My Free Feedback Thread

[Deleted member 93348]

I've created this thread in the hope of honing my self-editing skills. If you do post here looking for a review, do note that it may take a while - from hours to days - to get back to you depending on my circumstances. (work, my writing, etc.)

What to expect: An amateur's general opinion of what I saw, what I liked and didn't like, mentions of general narrative structure, and grammar if it stands out too much. I'll generally go through a handful of chapters to get a feel before I reply.
What not to expect: A paid editor's overview. I'm not one of those.

A couple of things before you post:

- Let me know if you want it on SH or here. I'm gentler on SH due to the nature of the rating system, while I won't hold back as much here. If you want an example, I go by the same name on the main site and have already done a few reviews before. (Probably better to look at the 3 and 4-star ones.)​

- If you don't specify, I'll just assume you wanted it here and will act as such.​

- I won't review stories with these elements: Scat, Golden Showers (If it's super mild, okay), Fetishized Rape, Snuff (unless it's shown as horror), Netorare, Netorase, Vore, Pedophilia.​

​

Preference Sheet:

(Note that I'll read anything except what I explicitly stated above, this is just to give you an idea of the kind of person I am so you can gauge whether or not I'm within your target audience if that matters.)​

Love It: Soft Sci-fi, Mystery, Harem, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, Seinen.
Like It: Fantasy, Horror, Ecchi, Adult, Mature, Girls Love, Mecha, Smut, Supernatural.
Neutral: Hard Sci-fi, LitRPG, Gender Bender, Drama, Historical, Isekai, Josei, Martial Arts, Psychological, School Life, Slice of Life, Tragedy, Incest, Furry.
Dislike: Fanfiction, Sports, Boys Love, Futanari, Asshole MC.

I guess that's it for now. If I remember something I'll be sure to add it to this post.

Hello again. It’s been a while, and I’ve only just finished my new prologue still fresh out of Google Docs. Several beta readers have told me the prose improved significantly, easier to read, and whatnot. If it’s too long for a prologue, I’ll gladly omit many of its plotlines.

The long italicized paragraphs in this prologue will be block quotes once published, so bare please bare with me, and let me know what you think. Thank you!

World Story 2.0 draft

EDIT: I changed it into a chapter with better emphasis on the MC, because honestly, prologues are not worth it.

 

[Vaas13]

There

Hello there, sorry for the late reply, I actually missed you on my first pass. You also didn’t specify so you get my uneducated rambles here. I read up to three chapters at the time of this post.

In my opinion, the best way to describe this novel is ‘raw’:

- The novel will switch from first to third person on occasion.
- There are missing periods, quotation marks, and commas all over.
- Run-on sentences exist in frequency.
- Paragraphs get broken up in the weirdest ways.
- Random capitalizations occur.
- There are quite a number of unintentionally fragmented sentences.

Now I don’t usually start a review with grammar, but this time is important because the errors are so intrusive that most people wouldn’t give your story a chance based on this alone. Compared to other subjective things like plot and character, grammar in fiction has clear guidelines to learn from, and it’s only a matter of reading traditional fiction or using Google to find out. Learn the rules before you try to break them, as they say.

As for the story itself, I feel that it’s a bit too immature at the moment to give the proper tone and gravitas you’re trying to go for. The inner philosophical moments of Pete with his ‘fuck this’ and ‘fuck that’ crossed with his high temper and murderous impulses make him frustrating to read; killing people because they make noise or because a guy is a ‘pussy’ makes him come across as childish. I’m not against villainous protagonists, but Pete feels more like a Scrappy Doo from Spooky Island instead of a Hannibal or Dexter.

The other characters aren’t that much better either, Miss Holiday feeling like a kid one moment and an angry mouthpiece the next, while the Governor throws out lines like a Saturday morning cartoon villain. And Pete does have a point, having criminals pilot a spacecraft? That’s nuts. Even worse, only having like four guards escort Pete and other criminals to the spaceship and equipment with guns, then not pay attention in case one of the criminals tries a shootout, which actually happens as Pete kills them. What? Hello? There's a difference between not getting paid enough and not wanting to get riddled with bullet holes.

Grammar pile: (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or ignore my advice)

Spoiler: There were a lot so I cherry-picked instead

life is wonderful but for crying out loud SHUT UP! no one cares about your struggle just grow up.
- ‘No’ needs to be capitalized.

As Pete laughs hysterically, No one else in the room says a word
- The ‘no’ here shouldn’t be capitalized.
- Missing period at the end.

I AM A PRISONER! IS THAT NOT ILLEGAL?? Enraged Pete Shouts
- Missing quotation marks for the caps log dialogue.
- Character tag, so ‘enraged’ shouldn’t be capitalized.
- ‘shouts’ shouldn’t be capitalized.
- Missing period at the end.

