Yet another free feedback thread.

JDC_OnPaper

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Good day to you. Before I start with the feedback, I would mention that English is my second language. I stopped reading after finishing Chapter 2: Fantasy to Reality.

It's an okayish web novel. I would even say that this is a picture-perfect example of a 2.5-star novel. The beginning is horrendously secondary and feels like a copy of Overlord, while grammar and the overall writing style(prose) are not bad, it's not good either.

I won't criticize or say that copying or being inspired by other works is bad. I have no qualms about that, as my main gripe lies with the writing. Let's start with your opening. The first part of your story is an info dump. No matter how hard you try to hide it by adding descriptions, metaphors, and so on. It's a good-old info dump. Is it bad? In my opinion, yes.

I am giving this feedback as a reader. And as a reader, I would've preferred it if you had made a prologue or another chapter one. A chapter that would have the same info but more spread out and phrased slightly less like an info dump. Is this info dump THAT bad on its own? No. But the problem here is that it's not on its own. There are more problems. Such as logical mistakes.

We start the story with an explanation that this VRMMO uses VR-capsule. Guess what you write in that same chapter 1? He didn’t want to damage his VR-Headset You might say, "Oh, but he might've used a VR headset instead of a VR capsule." Okay. To this, I will mention your chapter two.

He was sure that he was in his VR-Capsule, yet he moved freely. What? Now you are going to mention that he used a VR headset in combination with a VR capsule? Hold your horses mate and mention it in a STORY, not in a reply. Btw, if I missed this being explained, sorry, but I think there was no explanation.

However, there is another logical mistake.
Made by an international Indie game developer group.
Ah… Such graceful animation… $50— fucking cash grab corporates.

I don't want to have a long back-and-forth with you about this, so I will try to keep this short. You used whale in the title. Most whales won't act like that or say such things. Even if MC is a whale who will shit on the company, you phrased it wrongly and illogically.

Another type of mistake is repetition.
The rather soft and wet ground met with his armored boots, rather slanting his balance.

Its jet-black surface shining rather brightly as it reflected the light of the moon.

Those are examples of you using one word over and over again. Please don't forget that this is an example. There are more repetitions, but I won't copy-paste every single one of them.

Another example that is related to repetitions is filler words. There are a lot of them, and you use them instead of writing necessary terms.

As he observed his surroundings, he had noticed that he was somewhat inside a cave of sorts. There is no need for somewhat here.
The height was somewhat 60 meters tall, Again, useless somewhat. The height was almost\around\close to 60 meters tall. And this is something from the top of my head(remind you, I'm a shit author).

I'm not sure where to put it, so let's put it here. Though it's not a filler word, it's an example of you adding a useless word.
The armor was the least of his problems, the world of [Envisioned Fantasy] had many numerous NPC-ruled Knight orders, Many numerous? One word is enough.

And now my favorite(no) part of every feedback. Weird phrases. There is a lot of them in your novel, so I will only copy-paste a couple of them.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Earth finally had illuminated itself with life once more in the bleak current. What? Bleak current?
Being an NPC creation of Blitz, he didn’t much for a voice. Didn't much for a voice?
“Ah… it had already been 3 years since the last Guild war occurred, The last guild occurred?
From the ground, the vast millions of leaves across the vast forest ruffled as the gentle breeze. What?
“This isn’t my house… nor the earth isn’t that bright.” What? Nor the earth isn’t that bright?
There were too many questions with so little answer. So little answeR?
however a figure of somewhat a hand was still there. OF SOMEWHAT A HAND? What? Like, really, what?
ENVISIONED FANTASY offered their players Freedom to several machinations, to make a story of their own. Okay, this one isn't that bad, but it's still weird. Freedom to several machinations? You can phrase this much better.

There was probably a typo.
An in-game market the gave the Users the ability of customization of their avatar and belongings. That gave?

And lastly, for some weird reason, you like to capitalize words in the middle of the sentence. It's not that it's wrong, but it's done inconsistently, and the capitalized words are basically random. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Your story isn't hard to read, and the prose is okay. There are descriptions, body language, and metaphors, this is great. If there are any mistakes, they didn't catch my eye, apart from the things I've mentioned. This is why it's a 2.5-star novel, in my opinion. There are both logical and grammar mistakes, but at the same time, I can read and understand almost everything, and the prose is okay\good.

