She Belongs To Me - Detailed Feedback

Intro:

She Belongs To Me was written by sugararmy07. It is a BTS fanfiction following BTS member Jeon Jungkook in a CEO AU. The plot takes a turn when Jungkook is invited to dinner with his best friend and first love whom he never confessed to, Min Ara. With her back in his life, he needs to make a decision about if he will confess his feelings or not.

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Detailed Feedback

What Worked:

I like to start with the small things and work my way into the larger things.

This is a really small thing, but it was honestly kind of fun to see jealous Jungkook. Seeing him get jealous over Taehyung in the earlier chapters was entertaining for me. Maybe that makes me sound psychopathic, but I haven't read too many BTS fanfics in the past week, so it was fun to see an entertaining fic with Jungkook being Jungkook. He's competitive, he's jealous, he's a little weird (in a good way) at times, etc. It just felt like a return to form for me to be able to see him acting the way he does. All this is to say you chose a good personality for this version of Jungkook, and I'm glad you started off with him being jealous of Taehyung and being all pouty about it, like him thinking "She looks beautiful every day" when Taehyung complimented her. It was a small moment, but it was cute and added to Jungkook's character.

Moving more into the specifics, I like how "unrequited" love is portrayed. Jungkook never confessed in the past, so he doesn't know if the feelings are returned or not, but in Jungkook's mind, no answer means there's no way she can like him back, and I think that was an interesting way to take the story. Like when Ara shows up and says Tae proposed, it was intriguing to watch Jungkook attempt to hold himself together while congratulating his friend. And that was it: friend. He had to come to terms with that while also keeping on a facade so he didn't make her big moment about himself, and that was cool to see. Again, I probably sound psychopathic for saying something like that, but it's true. I don't mean it in a crazy way, I mean the emotions that Jungkook feels are realistic and make the readers more attached to him. He's a real person who went through his own struggles. Well, obviously he's fictional, but I mean he feels like a real person because he acts like one. He doesn't throw a temper tantrum at Ara for getting proposed to. He remains as composed as he can, then cries into his pillow later. It's relatable and also adds more layers to Jungkook's character.

The relationship between Ara and Jungkook pleasantly surprised me. At the start, I was wondering how the younger relationship between Ara and Jungkook would impact the current/present day relationship of Ara and Jungkook. I normally don't like flashbacks, especially early in the story, but I think those flashbacks did a good job setting the stage for how their relationship would pan out. I think they have a unique character dynamic, and, c'mon, I'm still an Army, so I gotta admit it always makes me giggle to see Jungkook, whether he be the real one or a fictional one, getting possessive and protective over the people he cares about. You know that smirk he had when they were getting accused of plagiarism? Yeah, that smirk is just him in this story whenever he has even the tiniest of concern for Ara, and I love that about him. He's a great male lead, and I loved how he took care of Ara, and also how Ara took care of him, and the way she thought and spoke about him with such respect.

Lastly, I like chapter 21 and how it ties everything together six years in the future. It puts a neat little bow on Jungkook and Ara's relationship and concludes the loose ends. This point actually relates to the last paragraph where I mentioned how I liked Ara's thought process about him, and chap 21 is what I was referring to. I love the way she uses pretty language to describe him. That may seem like a small thing, but it's not since it defines their entire relationship and shows the reader how far they've come.

All in all, the story has countless strengths, especially when it comes to the emotional side of the narrative and the direction you chose to take Jungkook's character. I think the themes and the relationship are the two best parts of the story, and considering it's a story driven by its characters, themes, and core relationship, that means you definitely did well!

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What Didn't Work:

Most of my suggestions are grammatical, so let's jump right into it.

