he's a young one
Story by strawberrychoc
Reviewed by eleutheromaniac

Title
While I don’t think it’s the most attention-grabbing title out there, “He’s a Young One” definitely encompasses the overall message of your story and captures the tone of your fic quite nicely.

Description/Foreword
The first thing that I noticed when I was reading through the description/foreword of this story was the grammar. I won’t go into it too much here, but it’s always a good idea to make sure that there are minimal errors in this section since it’s one of the first things that readers will see when they click on your story.
 

Plot 
I’m always a bit tentative when I read stories that take place in a high school/college setting just because I’m never too sure what I should expect. In the case of romcom, I get even more apprehensive just because the storylines tend to all feel too similar to one another.

However, I can honestly say that I couldn’t stop smiling while I was reading your story. The budding romance between the male and female lead didn’t feel rushed at all, and their interactions with one another always felt amusing. Though I wouldn’t say that the story was entirely original (after all, the “love at first sight” trope is a bit overused), I think that Yeoreum’s voice and perspective helped to add a more unique twist on the story. When she meets Junhwe in the second chapter and tells herself that she needs to go to church because of the way she had been thinking about him, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. And then when his actual age is revealed, the running gag of her “sinning” becomes hilarious since Junhwe is literally . Nice job!

There were times when I got lost in the flow of your story, but these moments were pretty rare for the most part. Since Yeoreum’s a college student, she mentions her coursework a lot, but it’s not until the fourth chapter that it’s confirmed that she’s a Journalism major. While this could be considered a minor detail, I think that since her life as a college student is the main focus of the story and her role as an aspiring journalist spurs her on during her high school sit-in, I think that it should be a part of the exposition of your story. Editing it into the first chapter wouldn’t be too difficult, and I think that it would make it easier for the readers to follow along on her journey as they continue reading.

Another minor thing that bothered me was in Chapter One when the characters are discussing plans to go to a club. There’s a good amount of time spent on the conversation regarding this, so I thought that we would actually get to see them go to a club, but the plan seems to go forgotten in the next chapter. I think that someone mentions that they actually went, but since there was such focus on it, I thought that we would get to witness the events firsthand, so the transition felt a little awkward to me.

In regards to the believability of the plot, there were some moments regarding the setting that weren’t clarified and led to some confusion on my part. For example, though most of the characters are university students, it’s insinuated that most (if not all) of them are living with their parents. Since this isn’t the norm, it would help if you threw in a sentence or two to explain why this is so—perhaps it’s a community college or all of Yeoreum’s friends decided to attend this particular college just so that they wouldn’t have to worry about paying their own bills. At the same time, Yeoreum talks about being “separated from her friends” in the first chapter of the story, but I didn’t really understand why she wouldn’t be able to spend time with them since they all go to the same university.

I’m also a little confused about the phrase “lunch period.” From my experience, university students don’t have a set time for lunch as it all depends on how they choose to design their schedule. However, this particular phrase makes it seem as though it’s a universal time for all students attending this particular college, and I’m not entirely sure that that’s your intention. I just thought that it would be best for me to point it out.

The location of the cafe that Junhwe works at also confused me a bit. At my university, students usually catch lunch at the different restaurants on-campus so that they don’t have to worry about being late for their later classes. However, if this cafe is on-campus, then it doesn’t make much sense for Junhwe to be working there since he’s only a high schooler. If the cafe is off-campus though, I think that it wouldn’t hurt to mention this so that the readers develop a better sense of the story’s setting.

Yeoreum and Kei’s bet seems to be an important aspect of the story since it basically embodies all of Yeoreum’s sentiments regarding younger men. When the bet is formed in the second chapter, however, it was strange that neither character established a deadline for the bet as that’s usually how they go. It’s a minor plot hole, but still something that I noticed. Another plot hole that came to my attention was in the third chapter, when all of Yeoreum’s friends are eager to discover Junhwe’s name. Since he’s working at a restaurant, shouldn’t he be wearing a nametag? In one of the later chapters, it’s also discovered that Jiwon and Yunhyeong coach Junhwe’s basketball team, so shouldn’t the three of them recognize one another when they meet up in the third chapter?