I can't say much about the plot, worldbuilding, and other stuff. So far, it was a copy of Overlord. And I didn't like Overlord, so I see no reason to continue reading your story. And that's the end of my feedback.
Thanks very much for the feedback.
For the repetition and irregular capitalization, that's practically a habit for me when writing gotta fix that. For the VR-Capsule and VR-headset mix-match. The design in my mind was that there was a VR-Headset within the VR-capsule, unless the VR-capsule gained sentience and plug its stuff on the person's body. Forgot to explain that or clarify that in the chapter (My fault).

However, gotta commend myself that I got quite good feedback when using the Show don't Tell. The problem is my repetitions and lack of explanation. Gotta thank you, this is my first time receiving feedback like this, (Me being a coward and was too scared back in the past when accepting criticizing or negative feedback). But this is something of a start.

Again, Thanks for your time in reading and ranking my little novel, much appreciated. Have a good Day!
 

SailusGebel

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However, gotta commend myself that I got quite good feedback when using the Show don't Tell.
Yep, it was good.
The problem is my repetitions and lack of explanation.
But this is where we disagree. Even if you fix repetitions and add explanations about VR stuff, I won't give you more than 3.25, maybe 3.5 stars. To get 3.5 and higher, you should also work on how you phrase sentences and overall grammar. See the part where I said weird phrases. There is nothing wrong with making some kind of an artistic metaphor. Yet sometimes you have to use an already established phraseological unit, an idiom, without changing it.

But this is only my subjective opinion. Perhaps others won't find those phrases weird\odd\irritating? I don't know. Anyway, you are actually quite good, so keep writing, and good luck with it.
 

SailusGebel

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Hi bro.

I only do this because it's just my hobby.

Well, it's my very first story, and it only has two chapters for now. My first chapter might have been really bad, but I might have improved in the second chapter. Feel free to check it out and give your thoughts about it if you don't mind.

You can comment anywhere that you prefer, on SH or here, or maybe both if you don't mind.

My aim is to do something like a Naruto-plot style mixed with rescuing survivors in multiversal worlds.

Here's the link:
God Slayers
Good day to you. Before I start with the feedback, I would mention that English is my second language. I stopped reading after finishing Chapter [1] The Second Chance and about a third of Chapter [2] The First Royal Knight.

It's bad. Chapter 2 is better, but not by a lot. If chapter 1 deserves 1-star, then chapter 2 deserves 1.5-stars at most. Even in chapter 2, there are problems with tenses, punctuation, repetitions, lack of descriptions, dialogues, characters, worldbuilding, plot, logic, and the list probably can go on.

"No, you idiot." "My new family." "I need to return to her because I'll be caring for her when our baby is born." An example of a punctuation mistake.

Interrupting their conversation, a glitchy voice of a woman that can be heard only from Ran’s mind calls him in a calm but glitchy tone. An example of a badly phrased sentence that has a repetition(the word glitchy).

The people who live here wear a mishmash of clothes. Everyone is living in peaceful harmony, from medieval attire to cybernetic body enhancements. An example of a lack of descriptions and details.

Ran replied as he confusedly looked at both of his hands while thinking back about what happened before he got here.
Interrupting their conversation, a glitchy voice of a woman that can be heard only from Ran’s mind calls him in a calm but glitchy tone.
An example of tenses shifting.

“Calm down, Kez.” said Mino.
“Calm down?” “Why would I?” “Did you even realize what he did to you?”
“Did you understand what I just said?”
“But–” “He was trying to– “
An example of bad dialogue.

Looking at the foggy smoke caused by Ran’s destructive aura, he saw a silhouette of Ran who was painfully holding his head with a celestial ring surrounding him that resembles the First Ascendant’s celestial weapon, the Eight Phases of the Moon, and a cosmic orb floating behind him that resembles the First Descendant’s celestial bright sun, the Center of the Galaxy. An example of bad worldbuilding and an unnecessarily long sentence.

After receiving the clothes, Ran left his room. He looked at Mino, who was sitting cross-legged on a couch, smoking a cigar. An example of a lack of logic.

Okay, now I will slightly elaborate on every point.

Punctuation. There are obviously a lot of problems here, but the most obvious, glaring, and irritating one is your usage of quotation marks, speech marks, this " thing. You forget to add them, you add too many, and you add an unnecessary space between the dot\period and a quotation mark. You do this . " for some weird reason. I won't talk too much about commas, but I bet there are problems with them as well.

