The Chicken Pen (Feedback Thread)

[TsumiHokiro]

Hello there, stranger, welcome to the Chicken Pen.
Are you a writer, but do not have opinionated readers? Are you an author, but no one wants to actually look at what you have created? The chicken pen is the perfect place for you, then!
The Chicken Pen is a place of opinions. We offer several menus for you to choose from: from simple chick size to super chick size! But it all comes as a surprise! You have to first feed one of our resident chicks with your Story, and it will decide whether it is worth being eaten or not. But fret not, our chicks are not particular about what they eat:

1 - A story's text has to be selectable from a web-browser;
2 - A story must be posted on the internet and not downloaded into someone's computer;
3 - The chick decides what it eats. It never overfeeds;
4 - You can try to feed the chick more than once, but it is up to the chick to decide whether it eats or not;
5 - The chick only eats things that belong to the person trying to feed it;

If you would like to try your luck on a chick's opinion, here is your chance!
If you have any questions about an opinion, ask about it. The chicks do not tend to comment on comments about their comments.

**The Chicken Pen is a place dedicated to knowledge. Anyone who wanders here acknowledges that they are trying to better themselves on that which they have offered themselves in doing. Therefore, you are aware that once you have fed something to a chick, and it has returned to you an opinion, you acknowledge that you asked for it, and that regardless of how offended you might be by the chick's opinion, you will not pursue any senseless act of self-righting your so-called honour that might have been hurt by this Chicken Pen.**

Next 3 people to have their feed offered to the chicks:
-----
-----
-----​

 

[AYM]

What is a super chick size?

 

[TsumiHokiro]

What is a super chick size?

How thorough they go through your feed.

 

[AdOtherwise]

Oh great and mighty chick, I offer you my story.
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/727045/lowly-ascent/

 

[HelloHound]

For Want of A House

Waking up is always a difficult part of anyone's day- it's even worse if you wake up inside some squalid room to spit out mysterious black cubes in a land you are not familiar with. Now imagine what Sybil's going through. Watch this short and tempered child grow, seeking a...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[Sleds]

Well, having opinions are always welcome. But if there too much for you to eat, you can skip mine.

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/815788/crystal-evolution/

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Oh great and mighty chick, I offer you my story.
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/727045/lowly-ascent/

Hello there, AdOtherwise. The chick has accepted your feed and has decided to give you an opinion.

After reading your first chapter, I also went ahead and decided to read two others. They were selected from different points of your writing: Chapter 75 and Chapter 156. I did it like this because you have published quite a few chapters, and I was curious about your progress through time. Just reading the first chapter would not allow me to understand how you have progressed and if my feedback could be of use to you.

Chapter 1:​

1. You used words in strange contexts from time to time: "He spent his life clinging to small joys, like covering the bearing the dead with a semblance of dignity"; "This caused people to have hostile reactions. One of which is the hate for foreign bodies, also known as Contaminants." There is also a passage about a truck, but you obviously meant to say "trunk." They were either misspelled or used in the wrong context, but are not recurrent enough to be a problem.
2. Repetitive ideas: "Yes, sir!" Cain responded like a soldier and hastened his pace."; "The boy was as curious as they come so … Cain seemed to grow the courage to ask his own question."; "As Cain shoveled, he finally recalled. The shovel sliced through damp soil with a soft crunch" The first is quite obvious since you are repeating things one after the other quite close. The second example also faults from the point. The third example took me by surprise when it was mentioned the second time. There is quite a bit of text between those passages, but nothing said the boy was ever not asking questions in between them.
3. Your Narrator interrupts your Characters: "After reassuring the boy and using logic…" And the second example from the previous point are passages where you abruptly cut the character's dialogue and insert your narrator to explain things that could have been said in-character for better immersion.
4. Don't confuse the narrative time: "Of course, Cain doesn't know why because all Contaminated individuals have no memory, thanks to the powers that be."; Slowly Cain will be infected and contaminated, slowly he will lose…" The whole narrative is told in the past. Yet, these passages are not. I understand wanting to talk about the present and about the future, but unless correctly transitioned to, dissonance is the result.

