It's going to be my fourth time, but I really love your service, so I'd like to have another one. You helped me a lot in getting ideas on how I should go about reframing the story after all (probably comes into play once the whole series is finished). If you can recall the previous ones I sent, more comparisons on maybe the prose or pacing will be helpful.
Just put me on low prio to give way to the first timers.
With late July comes the highly-anticipated annual school event, the Fuyusato Grand Festival. Having put the incident at the Chronodome behind them, the main trio look ahead to this event. In the midst of the preparations for the festival and sports extravaganza, Kazuki runs into an...
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Would keep reading.
I quite liked this one and have little to say in the way of critique. Your first section deals with characters pretty well. You establish who they are, what they want, issues they have. It's not masterclass, but I felt a connection to them right away. It was great.
I then really like the contrast to section two where you flip focus and talk about the fantastical elements and things more plot driven. You have those elements of reestablishment that are obligatory for a sequel. I don't think you go quite far enough to catch us back up on its own, but then I noticed you have that pre-prologue bit that is literally a refresher and actually cute. I appreciated that.
I wasn't as huge a fan of the third section with the character drama. I appreciate structurally how you have three separate ideas that are thematically all different, that was really really well done, I just don't think this one was your strong suit. And to go along with that, the only big critique I have is your general writing and character dialogue. It's slightly stilted. Not enough to be annoying or detract from most of the enjoyment, but it's noticeable enough. But here's the thing, I'm not even sure it's a true negative, because it makes everything seem even more Japanese and foreign, which, might be the intent, because it is exceedingly Japanese.
So anyway, good job. I liked it.
I'd like to throw my latest work into the fray. There's some things I'm been wary about (pacing and clarity, for the most part) and I think feedback would help in making sure I'm on the right track.
Althea is a hopeful girl who lives secluded from Occidera, a world occupied by demons. After her mother's injury, she's her family's life support , hunting and gathering to obtain mystic ingredients for them to sell off. One faithful opportunity grants her the chance to explore the nearby...
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Would not keep reading.
So there's going to be a lot to talk about on this one.
First up, let's just cover the basic narrative presentation. You start off in first person. Fine. And after a line break, you switch to third person. You have another break with the character's name and switch to first person, and then you have a another break with no name. . . but we're still in third person. Generally speaking, you want to keep a consistent narrative space. Only 1st person. Only 3rd person. Yatta yatta. I think it's interesting to change it up like you do and it COULD work, but you don't even follow your own formatting which further confuses it. Secondly, if you are going to be avant guard with the perspectives, I think there has to be more of a justification for it. I was willing to give it a chance, but it felt like the random switches to third person were solely because you didn't know how to tell those parts in first person. And that's a problem.
Next up, I think we need to talk about world building and establishment. On a basic level, you have in your mind what the world is and how it works, but I don't think that's always fully communicated, and sometimes its just confusing. For example, I had to reread the portion where you first mention "sinbeasts" many times. You never tell us what that is, and you introduce it right after introducing the demons. So when the little demon says its hunting a sinbeast, I'm horribly confused because I'm thinking demons are colloquially known as sin beasts. Did the line get attributed to someone else. Are there other people there talking about the demons? It took some work to figure out what was going on.
And in that vein, even the character's emotions are muddled and inconsistent. She goes from having her knife drawn ready to fight the demons only to have to stop herself from going to introduce herself to play cards. You're feeding us mismatched information when we don't even know what's going on yet. The MC can have conflicting emotions and thoughts, but that has to come after the audience knows where we stand.
And I think there's another additional element of world building that crosses with tone in that I'm not sure what kind of fantasy story this is. On one hand you have things that would seem to be a pretty straightly plaid fantasy with people fighting dangerous monsters and there's all this lore. And then on the other hand there's this silly card game that obviously couldn't exist in a real fantasy world, which makes everything look like farce. But tonally it isn't played for farce. On this matter, it almost feels like a video game.
Also lack of foundation sometimes. You bring up that they have these magic potions on their belt. . . the paragraph before you need them. You need to establish the elements up front to prevent the feeling of deus ex. Contrast that with the mushrooms. The giant mushroom works well BECAUSE we have these tiny mushrooms established up front.
Past that, everything else is middle of the road I think. Competent writing. Your character has a voice, even if I personally don't like it. Humor is subjective though. I do think all the other characters' voices blend together. They all have a samey element which is the writer coming through too much.
And finally, and almost the biggest, structurally this is two chapters. Character meets demons in the woods and character fights a giant creature are really two separate ideas. There are of course ways to combine them, but as you've done it here you have two very distinct ideas and the structure buckles under that weight.
That's everything off the top of my head.