Badly phrased sentences. You use incorrect words, you word your sentences weirdly, use weird metaphors, and so on. Yeah, I got it, English is your second language. Read more books in English and try to use more idioms instead of coming up with something on your own.

Repetitions. It's a problem that isn't exclusively about weak vocabulary. It's also about adding useless words into a sentence.
Interrupting their conversation, a woman's voice that only Ran could hear called him in a calm, glitchy tone. I'm not saying what I wrote here is great, but it's an example of how many useless words you add. This sentence works even if you take a lot of stuff away.

Lack of descriptions and details. Well, I think the example is self-explanatory. Instead of describing a couple of people with different get-ups and how they look, you write The people who live here wear a mishmash of clothes. And it's pretty much all the time. You don't dive deep into describing something and usually write a couple of words at best.

Tenses shifting. This is also a self-explanatory point. Stop using past simple and present simple interchangeably. Stick to one of those two tenses.

Bad dialogues. This is somewhat harder to explain as it is related to characters and logic. Your characters don't feel real at all, and thus their dialogues feel as if they are reciting lines from a screenplay. It's as if they are forced to say these lines. Also, you don't add enough body language, and the characters don't have enough individuality, they sound kinda the same.

Bad worldbuilding. This is related to the bad dialogues and lack of descriptions. You usually just dump a part of the worldbuilding, so it looks very forced.

Lack of logic. This I can't explain. The characters don't act properly, and it has nothing to do with your story being a sci-fi+fantasy. Regardless of where and when it happens, people don't act like that. The decisions they make, the way the plot unfolds, it's all very, very forced.

Characters. They don't feel real, and they don't feel believable. Basically, all of the problems above are intertwined altogether, thus making it hard to pinpoint an exact moment where everything went wrong. All of it from the beginning is wrong.

Your writing doesn't flow, when I read it feels like you are listing things, you don't connect them. I'm sorry I can't explain this properly.

If you want to improve, read more books in English. Copy them, the idioms, descriptions, and writing styles. Memorize what you liked from those books in terms of technical stuff. Like how they word the sentences, how they make the story flow, etc. And don't forget to write more. Write whatever, look back at what you've written; think and pinpoint where are mistakes and where are good parts.

If you don't care about me and my opinion, which is 100% acceptable as I'm just a random dude you can obviously disregard what I've said. You can continue writing as is and find joy in it.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck with it, and sorry for not being able to find something good.
 

SailusGebel

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Sorry, I'm new here and didn't quite understand. I didn't think 'on SH meant' on the forum, thinking they were two different thing. Thought you would leave your feedback in the form of a review on the novel page. Can you? If not, then here in the forum is also fine.
Don't think that I'm acting like an ass. I can't phrase some things differently, so I might sound rude.

The rules are simple. You post a link to your story, you state where you would like to receive the review\feedback, this thread, or PM, and I read your story. After I read as much as I can, I will reply to you. This is what I've written at the beginning(first message) of the thread. If you didn't see it or missed it, it makes me think that you only looked at the thread's title. I advise you to quickly browse through the thread. My feedback is very blunt and rude; can you handle it? Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I don't want to ruin your mood or bicker with you after you see the feedback and start acting defensively.
 

SilverFlame

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Don't think that I'm acting like an ass. I can't phrase some things differently, so I might sound rude.

The rules are simple. You post a link to your story, you state where you would like to receive the review\feedback, this thread, or PM, and I read your story. After I read as much as I can, I will reply to you. This is what I've written at the beginning(first message) of the thread. If you didn't see it or missed it, it makes me think that you only looked at the thread's title. I advise you to quickly browse through the thread. My feedback is very blunt and rude; can you handle it? Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I don't want to ruin your mood or bicker with you after you see the feedback and start acting defensively.
All good, skip me then.
 
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No idea if you accept stuff like this, SaliusGebel, but after some good ’ol reflecting on my previous cringe posts here, I’m legit sorry for claiming you were “too dumb” to appreciate my “work of art.” Anyway, this started as a very rough draft, but I made sure to make it look feasible as a mid at best isekai novel.

World Story 2.0

Now, why would I aim for a lame-tier novel? To attract a fuckton of readers, duh. 😎

EDIT: For real tho, I wanna know your in-depth on this B.
 
