flowers and hope by clasicoustic



Criticism Level: 8

Title: 4/5
Your title, “Flowers and Hope”, isn’t too long or too short. Also, it has depicted what you are going to say on your story, that is, about flowers and their meaning in regards to hopes and stuff. But somehow, don’t you think that it’s too general? Flowers usually connect with romance and stuff while hope usually relates with some broken persons or souls. This might lead into some misinterpretations when someone first read your story title.

Description & Foreword: 7/10
Putting quotation is indeed a good start in hooking up people’s attention, but somehow I don’t know why you chose that Drucker’s saying, because I didn’t see any correlation between that quotation with your story. Probably, you can change that quote into something related with friendship. For example, “A friend in need, a friend indeed”. That is a very common quotation about friendship, but truthfully, that depicts more of your story rather than the one you chose. On the other hand, the rest of your description is relevant with what you are going to tell the readers.

Characters: 15/20
Actually some of the characters are well-written. They depict the lives of teenagers who are still craving for dreams and hope. Nevertheless, the main character himself doesn’t have a very special characterization. As a high schooler, a boy usually tends to be more expressive. What I mean is that, Baekhyun here is too calm for a guy his age. Let alone, he’s someone who has big dreams and his feet are his source to get that dream. Surely, he will get mad at everything around him, and especially at the situation that got him into it.

Plot: 10/20
To tell you the truth, I didn’t see any plot here. What I mean is that, usually in a story, you would find some problems, the ways to solve the problems, and in the end you would find the resolution. But in your story, I didn’t find any resolution. Probably your main focus is on the relationship between the main character and his friends. But, that’s it, nothing more. It will be a lot better if in the end you give some resolution, for example, everyone of his friends gave him flowers in hope for him to get well soon, right? By that, you can end the story with him being discharged from hospital or whatnot. Or you may twist it with none of the wishes and hopes come true.

Flow: 5/5
I didn’t see any inconsistency in the flow of your story. Although somehow your story went back and forth from today’s existence and the past, you gave it some signals by putting them in the brackets and/or italicized them.

Grammar & Vocabulary: 9/15
Truthfully, your way of choosing tenses is inconsistent. At first, you used past tense to tell your story, but suddenly you changed it into present tense. I don’t know whether you do that on purpose or not. But to tell you, although some people might think that grammar (in this term tenses) is not the main importance, for me it is important enough. Why so? Simple, it is because works of literature is very broad. Many people can interpret your work in so many different ways. Let alone, the changing of tense in a story will also have an impact in interpreting something. If you don’t have any intention to change that tense, then don’t. Not only in tenses, you also have some issues with articles and prepositions. For example, you said “I want our friendship will last forever”, instead of using the auxiliary ‘will’, it is supposed to use ‘to’. So, it should be “I want our friendship to last forever”. The word ‘want’ is usually followed with ‘to’, not any auxiliary.
And I can see that you are thinking the way to tell the story in your first language, right? Because, it can be seen by some lacks of preposition. For example, “His lips curved a smile”. Probably if you say that sentence in your first language, it does make sense, but in English, it seems like there’s something missing. Indeed, it should be “His lips curved into a smile”.
Other mistakes that you might probably be unconscious of, is that the phrase “it was” and “there were”. In present tense we can say “it is” into “it’s”, but the to be ‘was’ cannot be shortened. You can’t say “it’s” for “it was”. The same goes with the to be ‘were’. On the other hand, your diction, sentence structure, and also spelling are good enough. I didn’t see any misspelling or weird sentence structures.

Description & Emotions: 8/10
The story is quite descriptive. You could tell each event in a good arrangement. But somehow, you should dig more emotion in each character, especially the main character. For example, when he found the picture of his friends bringing the ‘get well soon’ thing, it could be better if you can portray more emotion within Baekhyun. For instance, “He opened the envelope, and it wasn’t something he had expected. Photos of his classmates ……….. with a letter said, GET WELL SOON BAEK, WE MISS YOU. He was tongue-tied. His eyes were damp, tears threatened to fall down. He felt his chest tight up, the effect of the feeling inside him. Being happy and touched. And that was when he realized that he was also needed.” Thus, if you give more emotion towards your character, you reader will also be more engaged in your story and it will be more lively.

Format (Graphics & Layout): 10/10
Everything’s good. The font is readable, while the graphic’s simple and gives the feeling of hoping some wishes to come true.

Overall Enjoyment: 3/5
Actually, I like this kind of story, in which it is talking about mere friendship and stuff. But somehow, I became uncomfortable because of your grammatical errors. But apart from that, I quite enjoy the flow of your story, even though I hoped for a twist at the end.

Total: 71/100 //B (+)
Try to be more consistent in writing a story. The more you switch, the more confused the reader will be.

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