Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: Bandaids and Punches

Title: Bandaids and Punches

Author: lurkinshadow

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

I am so incredibly sorry for the delay. I honestly don't know how I missed your name on the waiting list, so thank you so much for the reminder, and thank you so much for your understanding and patience! 

Summary: 3/5

I really, really like what you've got in your summary – it's very polished and professional. You seamlessly introduce your protagonist, and I already support them with how selfless he seems, with treating the illegal civilians and underground people. Then, you build up to meeting someone else, an underground fighter.

The issue I have is that your summary feels incomplete. Like, okay, we've met this underground fighter now – we know he's mystified about thinking they've already met. But then what? What's the conflict? The stakes? What will we be reading about? For all I can see, they just have a conversation about how they know each other, and that could be the end of the story.

I think you need to give the reader more. How is Black Ace relevant to the story? What will be the driving force behind the conflict? What are the stakes, and why should the reader care? Once you include those elements, your summary will be amazing. 

Grammar: 3/5

There were a few recurring errors throughout your story, but there wasn't anything major. Let's go through them in some detail, shall we?

Let's talk about dialogue first. Basically, whenever you have two characters speaking, you need to make sure each character has a separate paragraph for their dialogue. For example:

"Oh my, what a well mannered boy. Take a seat, would you like to drink something?" Dae Ho shakes his head, "no, thank you."

It should be:

"Oh my, what a well-mannered boy. Take a seat, would you like to drink something?"

Dae Ho shakes his head. "No, thank you."

Speaking of dialogue, let's talk about punctuating it. When dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'they exclaimed – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question, and an exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"I'm considerate of my body, unlike you," he moves his hand and eyes.

Since the part following the dialogue is an action beat, it should be:

"I'm considerate of my body, unlike you." He moves his hand and eyes.

Now, if you have a dialogue tag before the dialogue, the dialogue would still start with a capital if it's not a continuation and, rather, the beginning of a sentence. For example:

...she asks in a meek voice, "who is it?"

It should be:

...she asks in a meek voice, "Who is it?"

And finally, this one is a common one I see:

The young man takes a deep breathe...

So, 'breathe' is actually the verb (I breathe in, I breathe out), whereas the noun form is 'breath' (I took a breath). So, it should be:

The young man takes a deep breath...

Characterisation: 4/5

Instantly, the reader is made to like Haneul when he talks about how hard death is to deal with doctors. He instantly shows a mature way of thinking, a lot of empathy towards those around him, and it was great seeing how surprised he was to feel pleasure in helping someone – even if it was illegal in the circumstance. Great job in developing a likeable protagonist!

Ace (Park Dae Ho, should I say?) is mysterious, with no one really seeming to know who he is – even those close around him thinking he's a detective, such as his own sister. And even after seeing him yell at his sister, when he explains why – about how he hates people taking advantage of her, with the example of the bracelet sales, and how he feels sufficient and worthless – you can't help but pity him and want him to succeed in resolving all the conflict to come.

There were also some sweet moments of character development, and it was so sweet seeing the reunion between the twins, and how sweet Minji is throughout all of it.

The issue I had with characterisation was that you often went into telling territory instead of showing, but to avoid redundancy, I'll talk about that in the section below. 

Writing Style: 3/5

Your writing style is very simplistic, straightforward, and almost mechanical at times – and honestly, it worked really well when you were writing particularly from the perspective of Haneul, because I imagine that, in his profession, that's how procedures run. They're simple, succinct, and not excessively flowery.

However, there were times where it felt too much like telling and not enough showing. I suggest practising fleshing out the story more in some aspects. Even small moments such as:

He felt heavy hearted and lost.

That was one brief sentence on how he was feeling, and I think you could have done more to show it. What does it feel like to be lost? What questions would he be asking himself? What would be going through his mind, and what would his body be doing in response to this? What does it feel like internally?

Also, setting – I feel like there was a lack of it in general, and I wish there was more to make it more immersive. Give me the smells, the sounds, and the feeling of the area. Use literary devices such as simile, personification and metaphor to help the writing be that little more engaging and different, and to help develop a certain mood throughout the story. 

Plot + Originality: 4/5

I did like how it was Yoona, Haneul's mother of all people, who really got the ball rolling with the modelling idea! But also, more than that, there were some great moments throughout the story – it was fun learning the full truth after the court case from Haneul's side (and cool how Dae Ho noticed that his left fist was an indication of him lying). I like that it got more twisty when we learnt that Dae Ho actually knew the person Haneul saw in the playground, and there were some nice cliffhangers, too, such as finding out that Haneul was being accused of being the murderer in Dae Ho's place.

Nonetheless, there were some moments where I felt like you could have fleshed it out and shown it to us. For example, at the beginning, when we are told the story of when Haneul first helped someone illegally – you could flesh that into a full scene, with dialogue, a slower pace, and description, and make it a prologue of a sort to lure the reader into his tale.

And there are some parts that felt a bit rushed due to the lack of description. I recommend slowing down the pace by fleshing out each scene, showing the reader what it would be like to be there, and use dialogue for more than just banter – but for a touch of realism during the court cases, too.

Overall, I loved how the emotions are always changing throughout the story – we have wholesome, happy moments of Dae Ho being discharged from hospital, and then, bam! Scary phone call. And even in the intense moments of the climax, there are nice touches of humour with the bike riding (it was also very clever of Dae Ho to pick their phones like that!).

And I absolutely adored the happy ending and the symbolism – how Haneul was a band-aid full of hope, and how Park Dae Ho was a punch to represent survival and resilience. Really great work. 

OVERALL SCORE: 17/25

First of all, congratulations on finishing a pretty great story! I just suggest going back and fixing up your punctuation and you should be good to go. I hope this review helps!