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SailusGebel

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No idea if you accept stuff like this, SaliusGebel, but after some good ’ol reflecting on my previous cringe posts here, I’m legit sorry for claiming you were “too dumb” to appreciate my “work of art.”
You don't have to be sorry. It's hard to understand what I want to say, and I know this. The whole back and forth was because you couldn't understand what I wanted to say, and it happened because of me.
Anyway, this started as a very rough draft, but I made sure to make it look feasible as a mid at best isekai novel.
I'm not sure I understand what you wrote here. I didn't have any qualms with the previous plot. I've read a single chapter of the previous version and couldn't make any opinions. I disliked the way you wrote, your prose, and only your prose. Well, I also disliked the Japanese setting, but it is a subjective dislike that usually doesn't affect the rating I give. I have zero ideas why you changed the plot.
Now, why would I aim for a lame-tier novel? To attract a fuckton of readers, duh. 😎
It doesn't look like a lame-tier novel. I've read 'lame-tier' novels in this thread. I won't point fingers at which novels it is, but yours is not like those. My opinion is that you won't be able to attract a lot of readers.
EDIT: For real tho, I wanna know your in-depth on this B.
You won't be able to get any. I don't want to read your story as it's not my cup of tea. I will slightly elaborate on a couple of reasons.

The first reason is, obviously Japanese setting. Now that I can actually understand the majority of what is written, I dislike it even more. Actually, your novel is probably one of the rare exceptions to my unspoken rule. If I had to rate your story, the setting would affect it.

The second reason it's cringe-inducing. I'm not sure if you wanted to write something fun, cool, or both. To me, the story is nothing but cringe, pure, undiluted cringe. I've read one and a half chapters and couldn't force myself to read further.

The third reason is your prose. This is the most important part. As I said, I'm not a skilled author, and my English isn't that good. I still dislike your prose, but I don't know the exact reason why. It's either bad grammar or simply your style isn't my cup of tea. If it's not bad grammar, others will tell you if this is the case, then it's your style.

If it's your style, it's one of the reasons why your story won't become popular, in my opinion, of course. To make it easier for both of us, I can simply show you a couple of examples. Examples of what I think is good prose that CAN attract a lot of readers. Again, it's MY opinion. I don't claim that my opinion is an undisputed truth.
 
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The first reason is, obviously Japanese setting.
It’s not a Japanese setting, lmao. It’s a fantasy world with magical twists on real world cultures, but the first characters just happen to be either reincarnated Japanese ppl or those who have Japanese roots. But I get it, I understand why you don’t like fantasy novels like this. To tell you the truth, I’m dumbing down the plot because if you want to write some epic fantasy novel that spans 300+ chapters, you gotta start narrow and stupid.

Also, yeah, I get why you don’t really like the humor, cuz it’s heavily gen Z (especially coming from the MC), but it’s intentional. Hokori’s going to be a corruption of light novel heroes.
To make it easier for both of us, I can simply show you a couple of examples. Examples of what I think is good prose that CAN attract a lot of readers.
Well, fire away, fam. Seriously tho, I know why you don’t like my humor, and that’s okay. I’m not writing a comedy, I’m writing through the perspective of a 20+ MC who listens to XXXtentacion and says “deadass” 24/7.
 
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SailusGebel

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It’s not a Japanese setting, lmao.
I know. I guess elements from Japanese culture would've been more suitable.
But I get it, I understand why you don’t like fantasy novels like this.
You probably don't because I'm afraid you've misunderstood me again.
Well, fire away, fam. Seriously tho, I know why you don’t like my humor, and that’s okay. I’m not writing a comedy, I’m writing through the perspective of a 20+ MC who listens to XXXtentacion and says “deadass” 24/7.
I will try to phrase it differently. The most important part I was talking about in the previous message is your prose. The words you choose to use, the way you phrase your sentences, and the way you combine those sentences in paragraphs. You use a third-person POV. MC doesn't affect your writing as much, so he is not the problem here.

I was NOT talking about showing you an example of a 'good' humor, or a PLOT that can attract readers. I was talking about showing an example of PROSE that can attract readers.
 
