Glass Corpse
Story by --choimiah
Reviewed by ioyrene

Title: (4)/6
I really like this title. It’s one of those titles that I know will have significance later on, which I’ll have to figure out. It isn’t common and it doesn’t have an obvious relationship to the story, so it is definitely a title that I would click on when browsing for something to read. The only thing I would suggest is to not reveal the meaning behind your title so early on in the fic (in the trailer and in chapter 2), because it is often engaging to allow readers to figure it out.

I was also constantly confused by the relationship between the title and the story itself. I understand the “glass” part, which emphasizes the Youngjae’s fragility, but I couldn’t wrap my head around why you used the word “corpse” when Youngjae is trying so hard to stay alive. Instead of “I’m a glass corpse in a word of jagged edges,” you could instead use the potential Youngjae has to become a glass corpse, because he isn’t dead yet. You could also imply that Youngjae is dead on the inside, but the instances where glass corpse is mentioned doesn’t really imply that.

Description/Foreword: (2.5)/8  
I am a huge fan of simplistic descriptions because I often find that they force me to ask more questions and draw me in further. However, upon further analysis, I found a few things that could be worked on.

First off, I thought the description was lacking the content needed to draw people, or at least me, into a story. Although vagueness is often desired in a description to leave readers guessing, not giving any hints towards what exactly his “situation” is may not attract enough attention to readers. I mentioned earlier that simplicity often forces me to ask more questions; however, it is important for your description to force readers to ask meaningful and focused questions that are particular to your story. For example, the question “what is Youngjae’s strange situation?” could be asked for many stories, whereas something like “how does [some event or some sign] affect Youngjae’s situation and what does it mean?” is a question that is more catered towards this story.

Another thing I noticed was that the description of Youngjae followed the first bit of the first chapter very precisely, and much of the information felt like a repetition. I will go into more detail on this in the characterization section, but repetition is often what bores readers (unless it is with a creative purpose) so there must be extra care to deliver information scarcely, but well.

There also may have been a typo in your second sentence:

“Strange circumstances land him in an even stranger position, forced to believe and trust.”

Whom/what is he forced to believe and trust?

I never give marks for trailers because a trailer’s artistic quality has little correlation with your writing, but I did notice that the trailer captivated me to the story more than the description did strictly because of its content. There was one frame that said “marking you,” and this intrigued me far more than the description. What did the mark mean? How will it affect Youngjae and what situations will it put him in? A mark has so much mystery to it and I would strongly suggest mentioning a mark in your description.

A trailer is super cool, but, in my opinion, it should not replace the information given in your description.

One last thing: you may not agree with me on this, but when I write stories, I often avoid using specific medical terms or mythological creatures in my tags or the description. Medical terms can sometimes define a character (I will mention this later) rather than the character’s personality traits representing them. The condition is often not a relevant trait until a situation arises where the medical condition becomes a problem. When it does become a problem, there will be more surprise for readers when they learn that Youngjae is a hemophiliac vs. if they knew beforehand. As for using names of creatures, like your werewolf tag, I would suggest against this because of how much information the term “werewolf” already gives us about the characters once we know they are werewolves. It may possibly be more interesting if that information is revealed later on in the story. Delaying information you are eager to reveal is often more compelling than announcing the information all at once.

Presentation: (2)/2
The story was readable, so the points here are pretty self-explanatory.

Plot: (11)/25
The plot definitely had a lot of potential. Although I would usually warn people of using werewolf/vampire AUs, since there are some very commonplace attributes to all stories with mythological creatures, I enjoyed your story more because of how it was centred around the development of Youngjae’s family and relationships rather than the action of the society Jaebum was in. The different focus of your fic is what drove me to continue reading it until the end (instead of stopping at 10 chapters), despite my usual fear of werewolf/vampire AUs and how many fics are lined up in my queue.

One major thing you could definitely improve on is pacing yourself, both with Youngjae and Jaebum’s relationship, and the plots you started. I understand that writing is really exciting and you really want to tell readers how things are gonna turn out and that everything is going to be okay, but this is super key. The main problems to be resolved that I found in your plot were the main relationship, Youngjae’s family situation, and Jaebum’s family situation. I found that only two of these situations were resolved, the last one was left hanging, and the resolved situations were both rushed.

