, this didn’t really have me overly curious about how the story was going to progress.

 

Characterization: 5/10

I’ll be honest here. I honestly didn’t see as much build of character as I expected to, mainly because you were using far too many characters in the story, if you were to stick to the original plot as you mentioned in your summary you would have had more room to play around with your characters [Minseok & Luhan]

As a result of using all your characters [With the intention of giving them all a part in the story] I was quite lost and confused sometimes.
In my opinion there was just too much going on. But that is just my opinion, so don’t take it to heart ^^

In summary, it was okay but could have been more focused, as I like reading fic’s with one or two main pairings no more than that.

 

Plot: 25/40

Despite everything [and the use of too many characters] The plot seems quite promising [Considering you haven’t finished it as of yet ^^] I will say I liked the change of YIxing’s character. Your scenes were written well, it is no secret that many writers have issues with writing realistic scenes, however you did well at it.

The reason you lost some marks here was because of what I said above, there was slightly too much going on which took away from the original pairing [Xiuhan] In summary, it was done well enough, but try not to take away the story from the original purpose ^^

 

Consistency: 3/5

Again, coming back to my original points, it flowed well enough but there was a lot happening, and took away from the original plot.

 

Readers' Response: 5/5

I can see that you have many great readers out there supporting you, so don’t be discouraged by my review ^^ Keep Working hard.

 

Additional Comments

(From yeolwho05: "I'm so sorry. I forgot that I assigned your request to another one, so I kind of started it, but yeah. I didn't manage to finish it, and I didn't want it to go to waste, so here is my critique. Don't worry though. I only managed to finish typing four sections.)

Story Title.

To be honest, I wasn't a fan of your title. Why? First and foremost, "Meant to be" is one of the most overrated titles that I had even come across with in Asianfanfics. I have also heard of that phrase for multiple times in my lifetime, so when I saw your title, I was like, "Oh. This again." Yeah. It was unoriginal in my opinion, and even though it clicks with your plot line, it wasn't enough to entice a reader once he/she read your story title. 

A few rules that you have to remember when choosing the right title are:

The title must not be dull. The title must be easy to remember. The title must be appropriate.

Furthermore, your title must make your readers feel something, like giving them some sort of connection with it. Likewise, they shouldn't be like, "Meehh? Nnngh? Muh?" Think about this. Will your readers remember your story through your title? If it's too generic, there's a high possibility that they'll forget it. Come to think of it, I think your title is generic. On the other hand, if it's too precious and complex, there is also the possibility of the title remaining out of the reader's reach. Remember that the title must pop and stand out.

Anyway don't worry. I'm not necessarily telling you to change your title. In fact, these comments above are just based on my opinion.

Just one, final thing though for this section. You should properly capitalize your title. It should be "Meant to Be" instead of "Meant to be." In titles, the first and last word, regardless of its part of speech, should be capitalized. The same goes for all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions. On the other hand, "to," as part of an infinitive, articlesm prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions must be in lowercase. In your title's case, "to" must be in lowercase, which you got correct, whilst "be" should be capitalized since it's the last word of the title and it's a verb.

Graphics:

Okay, so I wasn't a fan of your poster either. Sorry about that. It's just that it looked like it was rushed of something. I mean, the pictures used for the characters looked like they were simply cropped and placed here and there. Those pictures were even taken from pictorials. Basically, it looked a bit mismatching and recklessly done, and I didn't see that "Meant to Be" in that title, literally and relatively. I mean, the visibility of your title is very important in your poster. From how I saw it, it wasn't that visible in my eyes, and the first thing that one's eyes will catch is those pictures. I believe that it has something to do with the colors used. The background was blue since it pictured the sky, and the font color used is very much similar with that color too.

Furthermore, I don't see the point of placing six characters in the poster. It was obvious that Minseok and Luhan were the main characters from how their pictures were the largest. They were even the ones relayed in the story description. Needless to say, putting Jongdae, Joonmyun, Sehun and Yixing in the poster is pointless, you know. I understand that they're also one of the characters you mostly focused on, but it's more important to focus on the main pairing.

Most importantly, I didn't feel the "romance" from your poster, which was the main genre of the story. Using EXO's pictures from pictorials doesn't help either. It didn't depict any love of some sort, to be honest. 

I do believe that you should request for another graphics, though it's completely your choice to do so. To tell you t