"Because you read so much, your writing skill is pretty decent. It's just that your story tends to be boring at times."

"Try focusing on the dynamics of your story. Whether the story is moving continuously or the climax persists throughout the entire story, it's going to be boring either way."

So, a story's setting and characters have potential, potential for things to happen, relationships to change, et cetera. Dynamics are the forces that drive the story through interaction with the whole setting, and change what happens in the story.

The teacher tells the student to focus on dynamics, to make the story more entertaining. That makes sense. But "Whether the story is moving continuously or the climax persists throughout the entire story, it's going to be boring either way"? What on earth does that mean? This was the worst example, but there was one other piece of advice that made me chuckle, something along the lines of "your descriptions were too long, don't get lost in your emotions".

After listening to everyone, Mr. Moon added, "The winner gets a fried chicken from me."

The "from me" is unnecessary. Instead of ending the sentence on a powerful note, fried chicken, the translator/editor put two s*upid useless little words behind it. And think about it, if said these words, you'd never end with "from me".

This example was probably translation, not the author. Though you never know. However...

Unaware of the students' heart, James spoke without hesitation. Of course, in English.

"Oh, my! There's a centipede here. I have an idea of what the situation is. This is a rather threatening presence for the adorable first years. But we must not forget the fact that we're all part of nature. A slipper is not a tool for mu*der. It's an object that protects your feet. Now, let your slipper serve its purpose."

What in the seven hells is this dialogue? Is that how a grown-up teacher talks? This isn't an anime; you're trying to write a presumably serious webnovel.

For example, take chapter 26 to like 28. He meets a writer for coffee, who notes down his likes and dislikes. Our protagonist is suddenly reminded of the saying "know yourself" widely associated with Socrates (but not coined by him), and asks, "Are you into Socrates", to which the writer coolly answers "I don't dislike him". What purpose does this piece of text serve? Does it contain information useful to the scene, to the characters or story? No, nobody reads Plato's texts (Socrates didn't write) for literary purposes. Socrates is pulled in solely to impress the reader, to make our protagonist and the writer look intellectual. Because Old Greek philosophers were smart and cool. It cheapens Socrates: Socrates was much more than "know yourself". Not to mention, "I don't dislike him" is such a s*upid answer. Imagine you don't know anything about Socrates, and someone asks you the same answer. Wouldn't "I don't dislike him" or "Eh, somewhat" be convenient answers to pretend to know something about Socrates?

Later in the scene, Hemingway is discussed. Most of us have at most heard of Hemingway, me included, so he has to first copy half of the Wikipedia page into the novel so we can at least follow the very superficial references to the writer's personal life. It's like making a joke and subsequently explaining it, very unnecessary.

Two lauded writers meet, one of them says "I had never been so disappointed, even when I read Across the River and into the Trees [by Hemingway]". Right after it's explained that it's one of the worst critically received Hemingway books. Instead of telling us why the character thought it was disappointing, the novel backs out and just says it's universally badly received. It's of course put there to make the guy look like a sophisticated, cultured writer. But putting in an actually interesting critique is not something the author could do?

To be fair, at the beginning of the scene the characters do talk about what they think makes Hemmingway great. But I still wasn't content. The commentary they're giving is way too superficial: personal life, some plot details, some very general characteristics of his writing. Wikipedia would be enough, and that's not a good sign.

I never read any Hemmingway, but I took five minutes to read two articles just now. I'd make my characters say things like: "Hemmingway influenced my writing a great deal. His frequent use of short sentences or phrases makes his writing pack a serious punch. Yet, every single one of those sentences contains a clear message, every paragraph a clear idea. He only sparingly uses adverbs, preferring vigorous adjectives for his descriptions. It was powerful unlike any text I'd seen before. Before, I always thought I had to write beautiful, flowery prose. Hemmingway made me see writing in a different light. I still had a long way to go back then!". See, I can write a more in-depth paragraph on Hemmingway's writing than the author of the webnovel, and I didn't know anything about Hemmingway ten minutes ago!

Also, maybe a character could've quoted his personal favorite Hemmingway paragraph, a paragraph that tells something about the character. That would've been interesting. Imagine the author quoting a relevant paragraph from different renowned writers every few chapters. I'd love it.

Juho instinctively reached for a pen.

'Why does a person live?" he quietly asked himself. 'What was the meaning of living life?'

Before digging any deeper, he thought about whether he really existed. If people could no longer see or hear the person named Juho, he might be no different from being dead.

The protagonist puts out one book, that's hailed and praised by everyone. He meets up with another writer, that writer being very impressed by the protagonist. He impresses his language teacher/Literature Club teacher. In the Literature club, there was one guy who wasn't there to read and write. He's not interested. But he opens up the protagonist's book and suddenly, he's engrossed in it. Can you see the trend? See, you don't need face slapping if you use another trope: the secretly powerful protagonist. He wants to stay under the radar and live a quiet (yet successful) life, but can't help but show his genius now and then, to regularly impress the reader.

