Crystal;; masaakiryo's review

Crystal ;; masaakiryo's Review
Story: New York Memories

Author: crystal ;; masaakiryo

URL: http://www.winglin.net/fanfic/masaaki/Reviewed By: Xuewen

Title = 9/10

Well, the title certainly relates to the story, and it is refreshing- a reader scrolling down the endless list that constitutes Winglin's collection of stories will likely be interested enough to click on the title. However, the mark off is for the awkward phrasing- I do get what you mean, but it just doesn't roll as smoothly off the tongue as for example, "Memories of New York", where you can use the setting to allude to the history between the leads.

Creativity of the story = 15/20

Well, I really do have to give you high marks for this. Kudos for using an original character; that was a daring step out of the box; seeing how people rarely, if never pairs an idol with an original character, or if they do, they don’t put them as leads, because this is a move that will either make or break your story. To me, no story is perfect, and yours certainly isn’t, but you did well in building history between Arron and Kyrii.

(Ps. I don’t know if it’s intentional on your part, or not, but I was a Neopets player about three to four years ago, and I remember that this is the name for one of the pet species. LOL.)

Posters & background = 8/10

The background is a light shade of brown and doesn't hurt the eyes, while the poster relates to the text (and plot) of your story. My only complaint is that the background seems to be a little simplistic. But no serious problems with it (I’m just being my usual nitpicky self).

Casts used =3/5

Hmm, the deduction of two points is because I feel that as a character, Kyrii is only beginning to develop; and yet you already have nearly thirty chapters to your story. This is a minor problem though; just use more indirect discourse in terms of Kyrii’s thoughts and actions (remember, don’t spend so much time introducing the other non-lead characters), and you’ll be fine!

Originality= 12/20

The school like setting reminds me both Hana Yori Dango (Meteor Garden) and For You in Full Blossom (Hana Kimi) there, so I can’t really give you high points for originality. All in all, this is a rather conventional high school romance, with its attractive value hyped up due to the inclusion of an original character as a lead.

Storyline/plotting = 16/20

Well, the plot generally flows smoothly (if a little fast, though), although there are some parts where it kind of seem as though there’ll be a bit of a ‘jerk’, a disparity of tone all of a sudden between two paragraphs or chapters. Pretty fine in this aspect; just slow down some parts of the plot and it’ll be great.

Spelling/Grammar = 2/5

“…Kyrii, being a very blur girl…”

Hmm, well, there aren’t many spelling mistakes, but you did commit a few grammatical errors. One major thing is the usage of the word, ‘blur’ is, well, actually unacceptable, because the er, Singapore colloquial usage of the word is not deemed as accurate. So I guess you can replace ‘blur’ with ‘dense’, perhaps?

“…excited, Arron took Kyrii's hand again and ran towards the customer service counter.”

The sentence structure is kind of awkward; a possible rearrangement of the sentence can be:
“Arron took Kyrii’s hand again excitedly and ran towards the customer service counter.”

“…to Kyrii he pointed…”

I think “He pointed to/at Kyrii” will be a smoother interpretation.

“Soft hearted to such cute expressions…”

It can be rephrased into “Her heart softening at the cute expression on the child’s face….”

“She went to her kitchen to bake Arron”

(: I assume this is a typo?

“I'd better not cry later…”

“I’d best not cry afterwards/later” sounds smoother.

“Quickly, she started on the dough mixture…”

This is a very Singaporean mistake (HAHA!)… Remember, don’t put your adverbs in front; always embed them in the sentence; eg. “She started on the dough mixture quickly…”.

“Two days have passed since Arron left and Kyrii took it well. I think?”

One mistake the writer should never make is to let the narrator become one of the characters. Ie, let the narrator speak to the readers directly. So I think you can paraphrase the sentence into “Two days have passed since Arron left, and Kyrii took it well, at least, she thought so herself.”

Overall enjoyment = 3/10

Hmmm. Okay, I’m going to try to justify this low mark that I’ve given you.

First of all, there is this crucial line-

”Treasure your memories... They make us who we are?"

In my own biased opinion, I really don’t agree that a little boy, a child of five years old will phrase it that way. I doubt that it is his standard; perhaps it’s too coherent for a little boy? I would have expect things a la Love Hina (when in that flashback when Keitaro was playing in the sandbox with the mystery girl), along the lines of , “Remember me! Don’t even forget me!”

Also, a major point which resulted in such a low score for enjoyment was the fact that your story is a lot like a summary. It’s so condensed, all the actions; I mean, you have the dialogue, which saved your story a little, but you have to expand more, elaborate more.

For example, you wrote:

“Crying, a girl was sitting on the steps outside a shopping mall...”

Personally, I would have written:

“A little girl was sobbing her heart out on the steps outside a shopping mall. Her large eyes were merely dropping slits and her little hands were grubby from swiping away sweat and tears. All in all, she was a mess.”

Or something like that.

Another example:

“Arron nodded in agreement and threatened him, with his eyes full of power...”

Elaborate! If you can just expand “his eyes full of power”, and describe just how it seems to be powerful, maybe his pupils are dilated, or maybe there’s an intense light in his eyes, it’d be even more interesting to read, because your readers will have more aid in visualizing the image- usage of imagery in very important as well as powerful in prose, because it’s not as stark as poetry!



Total: 69 /100