Chapter 75:​

1. Disconnected paragraphs: How can a paragraph be disconnected? Simple, they were actually supposed to be a single paragraph that you broke into several in an attempt to make it easier to be read! "Due to the increasing prevalence of (…) Those who remained gambled."; "It was a pitiful sight (…) The road leading" Are two examples of paragraphs that could have been together, and if so, allowed you to better see the next problem;
2. Repeating words: City, 17 times in a single chapter. You mostly had to repeat it because you broke the paragraphs needlessly and could not refer to that idea from the previous paragraph without, once again, repeating the same word.
3. Repetitive ideas, once again they strike: "crumbling walls and nature reclaiming the city. Overgrown weeds and plants adorned the dilapidated walls and surroundings." I will not be posting the many times when you are refereeing to plants taking over the city constructions. If you want to paint an image of nature reclamation, use different images: the roads, the walls, and the buildings were severely repeated. You could better describe the scenario instead of repeating the same thing with slightly different words that, in the end, do not portray a different picture.
4. Reference confusion: "One of the cloaked figures approached the woman, they were the person leading the knights." This phrase is out of context, but it makes me believe that the one who approached the woman was leading the knights. Yet, there are no knights in their group, only other cloaked figures in this one's group. The knights should be in the woman's group.

Chapter 156:​

1. Reference confusion: "It allowed him to protect different parts while also giving him full mobility." You were talking about the properties of the armour, and then you insert the person in its armour. While I do understand that they were made of thoughts, you were here explaining something that pertained to the armour, and not so much to how the person controlling it had influence over it, although you made sure to confuse things by placing "him" in the text.

Conclusion:
Your work has a clear story and it has good direction. I did not read other chapters, but I was able to get a general idea that you are not failing to progress your plot through these chapters. If there is a problem, it is with form. Presentation is usually where most people will one way or another have issues; it is also the part that people pay the least attention to. It is not really a concern when it is at this frequency, people can tread through this much when they have a good plot that interest them, and your story does have a plot, and the plot does advance.

You might be interested in reviewing your earlier chapters in case you desire to increase your viewers with this same story. You have obviously improved between the time you started writing and right now, but I wonder how many people realise that? Also, even if you try to tell people that "those issues are gone as you progress through the story", that is only a valid excuse if you have enough readers to advertise it. Most should be still concerned with how their initial chapters look like long after they have published it. The first few chapters are what people use to judge your story. If it is not appealing enough, no one will stick to it, regardless of promises of future improvement.

 

[Sweetmeat]

I just posted the first chapter of a new story. Let me know what you think.

Scion: City of Sin

In the futuristic city of Scion, crime and corruption run rampant. Those with power exploit the system from the Spires. Meanwhile, the Lower Wards run on drugs, sex, and violence. Victor is a netrunner working freelance in the city’s seedy underbelly. A degenerative brain disease forces him to...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Hello there, stranger, welcome to the Chicken Pen.
Are you a writer, but do not have opinionated readers? Are you an author, but no one wants to actually look at what you have created? The chicken pen is the perfect place for you, then!
The Chicken Pen is a place of opinions. We offer several menus for you to choose from: from simple chick size to super chick size! But it all comes as a surprise! You have to first feed one of our resident chicks with your Story, and it will decide whether it is worth being eaten or not. But fret not, our chicks are not particular about what they eat:

1 - A story's text has to be selectable from a web-browser;
2 - A story must be posted on the internet and not downloaded into someone's computer;
3 - The chick decides what it eats. It never overfeeds;
4 - You can try to feed the chick more than once, but it is up to the chick to decide whether it eats or not;
5 - The chick only eats things that belong to the person trying to feed it;

If you would like to try your luck on a chick's opinion, here is your chance!

**The Chicken Pen is a place dedicated to knowledge. Anyone who wanders here acknowledges that they are trying to better themselves on that which they have offered themselves in doing. Therefore, you are aware that once you have fed something to a chick, and it has returned to you an opinion, you acknowledge that you asked for it, and that regardless of how offended you might be by the chick's opinion, you will not pursue any senseless act of self-righting your so-called honour that might have been hurt by this Chicken Pen.**

 

[TsumiHokiro]

What are you offering to the chicks? Cookies? They do not return opinions on those.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

What are you offering to the chicks? Cookies? They do not return opinions on those.