I wasn’t expecting a love triangle in this story, so I have to admit that I was kind of disappointed since love triangles in school-like settings are kind of typical in fanfiction. Though I didn’t read the story through to completion, it’s pretty obvious that Junhwe will win the love triangle over Taehyung since Taehyung doesn’t appear in the poster, the tags, or the description/foreword. I think that adding his name somewhere would help to balance the love triangle and make it seem as though he has more of a chance in the competition for Yeoreum’s affections.

(I really like to think that he has a chance because he’s a total sweetheart in the tenth chapter, but I’ll get to that later, haha.)

In your author’s notes at the end of the third chapter, you apologized for the slow development of Yeoreum and Junhwe’s relationship. To be completely honest, I didn’t think that their relationship was developed slowly at all, and in fact, I want you to commend you for making it seem so realistic! I was a little skeptical when Yeoreum was so immediately attracted to Junhwe, but you wrote it off well and played it up for comedic effect. Their exchanges feel like two flirtatious people trying to one up the other while still saving face, which was humorous to read and fun to imagine. What I’m trying to say is that there’s no need to feel bad about their relationship development because, from what I read, you were doing a wonderful job!

Characterization
For the most part, I found the characters to be enjoyable to read about, though there were sometimes moments during which I felt they seemed a little unrealistic.  While I enjoyed some of the cameos at first (Vernon and Seungkwan showing up made me super happy—you can ask any other member of the Kodawari staff), I’d like to caution you on having too many in a single story. There are times when the cameos seem to contradict some of the facts of your story. For example, in the seventh chapter of the story, Big Bang is established to be a group of celebrities (“It’s not like you’re a Big Bang member”), yet Seungri exists in the story as a cafe worker. Cameos can be really fun in fics like this, but I think that it’s important that you use them sparingly so that they don’t feel overbearing or nonsensical—cameos can be considered a rhetorical device for comedic purposes, so if you overuse them, they’ll lose their effect. Jinwoo’s good looks being referenced as Yeoreum’s big crush was funny because of his visual position in Winner, and I could relate to Yeoreum’s feelings in the situation; Jin appearing in the sixth chapter as Yeoreum’s creepy ex-boyfriend seemed random and unnecessary to the storyline.

(At the same time, Yeoreum’s best friends leaving her alone with her ex-boyfriend was also really weird to me, since they all seemed to be kind of protective over one another. I didn’t really understand what the scene contributed to the story because it just made me confused about some of the character relationships.)

I’ll start by talking about the side characters before moving on to the mains. There were times when it was difficult for me to keep up with all of the different characters you added into the story, and at times difficult for me to tell if a character was simply underdeveloped or if they only existed in the story as a cameo appearance. From what I could tell from the first ten chapters of the story, the main characters are meant to be Yeoreum, Junhwe, and Taehyung, while the side characters are meant to be Jiwon, Yunhyeong, and Kei (and maybe Chanwoo, to an extent?). The other characters in Yeoreum’s friend group weren't differentiated from one another well enough to feel like supporting characters, and the only other friend that I can remember is Jisoo, because of how Jiwon keeps mentioning her. I'm not sure if this was your intention or not, but I suppose it's just another one of the risks that comes with writing a story that features so many characters.

Though Yunhyeong gets more screen time than some of the other characters in the story, there isn't much that I can say about his character; it feels like he's just sort of there. I can't really find any qualities to associate his character with, other than his budding relationship with the other girl in his group project, so I think that's why his character felt kind of flat to me.

Chanwoo and Kei felt a little more lifelike to me even though they seemed to be modeled after stock characters (Chanwoo as the stereotypical younger brother and Kei as the cheery friend). I think that what sets them apart is the development that they receive in order to break the mold of their stock archetype. For example, Yeoreum sees Chanwoo as her annoying little brother, but after going to school with him for a few days, she learns more about him (like his relationship with Tzuyu) that proves that even though he has a penchant for silliness, there's a slightly more mature side to him that even Yeoreum hadn't been aware of. At first, Kei seemed to only exist to create the bet about younger guys, but there are a few details attributed to her that makes her more three-dimensional, such as liking all of the non-attractive guys and ignoring the attractive guys that like her. Giving characters some quirks here and there is an easy way to make them feel more rounded and lifelike.