The governor lights his cigar "We are not joking Pete, you and a group of the most notorious, disgusting criminals put on death row will be dying to benefit America."
- Missing period after ‘cigar’.

Why don't you just fucking do it yourselves yo-
- Missing quotation marks for dialogue.

"No", Miss Holiday interjects
- Comma should be inside the dialogue.
- Missing period at the end.

Pete visibly annoyed tries to end the conversation but out of slight fear of what he's getting himself into he tries to bargain after-all they are threatening the thing he holds most dear, his "peace of mind".
- This should be two sentences, in my opinion.

"Oh my god.... what the fuck is happening"
- An ellipsis is 3 dots. There are instances of 4 dots but this isn’t one of them.
- Missing period at the end.

"I don't know The word red just sounded cool is all." Miss Holiday replies with quirky
- The ‘the’ in the dialogue shouldn’t be capitalized.
- Since it is a character tag the dialogue should end with a comma.
- The character tag doesn’t even end properly, making a fragmented sentence. ‘replies with quirky’? What?

SH wise I’d give a 2, in truth a 1. While a valiant attempt, I think there’s a lot of editing and learning to go. As long as you apply yourself I think you’ll make it.

thank you soo much brother i appreciate this

 

[Proctor]

Den of Lions

Dante Sato's self imposed peaceful life at a foster home is interrupted when a prominent family named the Kaneko decides to adopt him due to his potential. After 6 years of being shut inside the house being trained to inherit half of the family's assets. His adoptive parents decide to enroll...

www.scribblehub.com

I would really appreciate a review.

Hello, sorry for the late reply. Since you didn’t specify you get my review here. I read up to Chapter 4 of volume 2 at the time of this post.

As per my usual, I want to touch on the synopsis first. While it achieves most of the basics, I feel like it misses a specific detail or two that can serve as a hook. One neat example of missing info that fits the bill is that he’s trying to hide the fact that he is an adopted child of the Kaneko family, a vital detail that could jeopardize his goal and the few relationships he made. It’s a contextual conflict that gives readers something to look forward to.

For the main story, I can see you’re playing quite deep into the cunning kid hiding their true ability in an academic setting, a trope that is quite common in anime. Your spin of the tropes feels digestible in style, a good feeling for a web novel to have, but I do have a couple of worries.

The first is what I call ‘magical sherlock’ syndrome, or where the solutions a protagonist uses just comes out of thin air. While it hasn’t been that intrusive yet, I feel like this story has quite a bit of magic sherlock on display, mostly because there wasn’t much in the way of actual foreshadowing or misdirection that would allude to such solutions existing. Sometimes the answer is more obvious, like with the evidence flipping with the camera and the fight with class 1-1 for the points, but sometimes the answer only comes at the end, like with the deal with the leader of 1-3, or the vote ballot stuffing (where'd he find all the paper for that). They might be ‘obvious’ in hindsight, but the reader isn’t equipped with enough info at times to not feel like it was an ass pull.

This is more subjective on my end, but the gigantic dialogue portions at the end of some games to explain the MC’s reasoning can be a bit difficult to read. I reckon it's due to it being a giant block of text that isn’t broken up with interjections or other things. People on mobile might not have the best time with that.

In my opinion, the ‘Institute of Multilayered Advanced Learning’ is a strange name for a high school. Most high schools follow some basic naming conventions, like the suburb they’re placed in, the surname of the owner, or some religious angle (particularly for private schools). I also don’t know if I’ve heard of any high school being called an institute, that word is usually reserved for tertiary education like university.

Grammar-wise, you’re good for the most part, aside from fragmented sentences due to paragraph breaks, missing quotation marks or the occasional missing period. This usually happens when you add a paragraph break in between a character tag/action beat and dialogue without finishing the punctuation or sentence itself.

Grammar pile: (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or ignore my advice)

Spoiler: The stuff I picked up on

My father, with his eyes still set on the road
"Dante, don't forget why you were enrolled here."
- The first sentence is fragmented. Even if the dialogue is separated by a paragraph there still needs to be an indication that it’s a character tag or action beat.
- Missing punctuation at the end of the first sentence. Since its also fragmented I didn’t specify.

Well, next time, avoid asking me dumb questions. It is an easy fix. "
- Unnecessary space between quotation marks and period at the end.
- Quotation marks missing at the beginning.

I turned my door handle, "Can't you see I am thrilled about it as well? I am practically bursting with excitement.
- Action beat, so the comma is meant to be a period.
- Quotation marks missing at the end.

"If I am being honest here, I actually want nothing but a regular experience"
- Missing period at the end.

