Storyline

This story is written about nothing but love. There is hardly any outside violence in here except for the violently turbulent emotions of love that generates between my 2 characters.

One is recovering from a bruised and broken heart, the other has been running away from that emotion since he’s never seen it last in real life.

She has scars that fail to fade from a love encounter in the past and he refuses to let himself fall under the spell that has claimed many and ruined their lives.

 Will he somehow help her heal her bitter heart? Will she somehow help him to understand that love is unconditional?

Destiny decides to play a trick and put the 2 most unlikely people ever in a most unlikely situation. Will he ever believe in love? Will she ever love again? Or is Destiny really just testing the emotions of 2 unsuspecting people?

I took the above paragraph from the Author’s forewords.

Basically, it’s about a girl called Ariel (Ruby) and a guy called Sin (Nicholas) that were arranged by their destinies, Blu (Ruby’s destiny) and Moon (Nicholas’s destiny) to meet. So that Ariel can teach Sin how to love.

Coincidentally, they rented the same apartment from a drunken landlord, and then decided to stay together to get cheaper rent and because both had no other choice….

Comments

Before I start commenting, I would like to say I mean no personal malice and I’m just giving my honest feedback as a reader,  I just hope I can help you improve your story.

The story’s 28 chapters, and I think that’s too long for it. Firstly, I had to sort of urge myself to finish the story as I had to finish it to review or honestly I won’t even read it.  

I had no urge to go and read the next chapter and I found it a little boring and had to skip a bit.

The reason is not because the fanfic is badly written, I think it’s a decent effort… it’s mainly because of the very predictable plot.  

I must say that I have read this type of plot like a million times (it feels like it anyway), we all know the girl and boy is going to fall in love though they will meet difficulties.  

The thing is with a plot like this, the readers know what is going to happen already.  

There is no excitement in the story and you don’t really feel like you JUST have to read the next chapter to find out what’s happening. I honestly wouldn’t have finished the fanfic, if I didn’t have to.  

There are two ways to get over having a predictable plot, include lots of action and excitement or make the readers fall in love with the characters and include lots of witty banter to brighten up the story and make the story come alive.  

The Potential

The fanfic had a lot of potential, in the first chapter it showed Ariel (Ruby) showing up at her apartment to see her jerk boyfriend Lou with a whore.  

Ok this makes for a very good scene of excitement and tension, but the disappointing thing was that the author wrapped up the scene in one chapter! And it was done in a manner that left me blinking at the screen - and I still don’t get it.  

He looked over the whore’s shoulder at Ariel and she saw that the fool was drunk. Not bothering to say anything, Ariel stormed to the bedroom. This was the last straw. She refused to let him blind her with his lies anymore.

Quickly, Ariel grabbed all her clothing from her closet and threw them into an open suitcase she’d thrown on the bed. Running to the bathroom, she grabbed all her necessities and stuffed them along into the suitcase.
As she finally zipped it up, she noticed that Lou was standing in the doorway

And then the whole scene was done with Lou not believing Ariel was going to leave him and that she was joking.  Later Ariel left and she went to a hotel and took a shower and she thought…  

She never felt better. Lou was out of her life for good now. She suddenly felt like a bird, released out into the open after being confined to a tiny birdcage for so long .It wasn’t like she didn’t make enough to support herself, whatever she made, she had to split half-sometimes more then half-with that lazy ass hole. Now, her income was hers to spend. It was time to move on. 

As you can see from above, I can’t believe why Ariel can just take off then thinking how happy she is and how she could feel better.

A lot of questions popped up in my mind…  

Why didn’t she leave Lou earlier then? Why didn’t she move on earlier?

And what did she see in that guy?  

And she just left, wasn’t she angry with Lou? I mean seeing your supposed boyfriend fooling around – again, doesn’t it makes you want to do some kind of revenge? This made me think Ariel was a very contradictory character, as later in the fanfic we don’t see her being so weak.  

Later we realized (much much later) that she was scared of Lou as he would beat her up, and that was why she didn’t leave. So I guess we are suppose to assume, seeing him with a whore (though he did go out with many other girls before and she knew it) suddenly spurred Ariel to leave him all of a sudden?  

Lou appears later in the fanfic trying to get Ruby back and almost rapes her, this was another potentially exciting scene, which was wrapped up too nicely and quickly when Sin came and beat him up and Lou left forever in like half a chapter.

But despite the hurried scenes, there were many sweet moments in the fanfic. Although the fanfic moved along at a sometimes snail pace that was draggy, it picked up when the author tried some romantic moments that added some flavor to the story.  