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I was talking about showing an example of PROSE that can attract readers.
Well, sure thing, fam. I want a ton of examples, cuz again, any feedback is extremely helpful. If you’re wondering what inspired my prose, it’s mostly Sanderson aka windowpane prose, so there’s more telling than showing. But after reading some Tolkien, perhaps I should tell my readers more about what world they’re truly in, and after reading some Stephen King, perhaps I can still show many scenes rather than tell them. What do you think?

Either way, I’d sincerely love for you to show me a prose that can attract plenty of readers. As long as I can still write my story the way I want it to, it’s fine by me.

EDIT: If you’ve noticed, I write a lot of “questions” aka inner monologue cuz I always loved this style. When done right, it can actually ponder the reader on many things, and even enhance mysteries.
 
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SailusGebel

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Well, sure thing, fam. I want a ton of examples, cuz again, any feedback is extremely helpful. If you’re wondering what inspired my prose, it’s mostly Sanderson aka windowpane prose, so there’s more telling than showing. But after reading some Tolkien, perhaps I should tell my readers more about what world they’re truly in, and after reading some Stephen King, perhaps I can still show many scenes rather than tell them. What do you think?

Either way, I’d sincerely love for you to show me a prose that can attract plenty of readers. As long as I can still write my story the way I want it to, it’s fine by me.

EDIT: If you’ve noticed, I write a lot of “questions” aka inner monologue cuz I always loved this style. When done right, it can actually ponder the reader on many things, and even enhance mysteries.
I'm saying this only because you said that you want a lot of readers. To have a lot of readers, you should write for readers, and you should know who your readers are. From my understanding, a lot of Web Novel readers are people who don't like to read. They started reading Web Novels after watching anime or reading manga. Both cases don't involve a lot of reading. And the first couple of works they read were probably a translation of Japanese or Chinese novels. Unlike people on this forum who genuinely like to read a lot, the majority seek fast entertainment.

A couple of days ago, WN made some changes and forced some readers and authors to come here. And one newbie author who came from WN said the following. "When I read, I skip the descriptions because they are boring." And another dude said that he also skips the description.
I'm not sure if they are the majority, but this is one of the types of readers you are dealing with. They want faulty books.

But even without this type of reader, a lot of readers don't want interesting prose. They want readability. They want to read fast and get entertained fast. Beautiful prose, for most readers, doesn't matter at all. In fact, even if there are a lot of grammar mistakes, as long as they can understand the story, they will read it. They come for the plot. Your prose, again, in my opinion, isn't easy to understand. The readability is low.

Even 10 thousand views will be hard to get with a book that has beautiful or interesting prose. With the exception of RR, there you can probably aim for something like 50k views. Authors will praise you, critics will give you 5-stars, and everyone will call your novel a hidden gem, but you won't get readers. I've seen three novels like yours in this thread, maybe more. All of them have not your usual prose, and all of them have less than 10k views on SH. With the exception of one story, that story is smut, and even with smut, it has 12.5k views.

At the same time, I've seen a story with a bad prose and a lot of mistakes, that has around 20k views, and close to 300 hundred readers. All while the novels I've mentioned before struggle to get more than a hundred readers. That novel isn't a smut, isn't a GL, isn't a harem.

I know that plot is also important, and you can't say that it's solely because of the prose. But your choice of prose also reflects the fact that you don't understand what a casual reader wants. It's obviously my subjective opinion.

In my opinion, these two stories are an example of prose that can possibly attract a lot of readers.
Maybe it's my misconception, but I see a striking difference between those two stories and yours. The prose of these two stories is not without flaws, but readability is very high.
And before you decide to act upon my advice, do what you think is right. I might be wrong. If your way of doing things and your writing don't achieve the results you've wanted, only then think of what I said.
 
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I'm saying this only because you said that you want a lot of readers. To have a lot of readers, you should write for readers, and you should know who your readers are. From my understanding, a lot of Web Novel readers are people who don't like to read. They started reading Web Novels after watching anime or reading manga. Both cases don't involve a lot of reading. And the first couple of works they read were probably a translation of Japanese or Chinese novels. Unlike people on this forum who genuinely like to read a lot, the majority seek fast entertainment.

A couple of days ago, WN made some changes and forced some readers and authors to come here. And one newbie author who came from WN said the following. "When I read, I skip the descriptions because they are boring." And another dude said that he also skips the description.
I'm not sure if they are the majority, but this is one of the types of readers you are dealing with. They want faulty books.

