Astania Reviews

Azia | Empress of Self-Ruin

TITLE: Empress of Self-Ruin

AUTHOR: mikrokosmos96

Review

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that everything in the review represents my opinion on what could make the story stand out more to who I think is your target audience. However, you know your story and your audience best, so no matter what is written here, please stay true to yourself!

Thank you for applying for my review shop! I'm honored that you wanted me to review your story, because as far as I can tell, views-wise, your story is doing pretty well. In fact, I should be learning from you too!

Overall, I can definitely see why you have the number of views you have. Your story premise has a lot of promise, and your chapter sells your story well. From a big-picture standpoint, you're doing fantastic. Therefore, this review will zoom into the smaller tweaks that you can do to make your story even better.

Description: Your description has a pretty interesting hook. 

"Countless people have suffered tragedy simply for a protagonist to shine and rise as heroes. But are they really heroes if they ruin everyone else's stories for the sake of their own?" 

Immediately, I can tell both the vibe and theme of your story. It will be a tragedy, and it will be a story focused on the non-heroes/anti-heroes/villains. If that's exactly what you're going for, you did a good job conveying that.

However, the two sentences mean essentially the same thing. You should merge the two sentences and shorten them to convey the same meaning but quicker and punchier. Remember, readers can only see a sentence (or less!) of your description when searching for a new story to read. That very first sentence you put in your description has to be short and sweet. My suggestion would be: 

"Are the protagonists really the heroes of the story—if people have to suffer for them to shine and rise?"

The next paragraph is perfect. I'd add the descriptor "modern-day" when describing Park Hanbyeol to emphasize the time-traveling part of the story. "Park Hanbyeol, a thirty-year-old music producer from modern-day South Korea."

The first sentence of the last paragraph is unnecessary in my opinion. It's already implied from the previous paragraph that Calypso has traveled back in time with all the characters from the original story, so it feels redundant to repeat this information. Instead, I suggest adding one more line at the end of the paragraph to bring the readers back to your awesome first paragraph. This will tie your description together and bring back the theme of your story. For example, "As Calypso juggles with her strange predicament, she slowly uncovers the truth about the novel and the heroes. In a novel, the full story is never truly told." Or something like that!

Cover: This is a beautiful cover. The woman on the cover gives off a very elegant and badass vibe that suits your story. The only advice I have is to make the text much clearer. Instead of gold, could it be white or silver—like the color of the chair the woman is sitting on? Or you could add an outline around the text. Anything to make the title and your author name pop out more!

Tags: Your tag use is extremely good. You used up all 25 tags, and all of them are relevant. Awesome job!

However, I did notice you have the "-romance" tag. That is a common glitch that Wattpad sometimes adds for people (it's done that to me too), and it doesn't add as much value as a tag because it's not really a real tag. You should swap that out for another way more relevant tag such as #historicalromance or #korean or #manhwa

Author's Note: I love your author's note and how you detail the reason behind writing this story. It's a great way to get people intrigued by your story before they even start reading. This is actually the first time I'll admit that an author's note can act as a good "hook" because normally I'll always recommend taking the chapter out.

I do have to point out that using he's/she's when the rest of the story is set in the past tense is not an idiosyncrasy though. It's a grammatical error. And it's totally fine to have these errors on Wattpad. In fact, I don't think people should put their perfectly edited stories on Wattpad because there are so many sites that steal from Wattpad all the time.

Chapter One: Overall, the chapter is well-written. There is a good grasp of the vibe of the book (angsty, dark, somber). The character is also one that readers can easily root for from the get-go. Tragedy befalls her over and over again, and yet, she is caring and has a strong moral conviction. The chapter ends with her vowing to be strong for her empire. In terms of building the world, creating the setting, and establishing the character and her wishes, you've got it nailed down. Therefore, I only have minor line edits for you.

1) Your first sentence.

"The imperial garden used to be full of beauty and splendor, but there was an eerie silence across its paved courtyards and gently babbling fountain that night, for it had turned into a graveyard of the unburied." -> This is your current first sentence of the chapter. You establish the setting and the vibe, and you talk about how strange tonight is, which is already a compelling start. But it is a long and repetitive sentence. It can be way more impactful if you split it up and start with a much shorter sentence.

My suggestion:

"Tonight, the imperial garden was a graveyard of the unburied.

What used to be full of beauty and splendor was now an eerie silence across its paved courtyards and a gently babbling fountain."

Basically, I split your sentence into two and rearranged it such that all the descriptions are at the back. Start strong to hook people in before you throw the harder-to-understand descriptions around. I hope you can see where I am going with this!

2) "I, who...," sentences.

You have quite a few instances where your sentence is structured like this: "I, who..., ..." This type of sentence structure is not widely used in writing, and it does read kind of clunky. I have a few recommendations for rephrasing them such that it reads much smoother.

Example 1: "But I barely paid attention and just continued to drown myself in paperwork, as usual. It was not long before I, who worked tirelessly to take care of the empire, suddenly collapsed."

Here, the second sentence is clunky, because you're essentially taking two sentences and trying to get them into one sentence. Also, it kinda reads like she is humble bragging about her work ethic, which is not the best look.

My suggestion: "But I barely paid attention and just continued to drown myself in paperwork, as usual. Being in charge of the empire was not an easy feat, and there was always so much to do. I was so engrossed that I barely noticed when I collapsed."

By removing the "I, who,..." sentence structure and expanding on the amount of work that she has to do, it is implied that she works tirelessly, instead of her outright saying that she works tirelessly.

Example 2: "I, who hadn't even known that I was pregnant, was in great shock."

Again, you're taking two sentences and combining them into one, so it reads clunky. And the "great shock" part is unnecessary too, because, once again, this is a feeling that can be implied,

My suggestion: "I hadn't even known that I was pregnant."

Short and simple, and conveys the same information.

Example 3: "Since the emperor wasn't around, I, who currently held the highest position in the palace, had no choice but to lead the battle myself."

My suggestion: "Since the emperor wasn't around, I held the highest position in the palace. I had no choice but to lead the battle myself."

I hope you can see that removing the "I, who..." structure can make your sentences a lot smoother to read without changing the meaning.

Anyway, that's the end of your review! Good luck with the rest of your writing journey, and I hope these notes are helpful.

Ending note: As per my rules, please share the review in your message board, tagging me (). Thank you!