○Misster○

Title: (3/5)

Is your title interesting? I’m not going to deny – it’s definitely intriguing, but it doesn’t have that big wow factor. It’s more of a title that only perks up your curiosity but it isn’t a story that makes you want to go, “I have got to read this,” and jump up and down in excitement. If browsing for a title, it’s more something that you’d linger on and maybe after five seconds decide to click on it. It’s interesting and intrigues people, but it doesn’t make them super interested to the point where if they don’t press it, they will regret never looking at the story.

Does your title suit the story? Of course it does! Practically every major character that the story describes about (currently just Kyuhyun and Ryeowook) has a mask that they wear.

Foreword/Description: (7/10)

Your description doesn’t really give the readers any idea as to what the story is going to be about. It tells us that it’s got something to do with masks and hiding everything from those closest and most precious to us – but it doesn’t really tell the reader where your story is going to go and what’s its mostly going to be centred around. It is, however, interesting because you do talk about masks and people go ‘Yeah, that’s true.’ It definitely has a dark theme going on and I can’t help but feel attracted to the story and I want to know more about it. What I want to point out is that you’ve put half of one sentence on one line, then the other half on the next line and started that line with a capital. Please don’t do that. It is incorrect grammar and punctuation. Just put one sentence per line and it makes Grammar Nazis not want to shot themselves (go to Youtube and search ‘Grammar Nazis’ and you’ll see what I mean). There is one instance where there is an incorrect spelling mistake which is shown in the Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation section below.

It’s a good thing that you’ve put a warning there for readers and to tell people that if they don’t like yaoi or are uncomfortable with reading mature scenes, they need to turn away before their minds get damaged. Considering all that you’ve put there and what could possibly happen that readers don’t really like, I think that the recommended rating should not be PG-13, but rather M. (But hey, that’s just me!)

Your foreword doesn’t say anything about your story except for what the pairings are (and judging by the poster and warning, readers can tell what the pairings are going to be). You put things in there like ‘Do not plagiarise’ and ‘Do not bash the story because you don’t like yaoi’ and stuff. What I would recommend that you do is that you make the font size the same. You can capitalise words/phrases you believe are important but there is an inconsistency in font size which damages people’s eyes. I know that you’ve purposely done it so that it catches people’s attention, but personally for me (and I’m sure that I’m not the only one), it makes cringe and go ‘Yikes!’ and press the back button faster than you can say ‘Masquerade’. That’s all I would change about your foreword/description.

Plot and Originality: (12/20)

Your plot is mainly, so far, about a physician named Kyuhyun who is requested by a complete stranger to take care of a supposedly dangerous man named Ryeowook – and that’s where all the trouble starts. It’s not exactly the most original plot out there because while I might not be a major yaoi fan, I still find that your story is somewhat cliché. It sounds a little reused because one character suddenly has a roommate who turns out to be a potential love interest and they fall in love and live happily ever after, but not before facing some problems and solving them first. There isn’t a whole lot of originality in there because there are so many authors who have done something similar. But that’s probable to change because the story has a dark theme to it and there are only five chapters so far.   

There are a few things that I would change, but they are very minor details.

To help set the scene, you could’ve painted the picture for us a little bit at the beginning about Seoul Scientific Academy. It seems to be a very strict and prestigious place and as readers, we don’t know how strict and how prestigious the academy is. We assume it is because Kyuhyun is telling us that it is, but it’s also very sudden to have him think that the woman was holding onto her own beliefs and not believing in reality. That says a lot about the place and while it might not play any significance to the story, I still felt that you could’ve gone into a bit more depth as to how prestigious it is and how weird it would be for a student (Ryeowook) to partially be the cause behind its closing because as readers we don’t know.  

It came as a huge shock to me when Kyuhyun was suddenly showing Ryeowook his room. To me, that made no sense because firstly, I never expected that to happen and secondly, the way you describe ‘taking care’ of someone is very vague. It makes no sense to me at all. Chun Hei could’ve gone into a little bit more detail about what ‘taking care’ of someone meant, or she could have elaborated at the very least. If she actually explained what it was then I would have known that Ryeowook and Kyuhyun would be living together.

Characterisation: (10/15)

Considering that there are only five chapters, I’m not going to critic you too harshly because not everyone’s personality has been revealed. I still think that there were a few flaws.

Kyuhyun’s a bit paradoxical. He speaks very formally and he doesn’t get distracted by beauty of women and seems to be very serious about his job. His thoughts tell readers otherwise. He’s trying to keep up this cool and almost seemingly perfect façade for a physician and be very professional. This provides relevance to your title because already in the first chapter, readers can tell that Kyuhyun has a mask of his own. At one point, you almost mix them both up and his thoughts seem very professional and mature, very similar to how he would communicate with anyone and he rambled when he was talking to Heechul and Ryeowook, which is something that should occur in his thoughts.