Among all of the side characters, it was Jiwon that stood out the most to me as the best written. His honest friendship with Yeoreum made me smile and the one-sided love story he has for Jisoo was a really nice touch for his character. I had been curious about why Jiwon and Yunhyeong were the only two boys in a large friend group of mostly girls, so when Jiwon explains in the fifth chapter that it’s because he likes spending time with girls since they’re prettier, I couldn’t help but laugh. It’s a kind of cheesy explanation, but it fits the nature of your story nicely.

While I enjoyed the personal effect of Yeoreum’s voice in the narration, there were times when I felt like she was “too perfect” of a character, kind of like a Mary Sue. She’s overdramatic (though it kind of works sometimes for comedic effect) and can come off as a little arrogant, yet so many people want to pursue her as a love interest. Her actions don’t even make sense sometimes, such as in the fifth chapter when she’s yelling at someone while still maintaining her  “calm facade.” There’s nothing that she seems to be particularly good at and there aren’t really stereotypical popular people on college campuses like there are in high school, so I couldn’t really understand why so many people were drawn to her, especially since her personality isn’t all that friendly.  At the same time, her strengths and weaknesses can be kind of contradicting, such as when she is described as “fluent in the [English] language but is not interested in readings too many facts at a time.” This statement doesn’t really make sense because fluency in another language isn’t really correlated to reading too many facts at a time. While Yeoreum usually comes off as a blunt, straightforward character (with Junhwe apparently being the one exception to this rule), it was strange to me that in the ninth chapter of the story, she admits to being annoyed with Taehyung for getting in the way of her budding relationship with Junhwe and doesn’t bother to set him straight. For the most part though, I enjoyed her character’s voice within the narration and found myself smiling at some of her antics. I also thought that Namjoon calling her “Summer” in the second chapter was a nice way of also inserting the meaning of Yeoreum’s name. Since you took the time to let readers know what it meant, I’m hoping that it proved to be symbolic later on in your story.

To put it frankly, I found Junhwe’s character to be hilarious. From his “I’m not for sale” comment at his very introduction to his “confident and y” comment in regards to Yeoreum towards the end of my reading, I found his character to be the definition of —which was hilarious within the context of your story. As opposed to the other characters who seemed to be at least somewhat mannerful in their actions, Junhwe’s slick flirtations were a nice contrast that made him feel different from the other characters. It’s a nice touch, especially since the story is told from Yeoreum’s perspective: she refuses to date anyone younger than her, but ends up falling for a high school student because he’s unlike anyone she’s ever met before (though his looks probably have a large part to do with it as well). I also liked seeing that Junhwe faced some repercussions for behavior, such as when he gets in trouble with Seungri for flirting with Yeoreum in the third chapter.

I’ll be completely honest with you: when Taehyung was first introduced, I could kind of tell that the story was leaning towards a love triangle and I could feel myself getting disappointed. For a while, there wasn’t anything really unique about his character, and even though Yeoreum kept repeating that they tended to have back-and-forths with one another, I wasn’t really seeing that dynamic at all. However, things definitely turned around in the tenth chapter when he realizes that Yeoreum’s on her period, has bled through her skirt, and then takes off his own blazer in order to cover it up while he goes on to buy her pads. Like, I read that, and that was it, I was sold. At the end of the chapter, you were apologizing for including the scene, but I think that it’s a situation that a lot of girls can relate to, which is what made it especially effective in turning Taehyung into a probable love interest for Yeoreum.

Grammar
Grammar is definitely where the story fell short for me. I noticed a lot of tense and punctuation errors, which is what I’ll be focusing on within this review, but when you’re proofing your chapters, be sure to also pay attention to your word choice. For example, in the first chapter, someone says, “why the hell it’s so hot today,” when the proper version should be “why the hell is it so hot today.”

