Full title: My Anpanman || A Kim SeokJin Story by KimIcy_03
Source: Judging task for interview with -Chrysalis_Realm
Genre: Fanfiction
Subgenre: Romance

Fandom: BTS

Mature: Y (strong swearing)

Status: Ongoing
First impressions: 29/40

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book.

*****

First impressions total: 29/40

Title: 10/10
I am the type of person who loves having to look things up, and I had to look up "anpanman." Children's superhero? Bread man who cuts pieces of himself off to feed starving kids? That's simultaneously cute and disturbing, and I have to wonder how it relates to what's about to play out in this story. And, of course, you tell every BTS fan exactly who this story is about right up front.

Blurb/synopsis: 7/10
The quote. I'm not a big fan of story excerpts in the blurb, although other people like them, so I'm not knocking points for that. I do think it should go after the blurb, though. When a potential reader clicks on your book and gets that pop-up, they don't get to see the full blurb, so the part they do see needs to hook them right away. So, I'd actually move the quote down so your story blurb is the first thing a possible reader sees.

Now, for that blurb. I like short and sweet, and that's what you have here. I also like single-sentence lines that tell just a little and leave you in suspense for the rest, so you're already on the right track. There are a few little grammatical errors that dull your hook, but they're easy to resolve. First, May needs to be introduced right at the start of the sentence. She's the main character, I presume, so you don't want to bury her name in the middle of a sentence. Dropping it right at the start makes it stick in the potential reader's mind. A little tweaking, and this is what I came up with: "May already had plenty of hardships in her life, but she decided to date a famous singer from BTS anyway."

It feels better to me to push Kim SeokJin's name into the second line. I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe it's to keep the emphasis on May in that first sentence? Or to add a layer of mystery? Not that it's too much of a mystery, since his name's in the title, but it still adds suspense and interest. Anyway, I think it works better for him to have his own intro after her intro. Something like, "But Kim SeokJin came with trouble and dark secrets." That also adds a nice reveal that answers one question and raises others, further hooking the reader's interest.

I'm also tweaking the wording a bit here to give each sentence more of an edge. Condensing a sentence and choosing harder-sounding words increases the impact and the appeal of each sentence. Doing that with the next sentence is tricky, because I'm not entirely sure of your meaning, and I think it's the "them" that's tripping me up. Is "them" the "dark secrets?" If so, clarifying here would be a good idea, and contrasting "secrets" with an opposing concept would improve your hook. "The truth" would be a good choice. And then add "him" before "go" to indicate that the choice she makes will decide whether she stays with Kim SeokJin or leaves him.

Last thing is the trailing periods. You use two, and it's better to use an ellipsis, which is three periods (...). Not two, not four, just the standard three, and this applies elsewhere, too. But your ending sentences here are on point. This is what grabs your reader's interest and gets them to start reading the story.

Cover: 7/10
First thing: this looks like a movie poster. I like it. I like the background image, the way everything's blurred around the central character, who I assume is Kim Seokjin (please forgive my ignorance). But the glow around him is...well. You're trying to make him stand out, which that accomplishes, but it also makes it seem like his picture was cut and pasted over the background. I'd recommend reducing the glow a bit to eliminate that effect. Next thing is the title. "ANPAN" blends into the background too much. I actually missed it completely until I took a closer look. The "A" is the part that disappears the most, and honestly, just doing something to make that pop a little more would probably allow the reader's eye to see the rest of it just fine. Maybe some shading over the top left part of the letter? Something like that. Anyway, moving on to the rest of the text, it's too small. When I view the cover on the title page, I can't make any of it out. I can make out the subtitle when I open the book from your profile, where the image is bigger, but the text at the bottom is still hard to make out, especially whatever it says above your name. I think bumping the size up a notch for the subtitle (and moving over to the left as needed to maintain its position across his chest) would do it for that. For your name, probably another size up, and the text above that a size or two. But otherwise, the font choice and color are perfect for this.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 5/10
Cast & copyright: Oh, this is your first book? Yay! 🙂 Just a few comments here on grammar/punctuation. The first sentence would work better as two. So, period after "work," cut "and," and start the next sentence with "this." Next sentence after the copyright should have a period after "not" instead of a comma. When you're explaining the girls' names, I think it would be better to say, "If you think" instead of "I know." Not everybody thinks they're strange, and saying "I know" almost sounds like you're admitting you've done something wrong, but you haven't. Then you can cut "well," drop a period after "that," and maybe stick a colon after "please" to emphasize your point further. In the next paragraph, I'd spell out "you," since you haven't used any other text speak here, and you can drop the second "this book" because it's redundant. I think a period after "leave" would be good, and another colon after "thing" would be good to emphasize your next point here. A point that I really wish you didn't have to make, because nobody should be leaving hateful comments on anybody's books...🙁

Achievements: Yay! Congratulations! I didn't read this because I don't want my opinion swayed by the opinions of others, but great job. 🙂