Touching on the Seoul Scientific Academy, I think that Kyuhyun is obviously clever enough to know that while the academy has high standards and most probably a good reputation, not everything is perfect. He’s a qualified physician and while his thoughts don’t sound very smart, he is and I think that he knows that no matter how good a school looks on the outside, there is something bad happening on the inside. Therefore, the woman asking him about taking care of Ryeowook whom she believes to be a dangerous man shouldn’t come too much as a shock (still a shock, but not that much).

Also, when Kyuhyun acknowledges that Ryeowook is a handsome person, after listening to Heechul, I think he should be freaking out. He should sort of realise what he’s thinking and realise that maybe he might be a little bit attracted to males. Then he starts realising that maybe he could’ve kissed him. Shouldn’t something in his head go ‘What the hell am I thinking?’ I’m not a love expert but when that kind of thing starts happening to my brain and after only a day of meeting that person, I don’t start to always think about them. Love at a first sight doesn’t happen that quickly. People might say it does but that’s only if there’s some conversation involved between the two people, and as of right now, Kyuhyun and Ryeowook have barely had a proper conversation – it’s mostly just been Kyuhyun blabbering and Ryeowook observing but not saying anything unless he’s asked. Although Kyuhyun has never dated anyone, or liked a girl for that matter, I do believe that when humans are first-born they are attracted to the opposite gender and not the same. (Unless there’s a disorder that Kyuhyun has that I do not know of and its symptoms make him naturally homosexual or his brain is slow at processing thoughts like the fact that he’s into guys or something similar, then I rest my case.)

Readers cannot tell a lot about Ryeowook except that he is shy and quiet and could potentially be very dangerous because of the rumours that follow him around at the academy. His actions suggest that he is uncomfortable with the warm vibe that Donghae and Eunhyuk bring, which suits his situation considering what he has been through. He’s the mysterious character who has yet to reveal who he actually is and if he is dangerous or not.

Moving on, Heechul is a complete stranger to Kyuhyun, right? And Kyuhyun is no therapist or psychologist so he obviously hasn’t learnt how to be one, right? Then how come Heechul is so open about his feelings? They’re completely strangers and normally for men, it’s really weird to be talking about love and what they feel. It’s even worse if you’re discussing your feelings for a best friend whose dating someone and you talk about what you’ve been though ever since you realised you are gay. You might argue that Heechul just needs to let it all out and he doesn’t do it to any of his friends because his friends would probably freak out and avoid him, but I think that even for someone with characteristics like Heechul; telling a stranger about how he feels and his attempts of self-harm isn’t easy. You’d normally tell someone you trust and considering that Heechul probably just met Kyuhyun, I don’t think he’s at that stage of trusting Kyuhyun just yet.

Flow: (10/15)

The flow of your story was a little disrupted if you asked me, because confusion is a major factor from preventing readers from delving deeper into your writing. Confusion was created because there were instances where some of your sentences didn’t make sense and it affected the flow. To fix this is simple – reread your story. Microsoft Word can pick up on grammar mistakes but even then, it isn’t reliable. In terms of whether your story was rushed or not, I think that it was a little bit rushed. I found that as soon as Kyuhyun met Ryeowook he was already thinking that the other man was handsome and dreaming about him. People don’t fall in love that fast. Yes, there is the possibility of people being attracted at first sight because the other person is pretty but when you start thinking about them all night, I do believe that’s after at least a few months. If it’s someone of the same gender and in a romantic way, it’s probably even longer. Slow it down a little bit. At this point in time, Kyuhyun should try to be friends with Ryeowook and not fantasizing and contemplating on how handsome he is so much.

Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation: (19/25)

*Note: All suggested changes are in red and only appear in the 1^st Chapter.*

I have spotted a few grammar, spelling and punctuation errors in the story so far. Let’s start with grammar first.

There is only one sentence where you use the incorrect word for the past tense of a verb.

…it was just a typical Sunday morning, busy and tiring, but outside, the sun beated (use another word because ‘beated’ isn’t a word in the English language. Past tense of ‘beat’ would be ‘beaten’, but if you put it in the sentence, your sentence wouldn’t make sense. Either you could rearrange your sentence or you could use ‘beamed’, ‘shone’, etc. If you decide to use ‘beamed’ or ‘shone’, you need to put the word ‘down’ after it.)

There were also instances where certain sentences didn’t make sense, for example, the following one. While most of your story is in past tense but if you read Kyuhyun’s thoughts in its entirety, it would make sense for ‘did’ to become present tense and turn into ‘do’.

…wait that makes me sound like a bitch, since she didn’t actually do any of that.

Sometimes your sentences don’t make sense because of the plurals that you use, or more accurately, the lack thereof.

…such high principles would not be involved in such actions as the one you and several others…

Sometimes the sentences don’t seem like sentences because you start the sentence with a word that is normally used as a conjunction and one that authors don’t normally put at the front of their sentences.

It was surprising considering Sungmin never had any interest…

The best way to prevent grammar mistakes is to reread and edit your story. Reading out loud is even better because then you can see where your grammar errors are and you can correct them. (Unfortunately, there is no electronic program/device/website that checks your grammar. You’re going to have to use your brain for this one.)