Youngjae and Jaebum’s relationship, as you pointed out in the comments section of the form, was definitely rushed at the beginning, although it progressed nicely afterwards. The main thing I could not get out of my head was that, after Youngjae had just seen Jaebum murder a man (that we still don’t know the identity of) in front of his eyes, he was not freaked out to the level that he should’ve been when Jaebum confessed his love to him. The best way to know whether or not the relationship flowed well or not is to imagine yourself in Youngjae’s situation. How would you feel in that situation, and when would you feel comfortable enough to open up? In my opinion, Youngjae should have been a lot more precautious around Jaebum and possibly even feel disgusted for his odd bouts of attraction towards Jaebum at least until he has the dream where he realized Jaebum had saved him. Even then, it would make sense for Youngjae to question his feelings, not just sometimes, but nearly every time he blushes or feels flustered by Jaebum, and try to stop the feelings. This stood out even more to me because of Youngjae’s history with abuse; I would expect Youngjae’s relationships to move more slowly than normal so that he doesn’t hurt himself trusting the wrong person again.

Youngjae’s family problem felt rushed because of how quickly readers were shoved into the situation. The first time we meet Youngjae’s father is in the call, and then after he had been kidnapped. All we knew going into that situation was that Youngjae called him a smoking motherer and a psychopath, but we were never shown what his father was really like. What did his father do for a living? What made him a psychopath? This is more of a character problem, but his father seemed like a flatter character than what he had the potential to become, besides the scene with the wooden horse. In my opinion, this plotline would have been stronger with more of a buildup and explanation as to why he was so frantic to find the ring. Then after not being able to find the ring, the plot would’ve benefited from waiting a bit longer before having Youngjae kidnapped, to draw out more suspense. The family problem seemed like it was solved far too quickly for the amount of turmoil it caused Youngjae.

The resolution for the family problem was also an issue because it was factually incorrect, so this will probably need to be revised. In court, the defense and prosecution always gets a chance for interrogation and rebuttal, no matter what. This is usually why trials take so long. Neither the bailiff or judge ever questions a witness (only the prosecution or defense attorneys do), and the witness must always be sworn in before questioning. Trial procedures are quite confusing at first, but it is really important to make sure they are correct. The main point of resolution to this that put Youngjae’s feelings to rest is that his father could not have been his genetic father if hemophilia were genetic. However, this is actually incorrect because hemophilia is a -linked recessive gene. In the simplest way I can explain this, hemophilia is carried on the X-chromosome, and occurs more frequently in males because they are XY and have only one X-chromosome. Youngjae will naturally get an X from his mother, and a Y from his father (since females have no Y), so, since Youngjae will never receive an X-chromosome from his father, his mother must have been the carrier, with one normal X-chromosome, and one mutated X-chromosome. Males can therefore only get hemophilia from their mothers, and hemophilia can only occur in males of every other generation.

The problem with Jaebum’s family was introduced very nicely (although it felt very clichéd and Twilight-esque with Jaebum not eating humans and the other of his kind shunning him for it), but it was never really resolved. Youngjae gets admitted to the hospital and then we don’t hear from Jaebum’s family at all. How did Youngjae get to the hospital? What went on between Jaebum and his family? From what I understand, Jaebum’s family still wants him back, but we don’t hear back from them afterwards. The slow progression of this plotline in contrast with the other rushed plotlines may be why. If all the plots were juxtaposed and paced appropriately, they would end at about the same time and the plot would work very well. Although it may be really hard to fix the flow now that you’ve finished the piece, pay close attention to the flow of your future pieces to put together a strong plot.