Let's start with tense. There are consistent tense issues throughout the story where you flip flop incorrectly between past and present tense. You're writing in a mix of both, so I don't know what tense you intended to write in, but I suggest picking either past or present and sticking to it, otherwise the timeline can get confusing. For example, from chapter 20, you have sentences like "...Jungkook by my side, who is caressing my head...". The "is" makes it present tense. Then, right below that sentence, you use "he murmured" as a dialogue tag. Murmured is past tense. That's a tense issue. Either the "is" needs to be changed to was to make the tense consistently past, or the "murmured" needs to be changed to "murmurs" to keep it consistently present. You can use present tense in past tense and vice versa, but not for immediate story acts. It's only for rare cases and exceptions. Like if you're writing in present tense, you can use past tense for actions that happened in the past in the story's timeline. In past tense, you can use present tense for things like dialogue and character thoughts since those are exceptions. It's a little complicated, though I suggest doing your best to stay in one tense of your choice except for in those rare cases. It doesn't matter if you write in past or present tense, it depends on what you personally prefer, though I strongly suggest sticking to one.

This is a creative suggestion, but there are many times you'll use phrases like "replied back" or "answered back." You don't need the "back." The words "replied" and "answered" already mean someone is saying something back, so it's like you're saying "back" and "back" back to back. Okay, that was a mouthful, but I mean "answered" already has an implication of the word "back" in it, so by saying "answered back," it's like you're saying "back back." I hope that makes at least some sense.

Speaking of word choice, be careful you aren't repeating some words too often. Like "slowly" is a word you use often. That also leads me into my next point: adverbs. Be careful you aren't using too many adverbs. Like I said before, "slowly" is repeated, but there are other adverbs, like "softly," you sometimes use multiple times in a single chapter. Since adverbs are telling over showing, that's why I recommend downsizing where possible. To help with this, consider plugging the text into Microsoft Word or Google Docs and using the find and replace tool to search up ly. From there, consider deleting some of the words ending with -ly.

Back into grammar, I'll go over some general grammar errors that happened enough in the story to be noticeable. There are capitalization errors where you'll have a proper noun but it won't be capitalized. For example, in chapter 2, you write busan instead of Busan. This error isn't too consistent, but still worth mentioning cause you do it in other chapters, like chapter 1, too.

The dialogue tags are inconsistent for most of the story. For 18 chapters, the dialogue tags are done with the dialogue ending in a full stop/period despite having a tag after it. They're done correctly in chapters 19, 20, and 21 where you use commas when using tags like "he said," so I'm not going to go over dialogue tags since it seems you updated your writing to do them correctly; however, I'd still suggest going back and editing some of the tags in the previous chapters so the dialogue style is more consistent whenever you have the extra time to do so.

One final suggestion is to consider tightening some of the chapters, like chapter 2. The beginning of chapter 2 is pretty much just the readers watching Jungkook go through the motions of driving and going home. I feel like you don't need this. You ended the first chapter on a cliffhanger about who this mysterious Ara girl is. Why not start chapter 2 with the flashback? Now, instead of showing Jungkook driving and going home, you're starting with something far more impactful and exciting. Him driving and going home doesn't do anything for the plot, so there's no need to include it. That's why I'm suggesting considering tightening the pacing in some areas. My suggestion would be that whenever you're reading a scene, ask yourself what it's doing for the story. If you can't come up with at least two things it's doing, but preferably 3+ things, then consider rewording it to do more, deleting it, or saving it for later. That's where the phrase "Kill your darlings" comes from. This is a phrase that refers to not being scared to delete things in service of the story. For example, if you write a scene you're super proud of, but it doesn't do much, if anything, for the story, you should have the strength to delete it. I strongly suggest looking into the "Kill your darlings" phrase since it's very interesting and beneficial for pacing.

I hope all those suggestions make sense!

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Summary:

- Jungkook's character was fun

- Interesting take on unrequited love

- The relationship between Jk and Ara is good

- Chapter 21 did a solid job wrapping up Ara and Jungkook's relationship

- Tense issues

- Be careful with redundancy in the word choice + adverbs

- Other grammar errors

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Overall:

She Belongs To Me is a relatively short BTS fanfic that provides a fun escape from reality alongside some powerful emotions and a relatable male lead that will make you want to keep reading. If you're someone looking for a good romance with interesting themes, then this is the perfect book for you.

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Thank you for submitting your book. If you have any questions or would like any additional reviews when the shop reopens, please let me know.

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I'm going to start leaving this new note at the end of all reviews since Wattpad removed pms.

If you would like to keep in contact with me and ask me for more feedback on your work, I have a Discord server for all readers, writers, and friends. I'll leave a link in the inline comment here for anyone who would like to join.

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