Another side note: when a new character starts talking, a new paragraph should begin. (For example, in the first chapter, the line that begins with “You found another crush.”)

Most of the punctuation errors I noted had to do with the incorrect usage of semicolons. Here’s a cute comic that explains the various ways in which semicolons can be used. Generally speaking, semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses and should never really be used in tandem with conjunctions or to replace commas.

“She mumbled to herself while holding her small dark blue backpack straps nervously; counting her steps before she stepped into class.” (Chapter One)

In the case of this sentence, the two clauses that the semicolon is trying to separate aren’t actually independent from one another. An easy way to tell whether or not a semicolon can be used in a situation, you can try temporarily replacing the semicolon with a period and seeing if the sentences will still make sense. In this case, since they do not, it’s evident that  comma should be used rather than a semicolon.

While I understand that Yeoreum is a journalist, works of fiction typically fall under the guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style as opposed to APA format (which is more common in journalism). That being said, make sure that punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks rather than outside them, like in this example:

"Writing for the English Media".

The corrected version of this would be: “Writing for the English Media.”

Exemptions and an additional explanation to this rule can be found here.

While the story is predominantly told in the past-tense, there were moments during which the story suddenly switched over to present-tense. This happened quite frequently throughout the text, but tenses are an easy fix once you’re able to identify when they’ve been used improperly. I’ve listed a few examples and corrections here so that you can see the difference.

“A voice that was almost frighteningly similar to Mr. Han called for her from the chair beside her, making her hairs stood up in alarm.”

“A voice that was almost frighteningly similar to Mr. Han called for her from the chair beside her, making her hairs stand up in alarm.”

While “stood” is the past-tense version of the word “stand,” the latter needs to be used in this context because it’s the zero-infinitive of the verb that needs to be used after the word “making.”

“... Jiwon said excitedly, making Yeoreum glared at him for reminding her of the boring class.”

“.., Jiwon said excitedly, making Yeoreum glare at him for reminding her of the boring class.”

This is another example of the zero-infinitive situation.

In the following example, Hanbin still composes songs in the present, so the verb should be in present-tense.

“His name is Kim Habin, and he composed songs too!”

“His name is Kim Hanbin and he composes songs too!”

Writing Style
As I mentioned before, Yeoreum’s personal voice within her narration was really strong and I feel like it was a good stylistic choice to have her as the primary narrator. The sudden switch from third-person to first-person was very abrupt though, and I didn’t really understand why the first chapter wasn't written in first-person to keep the POV consistent.

The biggest issue I had with the writing style in this story was the redundancy and some incorrect word choice. Here are two examples of redundancy from the first chapter:

“Hey, Yunhyeong, have you finished the script writing assignment? I want to read yours.” She asked the boy named Yunhyeong and he handed her his already-printed assignment for her to read.

“I knew it,” Yeoreum mumbled in defeat, she knew it will always end up like this every single day.

I went ahead and underlined the parts of each sentence that came off as redundant.

There was the occasional convention error as well, such as “1.00 p.m.” This could be changed to “one o’clock.” More rules about number convention in writing can be found here. Major works (including television shows) should be written in italics or underlined, meaning that the correct formatting would be She Was Pretty rather than “She Was Pretty.” Quotations are used for minor works, such as episode titles or chapters.

Personal Enjoyment
Even though I’m only required to read the first ten chapters of any story that I review, this story seriously made me consider reading the entire thing. Comedy can be really hard to write since it requires a certain kind of tone, and I can honestly say that I enjoyed myself.

Reviewer’s Comments: While I think that your story fit the comedy genre well, there were a few moments when the characterization of the fic seemed to fall a little short. Since this story is character-driven, it’s important that the characters seem realistic and relatable. However, there were only a few moments during which I was bothered by the characterization, so when you move forward to your next story, I would instead suggest more focus on improving your grammar. Either way, I’m hoping that I can find the time to come back to your story to find out what happens between Yeoreum, Taehyung, and Junhwe! (Lowkey rooting for Taehyung, but that might just be because I ended my reading with the period scene and it gave me this huge influx of feels LOL.)

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