I also noticed was that there was a lot of missing background information that could cause a lot of confusion. How old is Youngjae? How much time has passed between events? I didn’t even know Youngjae was a high school student until some time near the end of the story when he was at school. We really only get to know the people in Jackson and Jaebum’s lives (Jinyoung, Mark, Jaebum’s family) and besides Yugyeom, we have no clue about Youngjae’s life outside the whole supernatural business. Does Youngjae have friends at school? Who does he talk to? How does he feel about school and what does he do? We also know that Youngjae loves his parents, but, before the end during his interrogation, it was really hard to tell if he had any good memories with his parents, and what they were, other than the wooden horse. What caused his parents to become divorced? Why did his father say that he loved Youngjae while trying to kill him? There were a lot of places where things were just left behind and unexplained. Even though it’s great to let readers figure things out, there has to be a setting that readers can draw answers from. I’m still wondering about what happened to the three people Jaebum killed to protect Youngjae, and why exactly they were trying to kill Youngjae. Were they Youngjae’s father’s henchmen (what does his father even do that allows him to have henchmen)? Were they supernatural creatures? A mix of both?

The last thing I would mention is to be very careful of societal norms when writing about homoual relationships. Although it is a werewolf AU, it still feels highly unrealistic for characters to fall in love with others of the same , without questioning themselves or feeling at least a bit confused about their uality at first. Of course, we’d hope that people would never have to question themselves over things like this, but until the majority of the population considers these relationships as normal, having no resistance towards the relationship will almost never happen.

Characterization: (16)/30
I think the most consistent character here is Jaebum. He’s always been that sort of outwardly strong, gutsy, and reliable character who Youngjae can look for when he needs support. But he also has the side to him that’s childish and naive to other people’s emotions, and I think this was done well from Jaebum scenting Youngjae on a whim to even wanting his parents to accept Youngjae even though it was clear that Youngjae would be rejected by Jaebum’s family.

Youngjae, on the other hand, is a little less consistent and less explained. I mentioned earlier about Youngjae probably being more cautious about approaching Jaebum, but I think Youngjae’s character would have been more compelling if he was more affected by abuse from his parents. Although near the end he says more about things being his fault and him not deserving a lot of things, as well as Dr. Kwon telling Youngjae that he shouldn’t blame his parents on himself, those two themes, which should have been prominent in Youngjae throughout the story, were pretty absent before then. What I really got from Youngjae was instead a general annoyance for life in general because of his hemophilia. I mentioned this earlier in the description section, but be really careful to use the medical condition scarcely. Readers can figure out that Youngjae will avoid sharp corners and be more cautious, so, instead of saying that Youngjae avoids sharp edges all the time, you can play around with the situation more by saying something like “he places a careful hand on the corner of the table to guide him,” or “he runs through the room carelessly,” depending on Youngjae’s mood. That would give more space in each chapter to get to know Youngjae, rather than him being defined by his illness. As well, at the beginning readers got a sense that Youngjae was a more suicidal character and, because of his family and medical situation, he would most likely be depressed, but that didn’t really shine through in the rest of the story. I don’t mean to suggest giving Youngjae an outwardly suicidal character, but whatever character you want to give him, I would suggest giving it a little more consistency. If he’s suicidal at the beginning, there’s a high probability there will be instances where he’ll feel a lot emptier than usual, or he’ll blame himself more often, if you choose to follow through with that character.

As for side characters and relationships, I’ve already mentioned Youngjae’s father, and Youngjae and Jaebum’s relationship in the plot section, but I wanted to mention a bit about Jackson. Jackson was introduced as more of an older brother figure to Youngjae, and then, all of a sudden, we find out that he’s in love with Youngjae. This felt like more of a forced attempt at a love triangle since there weren’t really as many signs. I also think that Jackson’s character may have worked better as a human rather than a jynx. Jackson being a jynx added some more potential questions and plot points that could definitely not be answered in 21 chapters. We never really understand the full feud between the werewolf and the jynx population, which would’ve probably stemmed from the problem with Jaebum’s side of things that was never really finished. Jackson and Jaebum’s dislike for each other also doesn’t really add much to the plot or characters, since they work together anyway, so making Jackson a human who doesn’t understand how Jaebum suddenly has dibs on Youngjae could make things more interesting between Youngjae and Jackson.

Grammar: (19)/20
Your grammar was pretty much flawless throughout the story, and I could tell that you had a very good grasp on the English language. There isn’t really much for me to say here other than that you did well.

