Dangerous Love
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dangerous love
After a six month coma, Erica’s life feels like it was restarted. Her boyfriend simply broke up with her as if it was nothing and she had to force herself to love a man who only loved her. She didn’t know the trouble she was getting into or the problems she’d face. She just knew she had to move on, but what if moving on was the worst mistake she could’ve made?
reviewed by: exoexoexolellel
Title (3/5)
I'm a little . . . torn by the title.
At the beginning, when I started viewing your story, I looked at the 'Dangerous Love' and thought "God, how cliche." No kidding through, type those exact words in AFF's custom search bar, and there are ten pages of results. If it's not a title of another fanfiction, it's a chapter title. It's too common, it's overused.
My disapproval of your title lasted pretty much the whole time I was reading your story. However, this instanatly changed when I read your epilogue in Chapter 16. It was an unexpected grenade that blew up in my face, because as unoriginal 'dangerous love' is, you as the author of Dangerous Love just claimed those two words and brought upon it mind-blowing significance. Suddenly, in the split of a second, 'dangerous love' is a perfect title for your story.
So it really comes down to whether I think deceiving the audience into thinking that your story title is dull inside-out before you set the bomb off in the end is an amazing manipulation aspect, or whether it's just not worth having the readers thinking "This is a great storyline, but I'm not sure about the title . . ." whilst in the middle of your chapters. The fifteen chapters before the last could turn the readers away. Personally, I am a huge fan of stories that reveal the meaning of the title right at the end, or somewhere unexpected in the story, plus the fact that I would have never guessed the significance of it. As astounding as your title is, I think that because your title is too common, it wouldn't lull the readers in, and they'd have to first get through the story to be blown away by your title.
Graphics (4.5/5)
I am overly fussy when it comes to graphics. I adamantly believe that every feature in the poster needs to hold some significance to the story.
The font and hue contrast between 'dangerous' and 'love' perfectly captures the difference between the two in all moral aspects considered. Now that I look back onto the title in your graphic having read the story, 'love' in its cursive, elegant font is practically taunting at everything else in the poster, looking all sweet and innocent outside and no trace of evil nor hoax.
I think it's neat to have Loco's figure facing the viewer, and only Zico's side profile visible. Portrays that there's more to Zico then there is to Loco to which the latter is just a poor man caught up in everything. To have Erica's back facing the viewer is also very effective, doesn't give much about her, and her position also shows her depressed stage. It's quite appropriate to have city buildings in the background under a night sky; most of the significant scenes in the story take place in the dark. Nothing in the poster raises a question mark above my head, and this is really good.
Then there's the quality of the poster. To sum it up, it's quite amateur, especially with the cropping of Loco. Despite the great representation the features of your poster offers, at an overall glance, compared to other graphics around, it wouldn't be winning aesthetically.
Description and Foreword: (7/10)
The dark red and black decoration seen in the description gives the story a very mysterious, dark atmosphere - definitely intrigued me at first sight. However, unless it actually has some sort of significance, you should take out the [CONTENTID2] Surround your text in your story with these tags to display it here [CONTENTID2].
There is conflict between past and present tense in the actual description iteself, and I have fixed it up for you as shown below. I have also corrected awkward wording, and added words to control the flow of the events revealed to the reader:
After a six month coma, Erica’s life felt like it was restarted. Her boyfriend simply broke up with her as if it was nothing and she had to force herself to love another man. However, Erica didn’t know the trouble she was getting into or the problems she’d face. She just knew she had to move on, but what if moving on was the worst mistake she could’ve made?
The description adds onto the title, giving it an insight of the dangerous situation Erica has gotten herself in. It doesn't reveal hints on plot twists, and certainly does not mention the groups behind the plans.
The poster in the foreword is nice, may intrigue some readers.
Story Layout: (3/5)
Indents are used in all novels at the start of a paragraph, because books aren't printed with a division between each paragraph. On AsianFanFics, the majority of us tend to hit Enter once to divide paragraphs, therefore indents are not necessary. However, if you do want to use indents, then they should be used for every new paragraph, and this includes dialogue.
When you skip forward in time or change perspectives, you should always hit Enter more than once to let readers know it's not a new paragraph. For example, in the first chapter, you should isolate "6 months later":
“Erica, Erica”, I felt him shaking me but I couldn’t respond for I felt too weak. Then slowly everything went black.
6 months later
My eyes slowly opened as I looked at my surroundings, it was nighttime and I could tell I was in the hospital.
To make it more noticable, you could embolden or italicise it, or input brackets.
Plot: (15/30)
The plot is very interesting, however, some ideas are cliche. There were plot twists that took me by surprise but they weren't the unexpected of the unexpected. Because most of the ideas presented in your story are all vaguely heard of, it makes your story seem bland. It's just a gang-related story instinct. Overall the story looks like you planned it out well.
The typical love triangle is the steering wheel of the story, with the events that happen between the three main characters deciding the course of Dangerous Love. I think having the gang controlling the actions and decisions of Loco and Zico has the readers on their toes, desperate to find out the identity of the gang - and onto the aspect of identities, we don't end up finding out exactly who is carrying out the orders. Readers are aware of who the puppet masters are, but not the ones who propose the threats.
