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13th October

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Author :: taetae_army_luv

Reviewer :: btsluvvesper

First impression :: 5.5/20

The first impression is all you need to impress the reader and invite them to read your book. But speaking of your first impression, I really wanted to leave the book right then and there.

Cover :: 1/10
The cover is one of the main reasons why a person will be attracted to your story, but your cover was not able to do so. Your title and plot suggested a gloomy and/or a secretively mysterious, dark-themed story but contradictory to that your cover was a very plain one. The picture selection with the black and white color scheme was wrong, because the picture suggested a cheerful Taehyung. However in the story, he wasn't that cheerful or such.

Your font style selection was also not appropriate. For a dark/gloomy-themed story, the glowing font wasn't so good. Also, you need to increase the font size of your author name; it's barely noticeable.

For the relevancy between the cover and plot, then I would say it was an absolute zero here. As I mentioned the plot showed a dark, secretive, and gloomy theme but the cover displays a cheerful vibe. Therefore, it ruined the story vibe.

I would recommend asking any professional person in this field to design the cover while providing them with the information of accurate theme and vibe of the story. Then you will be able to get the heart of the readers on your cover.

Title :: 3.5/5
The title is what the story is known for. It should be catchy, inviting, and right to the point/plot of the story. Your story title was nice but very simple, and when I say very, I mean very very simple. It directly gives off the idea that — Something big must have happened on "13th October", either in a good or bad way.

So, being straight to the point, the title was quite good. But it has no creativity and attractiveness to grab your readers' attention. I feel you could have come up with something more interesting from what you told about the plot. Other than that it was quite relevant to the story so far.

Blurb :: 1/5
Now, a blurb is an essential part as your story technically starts from here. By reading a blurb, one can know what and how the story would be and what type of content there is.

But, trust me, dear, your blurb doesn't even fall in the category of the "blurb". I would have given a 0 if it wasn't for your hard work.

Your blurb was basically a revealing extract from your inside scenes. A blurb should have suspense while giving a hint of the story plot. It should create a conflict to know what happened on "13th October", which was missing.

It has many grammatical errors, like not giving punctuations such as — comma (,) or period (.) before the dialogue ends. Then, the sentences need better reconstruction. There was the unnecessary exaggeration of words, like — "Soo". We usually don't write in the way we speak. Normally, we can exaggerate while speaking, but while writing, it's not needed.

Therefore, I suggest you change your blurb, keeping in mind the things I mentioned above. Make it intriguing, create suspense and/or conflict. It's not always necessary that a blurb should have extracts from your main writing. You can use your own words to describe that too, but make sure it's related to the main theme of the plot.

Beginning of a new start :: 2/10

Truth be told, the beginning of the story was utterly boring. It had no spice or interesting things to keep me hooked. Basically, the first chapter and blurb were the same.

The beginning of the story must be interesting and intriguing which would attract the readers to dive deeper into the story. And in your case, it just wasn't it. The fact that it had the same extract as the blurb made it more boring. I just came to the story after reading that and now reading the same thing again was nonsense to me.

Your starting didn't make me feel like reading any further. I felt like leaving it the way it is. It had no inviting or keep me going on thing. I felt no urge to read it. Thus, I would say the same thing again that — Come up with some creative and engrossing ideas for the opening chapters that would make the readers excited for the next.

Concept and plot :: 12/25

I wouldn't say the concept was new or different, but it was a good choice. The plot was good too but it kind of lacked realism and creativity. Your execution of the plot was not that good considering your plot's theme. It was very predictable.

For instance, it was quite obvious to guess that Y/N was indeed trying to save Taehyung instead of doing any harm to him, though you tried to show an essence that they were here to harm Taehyung, which I think was not needed. As most of the readers could easily guess.

Next is the pace of the story, which was quite fast for me. I feel like you could have created a little more suspense when Taehyung was sharing his story with the psychiatrist rather than directly going into the story and immediately starting his 13th October day.

Also, the interaction of Kai and Sana seemed fast-paced too. Taehyung rejected Sana, and right after that Kai entered the scene and their sweet interaction started. It didn't feel like Sana was rejected by her long-time crush. It seemed like she actually wanted to get rejected. Also, this scene in Taehyung's storytelling felt useless to me. I know you gave that to show the KaiNa pair but still, I feel that it wasn't needed to put it in that scene or time.