There are two little things you lost marks for: sentence fragments and comma mistakes. This link deserves a good read and will help you with any comma inquiries you may have. The most common mistake I noticed was when you started a new sentence with “but”. Here’s a series of sentences from chapter 5:

“He really isn’t as afraid as he should be. More curious than afraid. But, clumps of fear worm through his body even when his mind doesn’t register it.”

First off, before fixing that comma, I noticed that “more curious than afraid” is a sentence fragment. So, after fixing the fragment and the comma, the excerpt would look like this:

“He really isn’t as afraid as he should be. He’s more curious than afraid. But clumps of fear worm through his body, even when his mind doesn’t register it.”

If we were to put the last two sentences into one sentence, it would look like this:

“He’s more curious than afraid, but clumps of fear worm through his body, even when his mind doesn’t register it.”

Since you’re simply separating the two clauses with a period rather than a comma, there is no need to add an extra comma before the “but”.

I understand that using sentence fragments can at times be a stylistic choice, but there are times when I would suggest using it too frequently because it makes your writing seem more choppy. If you need a longer pause than a comma suggests, using an em dash (—) may suit you more.

Writing Style: (7.5)/14 
You definitely have a writing style that became more developed as you continued writing the story. Writing styles take a while to establish so, in this section, I’ll mention some things I noticed throughout the story that you may want to be more aware of as you’re writing.

More prominently in the first half of your story, the sentence fluency and rhythm of your writing was lacking. I noticed that you started a lot of your sentences with nouns, and sentences were often of similar lengths. This makes the writing become really choppy, and a harder read than a more flowing writing style. If you were to read some of your paragraphs out loud, a lot of the sentences would be heading “downwards” due to voice inflection. This is normally more emphasized to people who speak to others for a living, giving your writing more opportunities for voice inflection will make it a lot more interesting. By starting your sentences with different types of words (not always nouns), combining some of your shorter sentences into longer ones, and using different types of punctuation (like semicolons, colons, parentheses, and em dashes), there will be a huge improvement in your writing.

Your word choice was quite good throughout the story, but there were instances of repeated terms, such as dysfunctional and grin. Smaller, more commonly used words in the English language are less noticeable when repeated (unless repeated a lot, as grin was with Jaebum); however, it’s important to be more careful with less common words like dysfunctional, where repetition can be noticed a lot quicker.

There were instances where some words were used in awkward places or incorrectly. The quickest examples I can draw from my memory are for when you used “beaver” and “endorphins”. I can’t find the passage where you used “beaver” right now, but it might’ve been a situation where someone was crying, and it was described as tears flowing over a beaver dam. I felt that this didn’t really fit with the overall mood of the passage that well, so be careful about usage of particular words, and make sure they make sense in the situations they are used in. As for endorphins: although endorphin is the “feel good” neurotransmitter, it is actually released to combat stress. The neurotransmitter that would be more related to feeling elated in situations dealing with affection would be dopamine. However, I wouldn’t really suggest using specific biology terms like these, even if accurately used, because the majority of your readers probably won’t know what they mean, and you can probably explain the situation in layman's terms.

The last thing I would suggest you look out for (and something I’m still working hard on as a writer) is to make sure that your characters sound different and consistent. To check for this, read the dialogue lines without any of the narration in between, and see if you can tell your characters apart. Every character has their own way of speaking, and capitalizing that will make each character stand out from the others even more.

Personal Enjoyment: (3)/5

At first the writing style was a bit too choppy for me and I felt like there were too many unanswered questions, but the suspenseful moments really kept it going. Be careful to keep situations realistic when Youngjae is interacting with others and himself.

Total Score: 65/110 = 59%

Reviewer’s Comments: Happy 2016! I actually enjoyed the story a lot more than I thought I would, as I’ve mentioned before, and I think you have a lot of potential as a writer. Although you mentioned that you usually focus on characterization and plot in the reviews that you receive, I think it would also benefit you to take a closer look at the writing style section. You’re really close to creating a promising writing style and I’d be more than happy to watch your growth as a writer in your future pieces. The plot issues in this particular story will be harder to fix, but I think your story seems like one that could have a sequel without forcing one, if you’re up for the challenge c;