Yeah, I have this thing where I make it a duty to learn the names of my classmates. I don't want to address another person by anything other than their given name. "
- Quotation marks missing at the beginning.
- Unnecessary space between quotation marks and period at the end.

After putting on a confused smile
"Sure, I'll see what I can do."
- The first sentence is fragmented. Even if the dialogue is separated by a paragraph there still needs to be an indication that it’s a character tag or action beat.
- Missing punctuation at the end of the first sentence. Since it's also fragmented I didn’t specify.

"That you're concealing something from the entire class. Maybe it is your ability?, maybe an alternate identity, maybe you're even a serial killer for all I know. "
- The question mark is already your punctuation. Either keep that one and remove the comma or vice versa, in my opinion. If you do keep the question mark, capitalize the ‘Maybe’ after it.
- Unnecessary space between quotation marks and period at the end.

"Ew, not like ever"
- Missing period at the end.

SH wise I’d give you a 4, in truth a 3.5. It is quite good as a digestible lunchtime novel and is pretty decent with its character beats, though I feel like it lacks a certain element or extra hook that would get it into the limelight over the competition. As it is, it is like reading a fictional cousin of OreGairu or Classroom of the Elite, which isn’t bad on its own but doesn’t make it stand out either.

Hello again. It’s been a while, and I’ve only just finished my new prologue still fresh out of Google Docs. Several beta readers have told me the prose improved significantly, easier to read, and whatnot. If it’s too long for a prologue, I’ll gladly omit many of its plotlines.

The long italicized paragraphs in this prologue will be block quotes once published, so bare please bare with me, and let me know what you think. Thank you!

World Story 2.0 draft

Sorry about the late reply, but I'm on the fence about doing only a prologue again. Like I said with the guy who wanted to do this before, I'm not a beta reader, and accepting rewrites without a handful of chapters to look at will likely bloat my pile long term.

Edit: Guess I'll add more specifics to my initial post.

 

[Lire]

Hello, newbie here! I'd love for you to take a look at my brainchild!
Even though I'd love an actual juicy review on SH, I prefer the honest feedback...
Is it possible for you to do the review on SH, but then put up the harsh stuff here...?
Or if I missed a rule of some kind and there can only be one, then you don't have to do the SH review. Just the critique here is fine!

(As I said, I'm new... so I don't know how they do those posts where the synopsis is included...)

An Author's Survival Guide
​

 

[Proctor]

Are you perhaps interested in Action?

Save The Boss

An incident occurred in the SH facility. As Tyler became a wanted criminal. Due to what he did to his Boss. What will happen to him who just joined the SH?

www.scribblehub.com

I'm a noobie by the way and there are only three chapters for now. Also, the three chapters are like an introduction, so, the next chapter I'm working on might really start the plot. Lol.

Hello there, sorry for the late reply. You didn’t specify so you get my uneducated rambles here in the thread. I also notice that the story disappeared while I was writing this (I draft over days if I don’t have the time), so uh, part of it might be inaccurate due to me going off my memory.

The overall tone of the story felt a bit young in my opinion like it was trying to appeal to a younger teen audience, but it had perverted jokes and some morbid depictions which caused a sense of shallowness and a juvenile atmosphere instead. It’s a hard balancing act to create a good parody, and I think this story missed the mark a little due to not getting into more description and a mismatched maturity like it was afraid to be adult where it should be.

I also noticed that a lot of sentences had similar sizes and cadence to them, which caused this choppy feel when they came up in big doses. There’s a guideline in fiction writing where it’s better to guide the reader with a variety of sentence sizes to create a better flow, like shorter sentences to grab attention before easing them into longer ones before the next paragraph break. Maybe I can find that picture, it does it way better than I can explain myself.

(Found it)

Due to the lack of description and the overabundance of dialogue portions, the exposition became easy to spot. I think most of chapter two had a paragraph start with someone talking, which meant that whenever a description or prose appeared I simply assumed it to be exposition to catch a reader up. You don’t really want people guessing the novel’s backstage directions since it brings them out of the immersion.

Now the MC’s power was actually kind of interesting, balls and all, but why flicking with the middle finger? Was that meant to be a nod to the universal rude hand sign? Why not just use his pointer finger like a normal person? If there was a genuine reason and I forgot I apologize, but it was the kind of comedy that didn’t have a proper setup or payoff, so it ended up looking weird.

Grammar-wise, since it’s been a day or so since you pulled your story I can only go off memory and the few examples I saved, so sorry in advance. Apart from what I said above about the choppy sentences, I think it was mostly missing capitalizations due to action beats or ellipses, and odd cases of flow.