Click on the links in my signature, or my banners.

 

[AdOtherwise]

Hello there, AdOtherwise. The chick has accepted your feed and has decided to give you an opinion.

After reading your first chapter, I also went ahead and decided to read two others. They were selected from different points of your writing: Chapter 75 and Chapter 156. I did it like this because you have published quite a few chapters, and I was curious about your progress through time. Just reading the first chapter would not allow me to understand how you have progressed and if my feedback could be of use to you.

Chapter 1:​

1. You used words in strange contexts from time to time: "He spent his life clinging to small joys, like covering the bearing the dead with a semblance of dignity"; "This caused people to have hostile reactions. One of which is the hate for foreign bodies, also known as Contaminants." There is also a passage about a truck, but you obviously meant to say "trunk." They were either misspelled or used in the wrong context, but are not recurrent enough to be a problem.
2. Repetitive ideas: "Yes, sir!" Cain responded like a soldier and hastened his pace."; "The boy was as curious as they come so … Cain seemed to grow the courage to ask his own question."; "As Cain shoveled, he finally recalled. The shovel sliced through damp soil with a soft crunch" The first is quite obvious since you are repeating things one after the other quite close. The second example also faults from the point. The third example took me by surprise when it was mentioned the second time. There is quite a bit of text between those passages, but nothing said the boy was ever not asking questions in between them.
3. Your Narrator interrupts your Characters: "After reassuring the boy and using logic…" And the second example from the previous point are passages where you abruptly cut the character's dialogue and insert your narrator to explain things that could have been said in-character for better immersion.
4. Don't confuse the narrative time: "Of course, Cain doesn't know why because all Contaminated individuals have no memory, thanks to the powers that be."; Slowly Cain will be infected and contaminated, slowly he will lose…" The whole narrative is told in the past. Yet, these passages are not. I understand wanting to talk about the present and about the future, but unless correctly transitioned to, dissonance is the result.

Chapter 75:​

1. Disconnected paragraphs: How can a paragraph be disconnected? Simple, they were actually supposed to be a single paragraph that you broke them into several in an attempt to make it easier to be read! "Due to the increasing prevalence of (…) Those who remained gambled."; "It was a pitiful sight (…) The road leading" Are two examples of paragraphs that could have been together, and if so, allowed you to better see the next problem;
2. Repeating words: City, 17 times in a single chapter. You mostly had to repeat it because you broke the paragraphs needlessly and could not refer to that idea from the previous paragraph without, once again, repeating the same word.
3. Repetitive ideas, once again they strike: "crumbling walls and nature reclaiming the city. Overgrown weeds and plants adorned the dilapidated walls and surroundings." I will not be posting the many times when you are refereeing to plants taking over the city constructions. If you want to paint an image of nature reclamation, use different images: the roads, the walls, and the buildings were severely repeated. You could better describe the scenario instead of repeating the same thing with slightly different words that, in the end, do not portray a different picture.
4. Reference confusion: "One of the cloaked figures approached the woman, they were the person leading the knights." This phrase is out of context, but it makes me believe that the one who approached the woman was leading the knights. Yet, there are no knights in their group, only other cloaked figures in this one's group. The knight should be in the woman's group.

Chapter 156:​

1. Reference confusion: "It allowed him to protect different parts while also giving him full mobility." You were talking about the properties of the armour, and then you insert the person in its armour. While I do understand that they were made of thoughts, you were here explaining something that pertained to the armour, and not so much to how the person controlling it had influence over it, although you made sure to confuse things by placing "him" in the text.

Conclusion:
Your work has a clear story and it has good direction. I did not read other chapters, but I was able to get a general idea that you are not failing to progress your plot through these chapters. If there is a problem, it is with form. Presentation is usually where most people will one way or another have issues; it is also the part that people pay the least attention to. It is not really a concern when it is at this frequency, people can tread through this much when they have a good plot that interest them, and your story does have a plot, and the plot does advance.

