Me Before You
written by wolfie-88
reviewed by layximi

Title: 10/10
I actually really like this title. It does a good job of embodying the major themes of the story, and ties together the heavy use of flashbacks in your story. Usually I wouldn’t like a title as cheesy as this one, but in this case, the title is very suitable and actually has a lot of meaning and purpose to your story.

Plot: 16/25

                8/10: Setting
                You’ve got a modern setting which is easy enough to construct, since it’s not really a far stretch for readers to imagine. I think you managed to stay pretty consistent with your setting, though I do feel like there are some instances where I felt you could have expanded a little on the details of certain settings in your story. For example, if they’re at school, mention the sounds of lockers closing and the crowded hallways. If they’re in a club, mention the music and the humid air. These kinds of little details really help to sell the setting of your story, and they build up vivid imagery for your readers to follow.

                2/5: Originality
                I wouldn’t say your story is entirely original. I mean, the arranged marriage trope has been done a thousand times over. The story I’m currently working on even involves arranged marriage. That alone isn’t necessarily an issue for me, and neither is the whole love triangle aspect. But, I feel like even with more micro details, where you could have afforded to stray from the typical formula, you chose to remain with the unoriginal route. Like, I’ve seen the whole, “My parents are pushing me to get married, so that’s why I married some random person” thing, a thousand times. You’ve got to sit back and reevaluate your own work from an objective perspective, and ask yourself which parts of your story haven’t been done before. Why would someone choose to read my story over someone else’s? Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Once you’ve consider these kind of things, you could start making changes to your story that will really help to improve your writing and strengthen your own writing style.

                6/10: Believability
                Some of your plot developments are slightly illogical. For example, right off the bat, you start off with a situation where Sunmi sees Taehyung and runs after him, mentioning that she missed him and wanted to speak to him before the wedding. Then like ten minutes later when he finally gives her the chance to talk, she suddenly says she doesn’t have the time. It just seems odd to me. Also, if you fall on the street and scrape up your knees, you get up walk your to the nearest bathroom to clean yourself up. Why would you burden random people by asking them to go get your bag which you forgot? Also, why would you even trust some random stranger to get your belongings in the first place? None of it made any sense. You need to stay realistic with your writing. Your characters need to use basic logic or else your characters are going to seem mindless. And also, I personally don’t find their reason for marriage very justifiable, but that’s just me being super knitpicky. I think the justifications behind your characters’ actions in general, are just not there. Like, even when you were explaining Taehyung and Sunmi’s first face to face interaction, you didn’t really explain why Taehyung was so suddenly infatuated with her, or why he treated her differently from the rest of the girls he’s dealt with. You could have explored the whole aspect behind why Taehyung found Sunmi’s helpless expression so intriguing. Their thought process just needs to be better fleshed out and explained to the readers so that it doesn’t seem like sudden or thoughtless. Also, this is just a minor gripe for me, but I really wished you had elaborated a little bit on what happened after Sunmi and Chanyeol made up at the end. You ended the story at such a crucial point, that it felt so abrupt and sudden. Even with movies, they never end at the . They dedicate at least ten to fifteen minutes going through the after affects. For example, with Finding Nemo, they didn’t end the movie as soon as Nemo reunited with Marlin. They showed a bit of their life afterwards, showing how Dory was now incorporated into their everyday life, and how Marlin has improved as a father, being overall less protective and restrictive. If you had done this, it would have really helped to resolve your story a lot better.

Characterization: 23/35

                2/5: Presentation
                I don’t particularly like the way you introduced your characters. Backstories are things you should be putting intermittently between your plot. By plainly stating your character’s whole background story in one quick passage, you take away any element of mystery surrounding your character. It’s lazy storytelling, and I don’t really understand the point of it, considering how long your story is. You literally have 75+ chapters. Why would you not just save that information and implant it into the actual plot of your story? Plus, a lot of what you mentioned in your intro actually gets mentioned in later chapters, so there’s really no point for your first three chapters. I’d heavily suggest axing them all together. Also, a lot of your characters come off very childish at times, which I assume is not what you want. I’m not sure if you noticed it, but I really think you should be more mindful of the age of your characters and make sure their thought processes are consistent with their age. I think what that comes down to, is that your characters yell a lot. Even when there’s not dialogue, they tend to yell in their heads, which comes off very childish. No normal person in their twenties yell that much. I go a little more into detail about your use of exclamation points later on, but just make sure you remember that every person thinks and talks differently. In your story, you seem to use the same speaking patterns and tendencies for all your characters. If you want to elevate your level of writing, then there needs to be minor variances between each character. From their thought processes, to their speaking tone, and even the pacing of their speech. Ideally, you want your readers to be able to tell whose perspective we’re reading from, even if you don’t have the POV explicitly stated.