But even without this type of reader, a lot of readers don't want interesting prose. They want readability. They want to read fast and get entertained fast. Beautiful prose, for most readers, doesn't matter at all. In fact, even if there are a lot of grammar mistakes, as long as they can understand the story, they will read it. They come for the plot. Your prose, again, in my opinion, isn't easy to understand. The readability is low.

Even 10 thousand views will be hard to get with a book that has beautiful or interesting prose. With the exception of RR, there you can probably aim for something like 50k views. Authors will praise you, critics will give you 5-stars, and everyone will call your novel a hidden gem, but you won't get readers. I've seen three novels like yours in this thread, maybe more. All of them have not your usual prose, and all of them have less than 10k views on SH. With the exception of one story, that story is smut, and even with smut, it has 12.5k views.

At the same time, I've seen a story with a bad prose and a lot of mistakes, that has around 20k views, and close to 300 hundred readers. All while the novels I've mentioned before struggle to get more than a hundred readers. That novel isn't a smut, isn't a GL, isn't a harem.

I know that plot is also important, and you can't say that it's solely because of the prose. But your choice of prose also reflects the fact that you don't understand what a casual reader wants. It's obviously my subjective opinion.

In my opinion, these two stories are an example of prose that can possibly attract a lot of readers.
Maybe it's my misconception, but I see a striking difference between those two stories and yours. The prose of these two stories is not without flaws, but readability is very high.
And before you decide to act upon my advice, do what you think is right. I might be wrong. If your way of doing things and your writing don't achieve the results you've wanted, only then think of what I said.
Dang… you legit opened my eyes, fam. Just by reading the first chapter of An Author’s Survival Guide (a fellow Pinoy author I know well from RR), I finally found out what I lacked: substance!

Think about this for a moment: I write too much action in every paragraph, leading to the reader prolly getting bored in the long run. I barely tried to explain what my world was like (I do the breadcrumbs approach mostly, but I guess I can’t do that all the time unless if I write manga like One Piece and Made in Abyss), and though I have the inner monologue down to a science, it’s still not enough to showcase what type of character they are. But all in all, there’s barely any time for my readers to breathe because I don’t even try to immerse them in the setting they’re in.

The whole reason why I write like this is because I’m always afraid I’d reach the 3k-5k+ word count for each chapter, and in RR, most readers don’t want to slog through that crap. So, I made a rule to only write until I reach 1.5k-2k+ words. But after reading the Rising Stars in RR and Trending in SH, nearly of them have 3k-4k words per chapter! So I was being paranoid over absolutely nill.

Anyway, I finally get it. As long as my prose is genuinely readable and doesn’t emphasize, it’ll get a ton of readers in no time. By the way, my prose had better reception on RR, as you’ve predicted. Many considered it the more beautiful kind, but it was still hard to read through.
 

SailusGebel

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The whole reason why I write like this is because I’m always afraid I’d reach the 3k-5k+ word count for each chapter, and in RR, most readers don’t want to slog through that crap. So, I made a rule to only write until I reach 1.5k-2k+ words. But after reading the Rising Stars in RR and Trending in SH, nearly of them have 3k-4k words per chapter! So I was being paranoid over absolutely nill.
I'm surprised that RR doesn't like long chapters, but SH also doesn't like long chapters that much. Trending in SH changes a lot nowadays, but generally, people do like 1.5k-2k+ words.

But it also depends on your release schedule. Releasing six chapters a week that are 3k words long will probably tire the readers. While releasing one 1.5k word chapter a week will be not enough, and readers will be bored.
 
D

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Releasing six chapters a week that are 3k words long will probably tire the readers. While releasing one 1.5k word chapter a week will be not enough, and readers will be bored.
Well, I’m planning on posting four chapters a week, so I guess 2.5k-3k+ words is enough to keep them interested. With that out of the way, let me emphasize the probable reason why my prose didn’t sit well with you: I wrote too much action. Too much of that doesn’t work well with either a showing or telling prose. It’s even action that plays in my head, but my the other part of my noggin wants it “subtle” aka breadcrumbs approach of storytelling. It’s because I don’t want to info dump my readers up the ass, but in these past few days, I realize writing action 24/7 is really, really dull.
 