Then, in some places I felt that it was baseless/meaningless. For example, Taehyung is alone and got attacked yet he was putting his life and trust in a stranger he didn't even know, that too the stranger was a dangerous one. I mean, in reality, then it's quite impossible. In real life no one in their right mind will really do that. Then, throughout the whole chaos, Taehyung didn't feel anything until he was locked in the room. Only then did he start to feel scared. Where were his feelings during the chaos?

Also, the other group part was confusing as well. I could guess that you wanted the readers to think about who the other group was and stuff. But, the fact they arrived at the airport out of nowhere really ruined the mood. Like how you showed Y/N and her team's little pre-planning before having Taehyung if you would have shown the same may be very little but still if you would have done that without revealing their identity, I think that would have been better.

So yeah, there were these problems with your plot and its execution. You have a nice plot from what you explained to me. But dear, your execution is not satisfying. Try to enter the plot slowly yet steadily. Try to execute it by thinking from imagination and logically and then combine those nicely. I am sure you will do great if you give your best on these parts.

Characters and emotions :: 3/15

Characters are the main elements of the plot. And if one can describe the characters nicely and descriptively, the story would be picture perfect. But your story failed to do so. There was no proper description of the characters, it seemed like they popped out of nowhere.

For instance, when Jisoo and Taehyung met, they already seemed to know each other. But how they knew and why they knew wasn't there. So it made me confused. Also, the sudden mentions of Y/N's one or two gang members were confusing for me. They were just mentioned out of nowhere. Yes, they may have a role in the future but still bringing them in the middle without giving proper information about the character was not good to me.

Similarly, Taehyung's character was kind of off sometimes too. As mentioned earlier in the plot section, how could he trust a group of strangers with his life? If he wanted, he could have escaped on his own, but still he didn't, which doesn't do any justification to his character if we try to search for a bit of realism in this.

Now, you may say that he was afraid of them, that's why he didn't do anything. But here's where I'll bring up the emotions. The fact that he was afraid wasn't shown in the best way. It didn't seem/feel like Taehyung was kidnapped; the mention of anxiety and/or fear wasn't there. The fact that he could die was something that would ruin his peace and calmness yet there was no mention of his feelings.

And just saying in the end about him crying about everything doesn't explain it. The main raw feelings that were supposed to be shown and/or described when he was attacked and kidnapped weren't there.

Again, a big thing happened in Taehyung's life and he is going to a psychiatrist to share that, yet he wasn't nervous or anxious. How? I mean, if you go to tell an unexpected occurrence in your life to someone else, getting anxious or thinking about whether you should share it or not is the first thing to think about. And the most important is even remembering that day brings chills to you, as if everything flashes again in front of your eyes all over again. But Taehyung didn't feel or show any of these things, which makes the story unrealistic.

So, all you need is to make and describe the characters more descriptively and realistically. You can take help from different sites about how to describe certain things and scenes. The same goes for emotions as well, you have to make the readers feel the characters by the art of using appropriate words and descriptions for scenes and characters' feelings. Then you can surely be a good writer.

Tone and style :: 2.5/10

The tone and style of writing is something that — if chosen and executed in the proper and good way then readers can easily fall in love with your writing. However, your tone and style weren't that good. It was off and bland in many places. It was too simple for me.

You chose to go for both narrative and descriptive writing in the same place. Unfortunately, the way you should have kept a balance between both the styles, you couldn't keep and thus you couldn't pull off a nice style.

You used the 1st person point of view, which automatically gives you an advantage in a narrative style. But for your descriptive style's part, you lacked a lot. As your theme and/or genre was dark-themed and mafia-based, your scope for descriptive writing was huge yet you failed in describing.

You didn't have any rich and new use of words, describing certain fight scenes wasn't the best. Everything seemed very fast-paced and absolutely bland. As an action scene was going on, there was no feel or engaging thing to make me imagine the things. Your tone and style should be in a way that can easily make the readers visualize the story in their minds. But it wasn't the case here.

Then comes your paragraphing style. Dear, we don't call single-line sentences a paragraph. A paragraph is a group of sentences written together to give out a single idea. But your paragraphs were of one line or sentence. A paragraph should at least contain 2–3 lines. Your paragraphing needs more attention. Also, we don't end paragraphs or sentences with a comma (,). We always use period (.) to indicate the end of the thing.