                4/10: Development
                Your characters are pretty cookie cutter when considering how tightly you stick to cliché character traits. I really don’t see much in terms of character development. For example, yes Chanyeol’s feelings towards Sunmi change over time, but do his actions towards her, or his manor of speech change at all? In my opinion, the answer is no. Same with Taehyung. But Sunmi definitely has the least development in my opinion. You really spend no time with explaining the maturation she’s gone through from her relationship with Taehyung to her relationship with Chanyeol. With the way you set up your story, you could have easily used the opportunity to show her growth, but she seems to treat Chanyeol the exact same way she treated Taehyung. She makes the same mistakes with them both too. This makes it really hard for me to root for your main protagonist, since she really doesn’t make room to improve.

                17/20: Diversity/Purpose
                For me, it was really hard to grasp onto a driving force behind your plot. I mean, your story is slice of life after all, which is why I wasn’t really expecting there to be much driving force behind your work. And that’s perfectly fine, not all stories need that kind of push to keep readers interested. But, you have to keep in mind how long your story is. It can begin to feel a little repetitive at times, so try to implement more drama to better keep your readers interested. Also I really think your fillers chapters are unnecessary. Like I’ve said before, your story is already long enough as it is. There’s really no need to add fillers. It ends up just bogging down your work, and like with animes, no one really appreciates fillers. More often than not, they have a negative impact on your work.

Writing Style: 16/30

                5/10: Narration
                I think your overall formatting needs work. You should find a cleaner way to differentiate past and present day. Also, I don’t really understand the point of the little bunny icons and stars and stuff that you put in randomly in your chapters. Frankly, they muddle up the format of your work a little. I’d understand if they had a purpose or they represented something, but as far as I can tell, they serve no purpose. I’d just also like to mention, that I really like how you used flashbacks a lot in your story, I just wish they were better organized. For example, if you clearly set up two timelines, with the events in the past happening in chronology, as well as those in the present, it would have really helped to keep readers oriented. Obviously, in this case, you didn’t do this, which is also fine. But if you’re not going to organize your flashback in chronological order, then I strongly suggest you better transition your flashbacks into your present timeline. You need to explain why a certain flashback is relevant to the present timeline, otherwise it will just seem pointless and out of place.

                6/10: Consistency/Flow
                There’s something that I want you to try. It’s this writing exercise I did in high school, which really helped me notice how often I used to resort to the same sentence structures. Basically, take paragraphs of your work at a time, and isolate each sentence like this:

1. I stood up to get back in.
2. I felt like I was invading her privacy and not to mention the fact that what happened almost made me feel angry.
3. I had no right to but I was.
4. I entered the house and laid back at my previous spot.
5. Didn’t want her to know that I saw her leaving.

This is a direct passage out of your writing which I just copied and pasted for the sake of explanation. Now, with it set up like this, it’s easy to notice how repetitive your sentences become. For example, almost every single sentence started with “I”. Then, every sentence turns into “I [verb] to/and/but [noun].” This is way too similar, and it comes off as choppy to readers. Obviously you don’t have to do this exercise with every sentence in your story, but I think you should apply the concept into your writing by being mindful of each sentence relative to the next. This will really help with improving the flow of your story.

                4/10: Spelling/Grammar
                You have a lot of grammar issues. I heavily suggest you look into getting a beta reader. You particularly have issues with omitting conjunctions and verbs. For example, “No it’s okay I [will] pick one of the ones that I have already tried on! Which one [did] you think was better?” Also, anytime there is a different person talking, there needs to be a paragraph break, otherwise readers won’t be able to follow who’s talking. There were also quite a few times where I felt your use of exclamation points were completely inappropriate, so try to limit the amount of exclamation points you use (Seriously. Exclamation points should not be used every other sentence). Realistically speaking, if you had a friend that yelled as much as your characters do, you’d probably want to strangle them, so remember that those kinds of things carry over into your writing too. A general rule that I tend to use, is that if you say your dialogue out loud to some random person, would you be embarrassed to say it? If the answer is yes, then you should probably omit it, or find a better way to word it so it doesn’t seem as crazy. Also, make sure you stay either completely in past tense, or completely in present tense. Switching between the two is a big no no. Also work on the formatting of your story. Your paragraphs aren’t always evenly spaced, which is disorienting for readers. I’m not sure why you have colons in front of your dialogue so often. I heavily suggest you delete all colons within your story, because they serve no purpose where you’ve placed them.

TOTAL: 64/100