You might be interested in reviewing your earlier chapters in case you desire to increase your viewers with this same story. You have obviously improved between the time you started writing and right now, but I wonder how many people realise that? Also, even if you try to tell people that "those issues are gone as you progress through the story", that is only a valid excuse if you have enough readers to advertise it. Most should be still concerned with how their initial chapters look like long after they have published it. The first few chapters are what people use to judge your story. If it is not appealing enough, no one will stick to it, regardless of promises of future improvement.

Immaculate! Amazing feedback I must say. Thank you for detailing everything. I admit I have already been revising chapters, 1-25 multiple times as I improved and 26-85 recently. It seems I didn't find all my errors. I appreciate you looking over my story and the feedback. Thank you so much.

Also, for Chapter 1, could you explain number 4? If you have time of course.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Also, for Chapter 1, could you explain number 4? If you have time of course.

Your narrative is all on the past, as I have mentioned, I believe? Yet, during these passages, the Narrator will assume another verbal time. Either the present or the future. The first passage becomes confusing because we have things that "have been explained" as "having happened" all this time, and suddenly we "see things happening right now". Later on, you turn back to a past voice again. You probably had this idea: The boy is right now confused, therefore he is right now unaware. Yet, in the narrative time, everything that is happening happens in the Past. Regardless of whether they are present or future, things should be seen as if from a Past perspective. If you are going to assume a narrative voice that does not coincide with that of the original one, there should be reasons for why: they are not elements that are being narrated at that moment of the story.

A smooth transition would be for you to alert your readers that it is something that happens every time in the universe. The passage, however, gives a mixed impression of the Narrator telling things (explaining the universe very briefly) after two passages that allude to the fact of why the boy would not know that, giving me the impression that it was not the Narrator telling explicitly the Reader something, but instead, narrating a fact of the story itself. And if it is a part of the story, as you have adopted the past tense, it would make sense that it also follows past tense.

The second passage should be easier to see: you are prophetising events to be. They're obviously a part of the narrative in this part, even if you are spoiling people. Therefore, it should be "would be infected". Even in the future, there is a past.

 

[AdOtherwise]

Your narrative is all on the past, as I have mentioned, I believe? Yet, during these passages, the Narrator will assume another verbal time. Either the present or the future. The first passage becomes confusing because we have things that "have been explained" as "having happened" all this time, and suddenly we "see things happening right now". Later on, you turn back to a past voice again. You probably had this idea: The boy is right now confused, therefore he is right now unaware. Yet, in the narrative time, everything that is happening happens in the Past. Regardless of whether they are present or future, things should be seen as if from a Past perspective. If you are going to assume a narrative voice that does not coincide with that of the original one, there should be reasons for why: they are not elements that are being narrated at that moment of the story.

A smooth transition would be for you to alert your readers that it is something that happens every time in the universe. The passage, however, gives a mixed impression of the Narrator telling things (explaining the universe very briefly) after two passages that allude to the fact of why the boy would not know that, giving me the impression that it was not the Narrator telling explicitly the Reader something, but instead, narrating a fact of the story itself. And if it is a part of the story, as you have adopted the past tense, it would make sense that it also follows past tense.

The second passage should be easier to see: you are prophetising events to be. They're obviously a part of the narrative in this part, even if you are spoiling people. Therefore, it should be "would be infected". Even in the future, there is a past.

Thank you for the explanation. To tell the truth, I'm just bad at the past, present, future things. I can fix the obvious ones but I have trouble realizing the more technical ones. When I check my work I just reread it in my head and see if it sounds good. Reading it out loud from now on might be better.

Thank you for the help.

 

[MintiLime]

Love the name of this thread!

 

[Cloudee77]

Would love some feedback. Thankyou.

Reincarnation of the Totem

Slipping through the gravels of time, she found herself in a new land that she had never dreamed of. Here she was nothing but a female supporting Character to a tale of a reborn heroine, her life meaningless but around some set lines. Watch her navigate through these murky realms...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[Verdante]

Please do mine, wise chicken. Thank you https://www.scribblehub.com/series/890910/altered-threads-of-fate-gl-isekai/

 

[TsumiHokiro]

For Want of A House

Waking up is always a difficult part of anyone's day- it's even worse if you wake up inside some squalid room to spit out mysterious black cubes in a land you are not familiar with. Now imagine what Sybil's going through. Watch this short and tempered child grow, seeking a...

www.scribblehub.com

Hello there, HelloHound. The chick has accepted your feed and has decided to give you an opinion.