Grammar pile: (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong or ignore my advice)

Spoiler: The few I saved before the story got pulled

“Okay, here's the result of your test yesterday, Mr. Tyler.” the big tit lady handed me an envelope to me. While I couldn't stop gazing at her chest...
- Since it is an action beat, the ‘The’ should be capitalized due to the dialogue ending in a period.
- The MC refers to himself twice in the same sentence over the same subject. You only need one ‘me’ in there.
- The last sentence flows strangely in my opinion, partly due to a new action from a different character being in the same paragraph and partly due to the lack of setup toward it.

I had one too on my home, but, only the toy version. If the kids were to use this, then... Their dead, literally.
- Unless it's literally an outside decoration on the roof or walls, it's likely to be ‘in’ his house instead, I think.
- ‘they’re’ instead of ‘Their’.
- The word after the ellipsis in this case isn’t capitalized because it connects two fragmented sentences together.

“Haa... As expected of Angela. She really is strong.” I mumbled. While resting myself on this comfy bed, which was, the infirmary. All alone inside.
- This is really choppy and I think parts of it could’ve been commas instead of periods, and a couple of commas didn’t need to exist.

SH wise I’d give you a 2, in truth, the same. The juvenile and shallow feel are where most of the negative points came from, and I think the story needs more planning on the depth side to figure out what you really want to get out of it.

 

[hdofficial1]

I've created this thread in the hope of honing my self-editing skills. If you do post here looking for a review, do note that it may take a while - from hours to days - to get back to you depending on my circumstances. (work, my writing, etc.)

What to expect: An amateur's general opinion of what I saw, what I liked and didn't like, mentions of general narrative structure, and grammar if it stands out too much. I'll generally go through a handful of chapters to get a feel before I reply.
What not to expect: A paid editor's overview. I'm not one of those.

A couple of things before you post:

- Let me know if you want it on SH or here. I'm gentler on SH due to the nature of the rating system, while I won't hold back as much here. If you want an example, I go by the same name on the main site and have already done a few reviews before. (Probably better to look at the 3 and 4-star ones.)​

- If you don't specify, I'll just assume you wanted it here and will act as such.​

- I won't review stories with these elements: Scat, Golden Showers (If it's super mild, okay), Fetishized Rape, Snuff (unless it's shown as horror), Netorare, Netorase, Vore, Pedophilia.​

- I am not a beta reader. Please refrain from jumping back into the queue with the same story unless the rewrite you're giving me has at least a handful of chapters to go off of. This doesn't apply for the first time, this is just so I don't end up being someone's chapter-by-chapter editor.​

​

Preference Sheet:

(Note that I'll read anything except what I explicitly stated above, this is just to give you an idea of the kind of person I am so you can gauge whether or not I'm within your target audience if that matters.)​

Love It: Soft Sci-fi, Mystery, Harem, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, Seinen.
Like It: Fantasy, Horror, Ecchi, Adult, Mature, Girls Love, Mecha, Smut, Supernatural.
Neutral: Hard Sci-fi, LitRPG, Gender Bender, Drama, Historical, Isekai, Josei, Martial Arts, Psychological, School Life, Slice of Life, Tragedy, Incest, Furry.
Dislike: Fanfiction, Sports, Boys Love, Futanari, Asshole MC.

I guess that's it for now. If I remember something I'll be sure to add it to this post.

Hi bro.

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.

I'm trying to do something like a Naruto-plot style mixed with rescuing survivors in multiversal worlds.

Here's the link:
God Slayers

 

[MBerkeley]

Relic Eater

The earth is plagued by 'Witches,' monstrous creatures who devour human beings. An organization called Umbella was established in an effort to combat the problem's growth. Umbella trains young and talented investigators, known as 'Erasers,' in the ways of detecting and disposing of these...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[Alfir]

I have 'Everlasting Mage' here... I prefer hearing the review on SH, good sir... I am feeling quite confident in this novel of mine.

I have been hiatus for a long time and I need that kick in the pants. My wordcount is at 24,303 at 13 chapters. It has mystery, romance, magic and a statue... yeah, you read that right, a freaking statue.
The link is in my signature.

 

[FourthDayInAvalon]

I would like to line up, please.

Be as harsh as you can, every part of my story is disposable to me.

Dearest Calamity

GL, isekai,
…but currently focused on the magic/LitRPG Introduction.

 

[Proctor]

A quick note that I am here, just had a lot going on and started falling behind the queue, sorry about that.

This post will likely turn into Lire's review after I'm done, IRL can be ruthless at times. So there are about six on the list? Guess there's work to do.

 

[Deleted member 93348]

Don’t know if you’ll ever check out this thread again, but I made another rewrite of my novel. If you’re still here, please let me know what you think.

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