The author made it quite interesting to see how they would cope with living with each other. There was a lot of potential comedy here and sparks, it wasn’t fully brought out but I think the author made quite a decent effort to brighten up her fanfic.

Character Development

It was a pity that Lou’s character was rather half-baked. All I saw of him in the end was this loser boyfriend who somehow kept sleeping with many girls and was someone who violently beat his girlfriend. That was basically what the author wanted, but I had no feelings whatever towards him. I think it would be better if the author made him into someone really bad – a spurned ex-lover. Develop him a bit and don’t make him such a pathetic character. Make the readers hate him.  

Ariel was written as a very nice sweet innocent girl. Basically, we don’t see her changing… but perhaps she did become stronger as she tried to reject Lou? However I don’t see her character developing or her mindset changing or having learnt anything. It’s probably because of the writing format, which gives fewer chances for the readers to read Ariel’s thoughts and feelings. However, from the start to the end, I could not believe Ariel ever felt anything but fear for Lou.  

Sin on the other hand, was rather puzzling as he had a 180 degrees personality makeover from the starting as someone who knows all women, you know the playboy kind to the end as someone who was totally in love with Ariel and was sweet and gentle. I mean it’s a romance story so it’s possible, but it was not very believable as the change was too quick and dramatic – we don’t know why he changed at all or what changed him.

Confusion  

There were quite a lot of confusing parts and inconsistencies in the fanfic.  

Some muddling parts were how Ariel and Sin ended up sharing the apartment? Totally confusing and unbelievable with a drunk landlord and all. Another part were chapters dedicated to Ariel’s and Sin’s destinies.  

It was written in dialogue formation and they would talk about how to help Ariel and Sin. One question that bugged me every time I read about the destinies is how come they don’t sound like well “holy beings” but rather some third party messing things up for Ariel and Sin.  

Also why of all the millions of destinies in the world, Ariel’s and Sin’s destinies so coincidentally talk to each other? I mean it’s rather weird that Sin’s destiny would ask Ariel’s destiny to make Ariel teach Sin how to love. I mean won’t Ariel’s destiny be talking to Lou’s destiny instead?  

And they totally assume Sin and Ariel won’t fall for each other, as they are total opposites. And when they do, Ariel’s destiny wants to separate them so Ariel won’t get hurt. This confuses me it’s like so Ariel shouldn’t fall in love?  

It was weird that although the readers could see Sin and Ariel was living quite obviously happily with each other – much better than what their lives was before. The destinies thought they would be better separated so Ariel’s heart wouldn’t be hurt again.  

It was kind of weird and half-baked the way the destinies put those two back again, like they were dolls as you see from below.

Moon: You forget-I’m Sin’s destiny and you’re Ruby’s. We can do just about anything. They can’t control us but we can control them.

It was kind of interesting to see supernatural and fantasy elements in the story, but it didn’t make the story more interesting overall as it did not have much of an impact.

Also as you can see from the phrase above, sometimes the author get the names mixed up and call Ariel Ruby instead.

In this case, as it is a fanfiction I don’t see the need to change the names of the stars as if you change the names of all the stars - readers give up reading if there are too many names they have to remember. But basically it’s the choice of the authors.

Presentation & Paragraphing

To readers, it’s very important because you are going to read a possibly long fanfic and you would be happier not to have sore eyes after it.

I liked the way Naliah paragraphed, very clear and it defined her chapters and her character views clearly. Thank you! I always love a clearly presented fanfiction.

Too many words and little spacing with long paragraphs clog up the screen and spoil the story a little.

Suggested Improvements

This fanfic was quite a decent effort at a romance comedy. I wasn’t sure what genre it was, as it ranged from melodrama to some comedy then to soppiness.

In my opinion, what genre you should focus on depends on your main plot. If you plot is over-the-top, it will work for comedy, fantasy and supernatural. If you are writing a tragedy, it’s best to keep the mood serious.

I think this fanfiction would have been better if it was a comedy. I think the author had the right comedic touches from several scenes in the story, and I mean look at the main framework you have a girl and a guy – two strangers living together in a flat rented from a drunk landlord! The possibilities are endless at what funny things that could happen, and it would be sweet to see them falling in love slowly but squabbling.

I think the author could have developed Lou more, make the readers fear that he would break up the couple (throughout the story I did not feel anything for the couple – like a fear of them breaking up or a strong desire for them to be together). Make Lou more real and dark.

Also if she would just develop those scenes which have a lot of potential for excitement and suspense, I think she would have a much better fanfiction overall.

My Verdict

The foreword was really interesting and I expected a touching emotional fanfic, but the story itself wasn’t like the forewords so I was a little disappointed.