In the end, we find out that Youngguk actually plays a pretty significant role in the story, so readers should know more about him either from when he first appears in the story, or in the end.
Characterization: (5/10)
Zico and Loco is well introduced and developed. Their character progression is very clear throughout the story.
However, I am really affected by Youngguk's role in the story. It was a little shocking to hear Erica state that Youngguk was her boss because the way she presented him was in a very dull, 'whatever' manner however, Youngguk doesn't deserve a 'whatever' introduction because we find him sliding himself into Erica's life, changing the love triangle into a love square.
Erica is a fake person so I don't feel the need to comment on her, and nothing much is revealed about the actual main character herself, which in the majority ways of looking at it, is quite a big problem.
That being said, the missing marks regard Youngguk's dull spotlight on both of his identities, and the empty description on the legitamate female lead.
Content Description (2/10)
There were a lot of missing description that left numerous of holes in your story. This heavily correlates to the flow of your story and I will be talking about that in the next category. As I read through your chapters, a lot of questions circled my mind, but I will be leaving that in the Flow category so it makes more sense.
Here, I want you to think about how you revealed the plan of the story to your readers. I think it is highly inapproriate on how you've presented it, and ended the whole story in a short epilogue. The three paragraphs feel like you've had your fun writing your story, and just want to end it as soon as possible. It is quite interesting to see Heesoo manipulating the boys as well as the readers, and to have Youngguk involved in it as well, but what about the background story? Who were her parents? Who helped her to achieve her mission other than Youngguk? I strongly suggest that you add another chapter showing us the new life of Heesoo.
Back to my statement of me finding your epilogue inappropriate. . . this is a personal thing really. It's strange to be reading through the main character, through a fake character, you know what I'm saying? I'm just thinking along the lines of keeping Erica's perspective of the story, with Heesoo's thoughts popping up from time to time. I reckon the Dangerous Love would be a better read if you kept Heesoo's identity a secret and gave us the character of Erica, and gave us confusing parts of "Once he turned his back, I stuck my tongue at him and mentally barfed from his touch." It would complicate things, but if you managed to get a good hold of it, you can sit back and laugh at us readers dying of confusion.
Towards the beginning of the story, there was a lot of telling rather than showing (assuming you know what this is), but that subsided nearing the end of the story. Furthermore, you have a standard vocabulary.
Flow: (0/5)
This is the weakest category of Dangerous Love. You sped up scenes that needed to be described for the reader's benefit, such as the three months between Erica waking up from her coma and the start of Chapter 2, where we find Erica in college and dating Loco. How did she cope in those three months? How did she meet Loco? How did she find out he loved her?
How hard was it to cope with HaNeul as a baby? Was it awfully stressing, frustrating, or blissful? How did Erica meet Bang Youngguk? How did Erica and Jenna become close?
This is the weakest category of Dangerous Love. You sped up scenes that needed to be described for the reader's benefit, such as the three months between Erica waking up from her coma and the start of Chapter 2, where we find Erica in college and dating Loco. How did she cope in those three months? How did she meet Loco? How did she find out he loved her?
How hard was it to cope with HaNeul as a baby? Was it awfully stressing, frustrating, or blissful? How did Erica meet Bang Youngguk? How did Erica and Jenna become close?
The questions go on and on. No matter how badly you want to skip to the parts in the story that you want to write about, you have to be mindful of your readers. After all, it is us you are entertaining.
Slow down. Why rush? AsianFanFics offers plenty of space for authors to write in. Play around with the readers' curiousity, order the characters around. The little things are just as important as the major scenes.
Grammar: (9/10)
Grammar is up to notch. There are only a few things that you should be aware about:
Grammar is up to notch. There are only a few things that you should be aware about:
Throughout your chapters, I found a lot of "their" when it should be in fact 'there'.
When you put an action verb before a character's dialogue, a comma or period would be missing. Here's an example from Chapter 9: Part.9 DON'T BE TRUE:
Quote: Mr. Bang did a light laugh then walked towards the kitchen exit “Goodnight.”
I smiled “Good night Young Guk-shi.”
I smiled “Good night Young Guk-shi.”
Correction: Mr. Bang laughed then walked towards the kitchen exit. “Goodnight.”
I smiled. “Good night Young Guk-shi.”
I smiled. “Good night Young Guk-shi.”
Taste of the Story: (3/10)
Overall, I like the mastermind idea, and how you fooled all readers. It's not something I would call original, but I was quite intrigued by the idea. I also like how you told how the significance of the title: Dangerous Love. Unfortunately, the lightning speed of the story with the ample amount of missing description really turned me off as I couldn't enjoy the story to its full extent.
Overall, I like the mastermind idea, and how you fooled all readers. It's not something I would call original, but I was quite intrigued by the idea. I also like how you told how the significance of the title: Dangerous Love. Unfortunately, the lightning speed of the story with the ample amount of missing description really turned me off as I couldn't enjoy the story to its full extent.
But finishing a story is always a challenge, so well done for that :).
TOTAL: (51.5/100)
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