Sorry for taking so long, I was busy and lazy, very lazy. Obligatory reminder that English is my second language, and this is subjective feedback from a reader. I stopped reading after I finished chapter
002 The Nail That Doesn’t Want To Stick Out
Friendly advice. If you plan to continue writing and posting on SH, don't post chapters in quick succession. Try not to post more than 3 chapters a day, and try to spread your releases. If you post chapters in quick succession, your story will be flagged as spam, and it will be hidden from the latest updates for some time(usually less than a day). No latest updates = almost zero views. Deleting and reuploading chapters also considered as spam.
The last thing I want to mention before the actual feedback is that you should not go and rewrite everything once you finish reading it. I state my subjective opinion, and it can be wrong. It would be good to ask for more feedback before you change anything.
And this is where the feedback starts. And I will start with something I usually don't mention at all. Your beginning. It is one of the worst starts that I've ever seen. There is literally nothing in the first two chapters.
Usually, I attribute this to me simply not liking the story. And although your story is not my cup of tea, it's not the case here. You spent around 80% of Chapter 2 describing MC's ability. At the same time, half of Chapter 1 had absolutely useless descriptions of food, exposition, and so on. The rest of Chapter 2 is exposition, and the rest of Chapter 1 is some useless stuff. Dialogues don't help in building any interest either. It's literally two chapters of nothing.
I will not do it since it will take a lot of space, but I can copy-paste huge chunks from the first two chapters that have no excuse to be in your story. Just to illustrate my point, a tiny example.
He opened a wrapped burger and took careful bites, since the fillings might slide out of the bun.
The burger had two patties and a fried egg, stuffed in a bun sliced for each patty, with the egg and dressing placed wherever convenient. Stable wasn’t how you would describe it.
This highlighted part is absolutely redundant, it doesn't add anything to the story, literally nothing. And what I personally think is that it doesn't matter how relevant this description would be in a hundred chapters or so. It doesn't matter if no one will read it, and it doesn't matter for a different reason.
The thing is, if I understand everything correctly, you constantly tell without showing. This is one of the worst possible starts. You tell, and you tell stuff that isn't interesting. The example with a burger is somewhat exaggerated, I agree. However, it is true for something that will matter further down the story.
Even MC's habits, something that can have a major impact on later chapters, are useless for one reason. There is nothing but exposition. You state his habit, then you describe an alcoholic drink, then you go on a tangent about how college students relax, then you describe his habit again, and it goes on.
No action to actually illustrate any of the points you mention, no interactions, nothing. Even the dialogues you write don't help at all. Partially, it's because of how you write, but the main problem is that those dialogue lines don't reinforce any of the statements you make via the Narrator's voice.
The part where the "mysterious" duo appears is absolutely the same. You CAN make a simple observation interesting. This isn't the scene's fault. You wrote it in a way that it became boring.
As for chapter two, I mentioned that it's almost exclusively about his power. Literally nothing happens, and it's bad. I am a reader, and I'm not hooked whatsoever.
A good question I want you to ask yourself. Why should a reader click on the next chapter button? Like, what do you consider a hook, a cliffhanger? The identity of that duo? Well, you stated who they are. What Jay is going to do? Same, you stated it. I should be interested in Jay? He has no personality and is boring as hell, at least for now. Like, what should force a reader to click on that button? Worldbuilding? Dialogues? MC's power?
I know this sounds and looks as if I am bashing you and beating the dead horse, but this is crucial. If you decide to follow my advice, almost everything else I will say will be useless, since you will have to rewrite everything.
Okay, since I said almost everything, I will mention something new, and something that will be useless. The way you write is not good. I mean, in terms of technicalities. I didn't notice a lot of problems with grammar, tenses, and so on. What I did notice is something that is hard to miss. Your paragraphing and formatting.
I understand what you did, and it is, in my opinion, extremely wrong to do it like this. You used formatting(extra spaces between the paragraphs) to separate scenes. The thing is, you should do it with your paragraphing. You should not write those super short paragraphs. Instead, you should write paragraphs of various lengths, sometimes long, sometimes short, depending on the scene and context.
Each paragraph acts kinda of like a shot in movies. Each time you write a new paragraph is like you make a cut. While this formatting when you spam space between the paragraphs is like a fade-out or something like that. Imagine how your novel looks like if you look at it by using my examples.
Obviously, this means that you have to rewrite everything, again.
And that's the end of my feedback. As I said, the grammar wasn't bad, I understood what you wrote, I comprehended it with relative ease. It's not unreadable. But it's really hard for me to call if good, or even okayish. Besides the acceptable grammar, there is no upsides. As usual, I didn't rate your novel, but if I had to, 1.5 stars. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. If I can, I will answer them.
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/890910/altered-threads-of-fate-gl-isekai/
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