Now, moving onto spelling – there were a few spelling mistakes that I found in the first chapter.

… Then they’ll go around and bawl about and they’ll be depressed…

There was another spelling mistake that you made and it’s in your foreword/description.

Is the one that suffers so much pain and abuse that we could never begin to think of.

Those were the only major spelling mistakes that I found in the first chapter and I don’t think that there were any others in the rest of the chapters. However there is a very easy way to prevent spelling mistakes. When you are editing your story, at the top on the right-hand side there is a function that spells-check for you. Jay is so smart that he actually installed this in for us. That function is there so that you can spell-check your work – use it. It’s awfully useful and it picks up on every single typo that you come across.

Finally, we’re at punctuation. Normally, punctuation isn’t a huge problem among authors because it’s fairly simple and most stick to five punctuation principles/must-dos/marks – capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and for a proper noun, full stops at the end of sentences, question marks at the end of the question, exclamation marks at the end of the exclamation and commas/brackets intended for either pause or for putting in information that isn’t really necessary. You add in another punctuation mark that most authors don’t use; the colon. A colon is used to represent a pause, longer than a comma’s pause but shorter than that of a full stop. It normally attaches a different phrase that relates to the sentence. Most authors don’t add in a colon, when there should be one. You’re different – you add a little bit too much. Do you know the K.I.S.S. (Keep it short and sweet) principle? In the first chapter, there are a few colons that shouldn’t be where they are and they’re better off with a full stop.

The year is 2013.  It was a typical Sunday morning…

The man turned around to face her. He was a man in his mid-twenties with thick, chocolate hair and strong eyes to match. (Remove the comma in between ‘mid-twenties’ and ‘with’.)

…equipped with contacts. She had the look of a model’s due to her skinny frame, but the male before her appeared to be rather inattentive to these features.

I’ve only seen this one but you did put the incorrect punctuation mark at the end. There are other times where you put a full stop when the sentence is structured as a question. You need to put a question mark at the end.

Sungmin just didn’t get it, did he?

In order to avoid punctuation errors, rereading your story is the best suggestion I can give because AFF doesn’t have a function that does this for you. You could use Microsoft Word and it picks up on all these things. (But if I were you, I wouldn’t rely on Word for picking up grammar – they haven’t quite mastered the skill yet.) While this looks like a long list of errors, these are all in Chapter 1. After that, it seems like you’ve mastered Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation because from then, I haven’t spotted any other mistakes.

Vocabulary: (3.5/5)

Your vocabulary, on a whole, isn’t complicated and extravagant - you use very simple words. But it works because using simple words, I think, conveys the meaning and the feeling to readers perfectly fine. However, sometimes you use the incorrect word which affects your sentence structure and ultimately, the flow of your story. So be very careful with the words that you choose to use. I have also spotted a few technical errors though.

In your foreword, ‘bears’ should be ‘wears’. (You wear a mask, you don’t bear it. You only use the word ‘bear’ when you’re actually talking about a bear or when you’re trying to imply that something is a burden and based on the vibe that I’m getting from your description, I don’t think that wearing a mask is a burden.)

…I may contact you in the event anything was to come up… (Those who speak English don’t use the word ‘case’; they use the word ‘event’.)

Bonus Points + Overall Enjoyment: (2/5)

I have never been very into yaoi – especially those with dark themes of sexual content. *gags* But so far, none of that stuff has been written in your story; I’m not too irked out. I think this is because of my preference, but I don’t want to find out what happens next. Kyuhyun and Ryeowook could be doing it for all I know. Considering that I’m still a junior, I’m a little disturbed by everything. But your story is still well-written and it seems that you have some sort of twist just around the corner.

There is one thing I feel like I need to point out, though.

Your paragraphs are too long! There were two that particularly bugged me because it talked about several different things which were almost completely unrelated to one another and it was much longer than all the other paragraphs that you put up. The one that bugged me the most was the one on Chapter 4 and the other one was on Chapter 5. You seriously need to break that monster of a paragraph into a smaller one because: a)it’s hard to read because so many events in one part without a space in between, b)it gets hard to read and sometimes readers can start reading on a line that they’ve previously read because all they see is line upon line of words and nothing else, and finally c) some readers, like for example me, don’t like reading long paragraphs and as soon as we encounter one, we give up and move onto a different story. Please put it into smaller paragraphs.

The highlight of the story, in my opinion, would have to be the twist you put on SNSD’s song, ‘Gee’ and when Donghae came over. That was pretty funny!

Overall, I felt like your story could have been better or written better. But who am I to judge? I’ve only seen five chapters. Maybe once the story is completed, you could come again and I’ll see what the story is like which will give me better ground to review. J

Total: (66.5/100) | Grade: C+

Note: This review is meant for constructive criticism. However if the opinion in this review has negatively affected you, your feelings or your writing style, please tell us. You deserve an apology even if it is unintentional.

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