First, great story you have here. You also have gone through great lengths when writing, to the point that there are few things that this chick has to point out in terms of improvement. In fact, most of the things that this chick will be pointing out are only opinions. You have a great writing style, one that this chick would have loved to find more often.

The chick has read the following chapters to write this opinion: 1 to 5, 34 and 66:

​

Chapters 1-5:​

1. Why allow understanding of the dialogues?: These chapters are so well written that I have nothing to complain about. There could be things that I might nitpick, but the chick does not nitpick, it offers opinions that it believes improves the narrative. English is the form of presentation, and if it does not work against your story, it would rather NOT comment on it. Therefore, the only thing it was left with commenting was on the narrative itself! Why would you allow your readers be able to understand that which your own character does not while you are doing a first-person narrative? That would be the only thing this chick does not understand. Of course, this is purely nitpicking as well! But since the chick desires for a Story, nitpicking on its consistency, it will forgive itself. It, however, does not believe this is such of a problem. It is just something it found puzzling.

Chapter 34:​

1. Overlong paragraph: "I take in a breath of the warm air and change the subject to what Raun mentioned last night about the rabbit." Nothing really serious, just that it did find these later chapters were not as nicely edited, and therefore it did find some little things.
2. Redundant explanation: " “Isn’t it going to make the rabbit sick? Humans are bigger, so if it makes them sick, then doesn’t it really hurt a small animal?” I ask, worried for the rabbit’s well-being." Why are you paraphrasing the character after it had just said it? No need for that. This is something that you have not done so far. It is something that you usually find when people have a word quota to fill. Or Children's Literature.

Chapter 66:​

1. A hyphen instead of double dash: "They still thought I was an adult though, and probably of mixed blood- elf or orc brought a lot more arguing among the drunk porters than expected." This is just a formal structure element, but in this case it REALLY confused me. "mixed blood—elf or orc—brought", the thing there is appositive, and it should be separate from the rest of the sentence structure.

Conclusion:
It was a great read. I was tempted to read everything from beginning to end or until I grew tired of it. I might go back to it when I have time. But considering that I have other people waiting for my opinion, I really had to skim the overall content of the novel. It has a great premise. It is very original too, as far as I know, considering only so much as I have read. There are some small English mistakes here and there, but once again, it is nothing that will distract people from the story that you have written. Which is a great one! I really look forward to what you have to write in the future and to when I go back reading it again!

 

[HelloHound]

Hello there, HelloHound. The chick has accepted your feed and has decided to give you an opinion.

First, great story you have here. You also have gone through great lengths when writing, to the point that there are few things that this chick has to point out in terms of improvement. In fact, most of the things that this chick will be pointing out are only opinions. You have a great writing style, one that this chick would have loved to find more often.

The chick has read the following chapters to write this opinion: 1 to 5, 34 and 66:

​

Chapters 1-5:​

1. Why allow understanding of the dialogues?: These chapters are so well written that I have nothing to complain about. There could be things that I might nitpick, but the chick does not nitpick, it offers opinions that it believes improves the narrative. English is the form of presentation, and if it does not work against your story, it would rather NOT comment on it. Therefore, the only thing it was left with commenting was on the narrative itself! Why would you allow your readers be able to understand that which your own character does not while you are doing a first-person narrative? That would be the only thing this chick does not understand. Of course, this is purely nitpicking as well! But since the chick desires for a Story, nitpicking on its consistency, it will forgive itself. It, however, does not believe this is such of a problem. It is just something it found puzzling.

Chapter 34:​

1. Overlong paragraph: "I take in a breath of the warm air and change the subject to what Raun mentioned last night about the rabbit." Nothing really serious, just that it did find these later chapters were not as nicely edited, and therefore it did find some little things.
2. Redundant explanation: " “Isn’t it going to make the rabbit sick? Humans are bigger, so if it makes them sick, then doesn’t it really hurt a small animal?” I ask, worried for the rabbit’s well-being." Why are you paraphrasing the character after it had just said it? No need for that. This is something that you have not done so far. It is something that you usually find when people have a word quota to fill. Or Children's Literature.