It's also very unfortunate that we don't know what specifically made the protagonist's book so great. There must be something more to it than the plot. Is it the way the protagonist structured the book? Is it the growth of the main character? Is it the character interactions? Colorful, evocative word choices? Nothing mentioned except the main plot point, we just have to believe that everyone, young and old alike, adore this book of his.

The language crutch is disappointing. Very early in he's able to write very "mature" works of literature, and knows like five languages by now. Sure. But what's he going to improve upon? You're belittling your own character's progress by giving him a crutch.

The attempts of the author to show character progression are clumsy. First example: there's this girl pretending to be the author of the protagonist's book. How did this not *immediately* get out to the public? To teachers? Impossible, it's the mystery author, everyone wants to know who he is! Funnily enough, that's one of the arguments the protagonist confronts the girl with later on. As if she's s*upid and couldn't think of it herself. Now because he's secretive, he lets her off at first. When he finds evidence however, he confronts her. This previously s*upid girl subsequently recognizes her wrongs and comes clean right after. Look, author, don't write your plot so ham-fisted. It's not a children's novel.

Second example. he main character lives through a tragic first life after releasing the bestseller novel. Homeless, he finds himself falling into a river and wakes up as his younger self. He reflects deeply on his past twenty-five years, his slow yet consistent fall from grace: he writes it down and it takes half an hour. Voilà, that's the end of the reflection. Wait, what?!?

Third example. He meets a woman singing (just "lalalala") and playing guitar in an awful fashion in public. She does it, she says, because she wants to convey a message, yet she fails to actually sing the message. Still, she persists. Meeting that woman, about a paragraph, suddenly provides the protagonist with enlightenment. Namely, he realizes he first needs a subject to write on. It could be anything, but he had to start from a subject. What crap character development.

As so often in these sorts of rebirth novels, he wakes up is like, "JACKPOT!". Really? Then a small scene shows the protagonist's (modest) emotion, where after he writes that reflection for half an hour. That's it. Yes, that's it. It's such a disappointment that authors don't focus more on this transformation. Being reborn should be such an impactful experience. You could write multiple chapter chock full of emotion about it. About how he thinks, how his mindset gradually transforms from being so down in the gutter, to optimistically gripping the new chance with both hands.

people kept on ranting about how he did not mention those friends he have in his past life. Like I was too shock to even think that. He was already considered a tr*sh, he didn't have any friend. People kept on bringing up his story as a fallen genius/ a person who won an award using ghost writer (coz no one believed that he wrote the first book). He was kind of warning signal to people.

Yeah, somewhat lost and somewhat not. I actually felt since he was typing 'that' story under the audience watch. I know that he was harsher to himself in that moment. He kept on getiing sunk in. The higher he gets, the more afraid he is about failure. The book with Kang face-slapped him so hard that he became what he was in his previous life. But he still kept on writing. Just the old self and current self is merging completely. Both afraid of death and failure.

Yes, it was kinda short and need more details. The time skip made the readers lost the touch slightly. But what I really like was the ever character development that I have been wishing since the first few chapters. The last book? Yes, I also wanted to know what the other people thought about that piece.

But actually, it brought me back to the moment that he confessed as Yun Woo but no one believed him. He already confessed it in the literary mag con that he died once but no one believe him. You know, he was grinning at that moment like what he did when he said he was Yun Woo in front of the publishing company. That kind of emotion, expression, and thoughts.

He was hoping someone would believe him yet no one does coz they called him a genius.

The book was just kind of confession and proof on what he said at that time (in the con) but decades later. People might believe it or not but few will acknowledge.

Well, he can read in different language but it was shown that he was strugglin in the language. Let him read it, he could. But he can't write it without further studying. He was asked in the english class, remember. He does know the correct translation but he does not know why his translation is correct. So, it wasn't basically a cheat. He studied it coz that cheat is not perfect. He took that advantage of studying in using it in his book.

Unfortunately, he's also a depressed, gloomy kid. It pained me how he kept on belittling himself. Saying that he could do better, his novels weren't as good as everyone said it was. Especially how he hallucinated even on the brink of his death. Because crow and a homeless man who fell to the river? Yeah, that wasn't real. You were seeing your past self. Why won't you lean on your friends' shoulders, Juho?? I'm sure they'll be glad to help you TAT

(Well, he does has a cheat skill. A.k.a he is a walking google translate, as he can read any languanges he encounter with a single glance. Kinda irked me that there's no explanation for this ability, so you can say it's one of the flaw of this novel)

I thought the 2 years skip of Military Enlistment was bad enough, but waow. A big timeskip from 27 years old to 47 years old? That was a bit too jarring. Not to mention, it happened in the middle of a chapter as well

Because the author used those last 6 or so chapters for Juho to undergo a journey in loving himself. Stop punishing yourself. The God gave you a second chance in life and you should live your life to the fullest. And that mean, take a break occasionaly. Nobody will hate you if your book come out later than usual TwT