You're doing great work here. The first chapter is often the most important, and it can be the hardest to get right. I'm interested what you think about mine for
Nova.
Would not keep reading.
The first section went a little too hard on the power trip and was pretty off putting. HOWEVER, once we realized it was a dream, I was more okay with it. I still don't think it has independant merit and there isn't any real nuance there to make it good in a vacuum, but I was okay with it once I had been given context.
Section two isn't much better however. The MC works better here, but from a story construction point of view, it's problematic. You have this dense fantasy world, and you start us off in a fantasy world in that fantasy world with section 1. And then you pull back and just exposit dialogue in section 2. It's not really story telling, and it's certainly not efficient.
Picture this, you use the section one day dream to world build. He's reenacting some historic event like what's being talked about in section 2. You can even keep the power trip, just make it a bit more nuanced. And then he gets woken up with a question or something, and he says "I was just there, it's xyz."
You see what I mean? I'm not going to say this structure for a first chapter is good. . . but there's still a lot of room for improvement in what you have.
And then section 3. . . I don't even know. It's a bit too much strange world building at that point. I'm already tired from what came before. You haven't really endeared your characters. I would say overall keep the entire chapter more focused on a singular idea. You're bogging us down with everything you've got.
This thread looks like it makes you want to improve your story... Mind if I join in?
Nolan had a goal, and that goal was to get the legendary sword, Excalibur. However, others said it was just a myth and fake. Yet, Nolan still believed that the Excalibur was real, after hearing the story of his late father. He promised he'll get it, no matter how hard...
www.scribblehub.com
Just a quick reminder: my first chapter is short and English is not my first language.
Would not keep reading.
I have two main complaints and neither of them have to do with English being your second langauge. The first is kind of the opposite really and something foreign writers do well a lot of the time. You have very floaty prose. You use lots of extra words and you focus on pointless things.
Example:
"Typically, the young man would always notice the hay ceiling first, every time he woke up. Yet, today was different."
You take us out of the story to tell us what the POV is not seeing. Weird. I get that you're trying to set the scene, but it's a round about way and clunky. You describe a floor as stiff. There's not a lot of prose, but you have a very native speaker mentality where you aren't considering what each word contributes.
And piggybacking off that, those problems bleed into the characters. I really don't like the dialogue. It's such an over the top and goofy portrayal of children. None of the dialogue feels real. And you have those same prose problems just in speech.
Also a weird fixation on colors. You love talking and identifying people by their hair and eyes and what not. Once? Sure. But once it's established move on if you don't have a good reason to linger on it. Give us there names and then use their names.
I do have a big compliment here. You use the dream sequence really well for your first chapter. You end it quick (hooray) but you have that juxtaposition there that was cute and you use the motiff to bookend the chapter. I'm probably never going to encourage dream use, but yours actually added something to the chapter, which might be the first time I've ever said that in a web novel.