Prologue: Starting this off with some family drama. Interesting, interesting. This doesn't read as a story so much as an info blurb, which is fine for a prologue. As far as grammatical issues, punctuation seems to be the biggest area where you can improve. You tend to under-use commas and periods. Commas can be tricky for sure, since there are places where they're required, and there are places where their use is just up to your stylistic choice. Periods are a bit easier. Basically, if two parts of a sentence can stand on their own without each other, you either need to split them into two sentences or add a transition word like "and" or "but." An editing tool that supports your English usage would probably help you out a lot to catch these little things that are easy fixes. There are also a few wording choice issues. "Where" should be "were" in the third paragraph, and there are several places where you use the same or similar words in close proximity (started, for one). It's just something to keep an eye on as you get more comfortable writing.

Chapter 1: Here we go!

Completely unrelated - have you ever watched "The Christmas Story?" There's an iconic leg lamp in the story, and the banner image made me think of it immediately. 😅

Moving on to things of actual importance...😉

Same notes on grammar as before. In general, splitting the dialogue of different speakers into different paragraphs helps the reader follow the conversation better. So, in that first paragraph of dialogue, I'd recommend pushing Marsi's dialogue into a new paragraph, and so on throughout. But your punctuation with dialogue is actually really solid. That's something a lot of people struggle with, but you do it quite nicely.

Another helpful rule is to always capitalize titles. So, "Unnie," "Eomma," "Appa," etc. - if you're using a title in place of a name, you should capitalize it as if it was a name.

Tense is a big issue here. The story is overall in past tense, but you slip into present tense quite often, which gets confusing. Just make sure your verbs are in the right tense for consistency. This helps to keep from distracting the reader. So, in the third paragraph, after Mayesha answers Marsi's question, it should be "I was" instead of "I'm" and "have" should be "had." There are also some issues with wording here and throughout, and this is a good place to illustrate that. Marsi only thinks she "knows" that Mayesha will get emotional, but Mayesha doesn't, so I'd change the wording there to show that. You don't need "that" or "anytime soon," and "overcomed" should be "overcome." There are also some commas needed here. So: "My sister sighed, thinking I was going to get emotional, but I didn't, because I had overcome their death."

Content warnings at the bottom of the blurb would be nice. Some people don't like swearing, so adding a note that there's strong swearing would be a nice heads-up.

Um...hate to break it to you, but Harvard is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not LA. Opposite sides of the country. 😅

Also, your tone. This is a story, not a text conversation. No text speak, and no emojis. Spell out "you." When a person sighs or shudders or anything that you normally put in asterisks for text conversations, you need to spell it out and write it into the story. So, when Mayesha is telling her students what she'll be teaching: "Of um..." I sighed. "Animals and humans. We are going to study it in detail."

Time skips. You don't need those. Every place you have inserted that in this chapter is actually a place where it's fine to just go from paragraph to paragraph. If you have a huge leap in time, like many days or weeks or longer, I'd use something like a line of asterisks to divide sections, as that comes across as more professional. You don't have to tell the reader it's a time skip. You can just show them with a non-verbal divider like that.

The POV changes are fine, but I'd actually split them into different chapters. So, Mayesha gets her chapter, then Kim SeokJin gets his chapter (because let's be honest, we all know it's him), then Mayesha gets her own chapter. The chapters may be short that way, but the flow is better, and the reader won't get confused by a big change like that partway into the chapter. That would also give you good cliffhangers to end each chapter, because you have those built into the ending of each POV.

My biggest overall critique here, other than Harvard being in Massachusetts and not California, is that Mayesha acts and talks and sounds like a teenage girl. I was actually shocked when I found out she was a teacher. I really thought she was dropping her younger siblings off at elementary or middle school while she was on her way to high school, so I thought it was weird that her sister had a boyfriend, but I brushed that off, because boyfriend/girlfriend relationships can happen young. But a teacher? Any teacher, especially a teacher at Harvard, is going to be mature, serious, responsible, and not easily flustered by students asking about reproduction. Yes, she can have fun with her best friend, although bashing her over the head with a book right at the start of the day is probably not going to happen. If I'm going to believe she's a teacher, she needs to act differently than her students and her younger siblings.

If her personality is something you don't want to change, which I would totally understand, because her personality is central to the story, I'd recommend modifying this so she's a student instead of a teacher. A teacher at Harvard would probably have a PhD, anyway, which would put her in her thirties at least, and I'm guessing you don't want her to be that old. She also wouldn't have much free time as a teacher. My brother is a teacher, and during the school year, he often works from sunup to sundown and late into the night making lesson plans, grading homework, arranging meetings with parents, etc. So, really, I think the best course of action here is to make her a student. It looks like the story is still ongoing, so I wouldn't recommend going back to make such a drastic change while you're still writing. It's just something to keep in my mind when you go through and edit this first draft. Or, if you get stuck at some point, maybe go back to the beginning and rework this to get your juices flowing.