SailusGebel

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Well, I’m planning on posting four chapters a week, so I guess 2.5k-3k+ words is enough to keep them interested. With that out of the way, let me emphasize the probable reason why my prose didn’t sit well with you: I wrote too much action. Too much of that doesn’t work well with either a showing or telling prose. It’s even action that plays in my head, but my the other part of my noggin wants it “subtle” aka breadcrumbs approach of storytelling. It’s because I don’t want to info dump my readers up the ass, but in these past few days, I realize writing action 24/7 is really, really dull.
Maybe you are right, but I want to show you two examples.
The three brothers unfolded their prize together, and their hearts raced with a smile. Yet they never knew their eyes would widen at the tapestry’s words of elegant cursive. To think its intro captivated them more than its illustrations:

In the land of rock giants and firedrakes, Novus always aimed to uplift everyone into the future; quite the exceptional city within the Prosperity Triangle, but the capital of Coelestis still needed to work on the coverage.

Are these two examples an action? Because I dislike how you wrote them.
 
D

Deleted member 93348

Guest
Maybe you are right, but I want to show you two examples.
The three brothers unfolded their prize together, and their hearts raced with a smile. Yet they never knew their eyes would widen at the tapestry’s words of elegant cursive. To think its intro captivated them more than its illustrations:

In the land of rock giants and firedrakes, Novus always aimed to uplift everyone into the future; quite the exceptional city within the Prosperity Triangle, but the capital of Coelestis still needed to work on the coverage.

Are these two examples an action? Because I dislike how you wrote them.
Yup, and your eyes barely have time to rest.
 

SailusGebel

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 7, 2020
Messages
8,878
Points
233
Aight, let's throw this in here.
I'm fine if you respond here.
Thanks in advance! :D
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/575432/ballad-of-the-peacekeepers-sun-of-the-beasts/
Good day to you. Before I start with the feedback, I would mention that English is my second language. I stopped reading after finishing all the available chapters. The current last chapter is Chapter 1 – Light of the Lower Moon.

I'm not a furry, which means there is no chance that I will continue reading your novel. Though the quality is okay. Overall it's easy to read, and I like the way you write, but not by a lot. 60% like and 40% dislike. Too many descriptions of action to my taste, but maybe it's because it's the first chapter, I don't know.

There are some weird phrases.
They recovered from their surprise and tried to crawl out of it, but the hole only dug deeper into the ground. Weird second part.

She had been sprinting through this area not long ago, but she could properly take in the sight now. Again, weird second part.

The crooked and dark buildings behind them seemed as if they would fall apart at any minute, but yet they stood tall. But yet. I think it's a typo? If you wrote it intentionally don't do it anymore. One 'yet' is enough.

The people trudging around varied in nearly all ways, but a majority of the people here wore rags over their furred coats. A useless repetition of the word people. You can rewrite the sentence a bit and make it look better.

Trys shoved her glasses down on the table. Shoved the glasses down?

None other fit the title of Elder than the Dragon before her. Either misplaced words, a typo, or you forgot to write a word.

Apart from those sentences, I didn't notice any glaring mistakes, typos, or weird phrases. As I said before, overall, it's easy to read and comprehend which I rate high. Now that it's easy to read, I want a higher quality. More appropriate descriptions, add small details, a bit more non-weird metaphors, fewer descriptions of action, add slightly more exposition\thoughts, work on and improve the paragraphing, and make the text more smooth. I can't give advice on all the things I mentioned for two reasons. I would have to rewrite chunks of your novels and I'm a shit author, so chances are I wouldn't be able to show a good example. The second reason, I provide feedback as a reader. Rewriting is not something I do; I only state my likes and dislikes.

About the story itself. You gave way too many names and terms. That's a downside, in my opinion. There is no gradual learning of what is happening, and why I should care. Whenever I see such a novel, I want to drop it immediately. Because I constantly feel like I miss parts of the story.

A somewhat subjective dislike is the opening scene. A GANG with knives stole... apples... I might be the only one who is perplexed by the logic of this event, so I won't dwell on it for too long.

Another subjective dislike is the way you ended the chapter. I felt like it was not a proper cliffhanger. It felt more like you cut off a part of the chapter, which isn't a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger is something that urges you to learn what happens next. But in your case, I questioned myself why you ended it like that.

That's probably it. As usual, I didn't rate your story. But if I had to, 3 stars. I don't have a lot to say, sorry. If you have some specific questions, I might answer them but don't expect much.
 
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