Up next is your capitalization. My goodness, dear, you are not supposed to use capitalization in an ongoing sentence that is not finished unless it is very important or needs to be highlighted.

After that is your use of informal and/or acronyms in such a type of narrative-descriptive styled book. You are not supposed to use "LOL, LMAO, or XD" in such writing unless it's a text-based story, which I believe your story is not.

Also, your constant change of POVs doesn't make it seem like Taehyung was actually narrating his story. That is because Sana and Kai's POVs—which as I mentioned in the plot section—wasn't needed. That's because when Taehyung is narrating his story, he is not supposed to know what happened with Sana or Kai.

And as you changed your POVs from Taehyung to Y/N or vice versa many times, to show both side stories, then I would recommend using the 3rd person point of view. In that case, you won't have to jump from one POV to another constantly. Also, you will get a wide range of opportunities to describe your story more nicely and accurately.

Grammar :: 5/20

Grammar is the most crucial part while writing. Without the proper grammar, writing will be of no use. And honestly speaking, your grammar needs much more attention than any other thing.

Firstly, let's talk about the misuse of ellipsis. Ellipsis is the three dots (...) which is used to indicate that some words or phrases are left out. When quoting someone, you can use an ellipsis to show that you’ve omitted some of their words.

Now, the problem is, in some places gave two dots and in some places three dots. Ellipsis is only of three dots, unless that comes right after a grammatically correct sentence, then that sentence will have its own period (.) as well.

After that, we have the punctuations, and dear, your punctuations need more care. Your period (.), comma (,) or semicolon (;) weren't right in many places. You ended a sentence incompletely without any punctuation mark. An extract of your work :

→ Well it's not like dating is not allowed in the organization but [Incorrect]

→ Well, it's not like dating is not allowed in the organization but… [Correct]

Here, a comma(,) after "well" is a must because "well" is an introductory word. And the ellipsis (...) is used because here you intended to show the trailing off, so it's needed. And as the sentence is a grammatically correct and complete sentence, it will have its own period too. Therefore, 4 dots are used.

Also, you end some lines with a comma(,) or sometimes with both comma(,) and period (.) which is absolutely wrong. You better change that habit of yours, because I noticed that you are using it on repeat in many places.

Now, let's talk about tag punctuations, so there are certain punctuation rules about where to use which punctuations for which tags.

For action tags, we end the dialogue with a period (.) or needed punctuation mark (?/!). But definitely not with a comma(,). But if the dialogue is followed by a dialogue tag, at that time we end the dialogue with a comma (,) or needed punctuation mark (?/!). Also, after that, the line should be written in lowercase, unless it's a proper noun.

You also have problems with tenses, comma, and conjunctions. Extract from your writing :

→ I could feel myself blush like a tomato but luckily she didn't notice anything. [Incorrect]

→ I could feel myself blushing red like a tomato, but luckily she didn't notice anything. [Correct]

Here, he is still doing the work. That's why "ing" should be used. Also, we can't blush like a tomato, but yes, while blushing we can take the form of a tomato's color. And as both the sentences are independent clauses, we have to use both comma and conjunction. Another extract :

→ Well, it's because every stall had a little opening at the bottom so if we would just stand our feet could be seen by them. [Incorrect]

→ Well, it's because every stall has a little opening at the bottom, so if we would just stand, our feet could be seen by them. [Correct]

In this, along with tense, you again had punctuation problems. As the stalls, most of the time have an opening, so the present form is mainly used.

Then, in the last chapter, you highlighted Taeyeong's as "him" in bold italics, which I feel was wrong, because there was no point in highlighting it when you were going to use the real name the very next moment.

Other than these things, you need to focus on your sentence forming as well, it's not entirely wrong but not very right as well. You don't have any spelling mistakes or typos, which is good for you. If you keep in mind the mentioned things and correct yourself accordingly, you will surely do great.

End Note :: You have a nice plot, but all you need is more attention and knowledge on grammar, writing style, tone, and execution. Once you get a hang of these things properly, then you can surely be a good writer. Going through different writing sites and reading some well-written books can always help you. Thank you.

TOTAL:: 30/100