Rewind

Title: Rewind
Author: bhebie9
URL: http://winglin.net/fanfic/rewind/
Reviewed By: Lone Ranger

Title: 9/10
I like the title. It stands out to me. It has a high possibility of me clicking on it on a winglin main page.

Poster & Background : 3/5
No background so it’s /5.

Poster is okay but nothing spectacular. But I like the quote on the poster though- “To know more about your enemy you need to rely on the simplest memory”.


Forewords: 7/10
I liked your forewords as a whole. You managed to weave a pretty good introduction of the setting and characters in a short paragraph. Good job. What I felt was lacking rather was the use of a tagline, a one liner or poem that would anchor the whole story. Also, you could have ended the forewords a cliffhanger that would really capture the readers. But in any case, I think your forewords are more than satisfactory already.

Cast Used: 3.5/5
As I am not very familiar with the cast used, this section will solely focus on the characterizations.

Well I saw the attempt in building up the character especially of “I” who was JiYoung. The story didn’t start being very clear cut about JiYoung character but as I read on, the man just slowly began to take shape. Slowly, I began to relate to JiYoung and understood him as a whole. Well done. SeungHyun on the other hand was like a mystery beginning to unfold.

The other characters had been slightly introduced in the forewords and I felt more could be done still. Just a suggestion, what you could have done was to make these characters distinct. Like one with a scar, with a funny accent or something. Don’t get me wrong, you did try to do characterizations, but they weren’t good enough. The characters don’t jump at me.

Originality & Creativity: 7/15
I liked how you rotated between the past and present, using it to weave the whole story. Too bad it’s not the first time I saw something like that =) But I guessed you still deserved some credit. I liked how you decided to focus on friendship instead of romance, it was a bold step and a well took one.

What I felt was lacking in your originality bit was the whole gangs and police setting which was overused and overused. Even the characterizations of your gang members seem typical or any other gang fics one could pick up.

Story & Plotting: 8/15
You managed to keep me wanting more =) That was a big plus. Your story looked as though it had been properly planned from the start which reflected well on the reader. Also, I liked how more and more things were beginning to surface as the investigation went on. Somehow, it felt like no one could trust no one anymore.

However, I just felt that the emotions and actions were not intense enough. For example, when JiYoung was being beaten up, all I felt was, okay, he was being beaten up. You failed to elicit a strong emotion from me throughout the story although your attempt to do so could not be hidden. So, it would be good to make your story more intense.

I was actually looking forward to the ending. I hope that it would be an ending with a twist as a cliché ending would spoil the whole story that you had built up.

Spelling/Grammar/Vocabulary: 6/10
Minus the tense and punctuation errors, your English was pretty intact although once in a while you had some expression errors such as “The TV wasn’t on”. I didn’t have a hard time trying to understand your story. However, I felt that you could have done better with your word choices. It seemed that your vocabulary was pretty much limited to the slightly above average standard and it prevented your story from climaxing further.

Flow Of Story: 6/10
I felt that it was great that you could manage two different time periods without making the readers confused. But I felt more links could still be made in a sense that it would good to link the recollections with the current events with a theme. Like in Chapter 6, the recollections were about JiYoung’s parents and the word “Sounds Good” appeared in both the past and present scene. It was good attempt but sadly, not all your episodes were linked like that. The question you could ask yourself is, what makes a particular piece of memory indispensable at that particular point of the chapter.

It would also be good if you had been linkers because at times your story felt cut like this: Past Present Past Present. It would be better if you could devise a way to link the Past and Past or the Present and Present and that would show well on your mastery of the story.

Writing Style: 2.5/5
Like I said in the creativity section, I liked how you weaved the past and present together. But I felt you as an author didn’t really stand out in the story as much as I would like it. I also felt that your chapters could get too short and before I could get into the “emo” mood, my journey was prematurely terminated.

Overall Enjoyment: 5/10
Technically, I didn’t really enioy the fic. But then again, there ain’t many fics that I truly enjoy so, I think it’s got to do with me. The major hindrance to my enjoyment would be that you did not manage to fully grip me. Littered around your fic were attempts to climax the story that fell a little flat at times or not pushed enough to make me gasp.

Bonus marks: 2/5
For not doing a romance story.
For really trying. I really could see the effort.

Total mark: 59/95 (62/100)

Additional comments:
Nevertheless, I still feel that your fic is under appreciated. It’s one of the better ones around, I think you have good ideas floating around your head but you major problem seem to be the ability to put it down in a way that would truly let the readers into your mind and bring them the roller coaster ride.

But keep writing! Because they say practise makes perfect.

Reviewed by Lone Ranger (aka Jess @midnight-tree.co.nr)