Chapter 66:​

1. A hyphen instead of double dash: "They still thought I was an adult though, and probably of mixed blood- elf or orc brought a lot more arguing among the drunk porters than expected." This is just a formal structure element, but in this case it REALLY confused me. "mixed blood—elf or orc—brought", the thing there is appositive, and it should be separate from the rest of the sentence structure.

Conclusion:
It was a great read. I was tempted to read everything from beginning to end or until I grew tired of it. I might go back to it when I have time. But considering that I have other people waiting for my opinion, I really had to skim the overall content of the novel. It has a great premise. It is very original too, as far as I know, considering only so much as I have read. There are some small English mistakes here and there, but once again, it is nothing that will distract people from the story that you have written. Which is a great one! I really look forward to what you have to write in the future and to when I go back reading it again!

thanks for your thoughts on my story! as for why I kept the option for readers to know what Sybil doesn't, it's mostly nostalgic because I spent an insane amount of time on the dialogue when I first started fwoah.
Honestly I need to edit the entire rabbit plot to make it sound better, not my best tbh as I was trying to move the plot along (eventually finding out things about sybil that I wasn't like. thrilled about) and I'll fix up what you pointed out in my most recent chapter - my grasp on language can get tenuous based off of the energy I possess lol
Thanks again and I'm glad you had a decent time glancing through my story
(here's a little snack: )

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Well, having opinions are always welcome. But if there too much for you to eat, you can skip mine.

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/815788/crystal-evolution/

Hello there, Sleds. The chick has accepted your feed and has decided to give you an opinion.

Firstly, a small introduction of what has been done: the chick has read chapter 1, 50 and 96. There was not too much to be read. The chick does not overfeed. Also, it does not underfeed. Therefore, it decided to read three chapters. The chick's opinion of your work could be summarized in the following words: Improve your English.

Chapter 1:​

1. English Language: This chick believes you have warned your readers that English is not your First Language, and that was well warned. It does a warning of what your readers are going to find in your work: Poor use of vocabulary, Strange choice of words, strange grammar are only a few of the things that you can notice due to your poor fluency in the English language. You manage to fail in all aspects of the language, and even as you continue to write, you do not improve by the leaps and bounds as other second language and native speakers of English do. Which means that to you, English is a foreign language. The only way to improve here would be to drastically increase your exposure to English. Which is NOT something that this chick can help with. And it is something that you should know how to best approach. And if you desire to approach at all.
2. Reference Confusion: "The sky was filled with spatial rifts, millions of beasts escaping from them, invading a huge plain," "many different races composed of millions of humans, elves, dwarfs, angels, beast-men, and other races," "a hint of envy passed through his eyes before disappearing as if he had never existed." I really cannot for the love of god make what is escaping from a rift and invade a huge plain while I fall from the spatial rift from the sky. What are different races all made of at the same time humans, elves, dwarves, angels, beast-men and other races at the same time? Just what is a race in the end? What is a species? And tell me, who was 'he' who disappeared in the end?
3. Narrative time: "Different abilities explode between the two armies making the plain tremble", "The races that defend the plain gradually lose ground." The story is told in the past, yet at these parts of the battle it is in the present.

Chapter 50:​

1. Narrative time: "ready to do anything he can to try to stop that beam." It's in the present, yet the story is told in the past.

Chapter 96:​

1. Repetitive idea: 'shine', 'bright' eyes: This chick was expecting this to be central to the idea of the chapter, considering how repetitive this idea was throughout the chapter… It was sorely disappointed when it turned out to not be…

Conclusion:
I did not nitpick on all your English strange choices. In fact, if I had been to, I would never have been done with this. It is not making your novel impossible to be enjoyed by people, therefore I will not nitpick on it. If you, however, were to improve on your English, making it more accessible to people who are more familiar with a better English, I am sure that your novel will be read by many more. This, however, would require for you to either greatly improve your English, or you to find someone to edit your novel.
Where it concerns your Story, you obviously do not have problems with the story. You have readers, you have people commenting on your story, and you have no problem whatsoever advancing your plot so far. All the chapters I have read were very different points of the story, and they were also able to advance the plot. If only your English was clearer, you would have more of a readership.