AI Novel Feedback

Salutations!

Well I've read through some of your story and I've got some suggestions for you!

The first thing I ran into is the very play-by-play nature of each scene. Instead of feeling like I'm IN the shop, I feel as though I'm receiving a laundry list of things that someone who is trying to describe a scene, has written down. It doesn't feel natural, just "this, and then that". I'll make an example and edit the text so you can see the difference in a scene.

Original: I listlessly gazed out at the rows of books that cluttered my mother's bookstore. It was late on a Sunday, so she had me shoved behind the counter. Before me, a bespectacled fujoshi retrieved her purchases, grinning bashfully. I waved her off and glanced at the clock. Five more agonizing minutes till closing time.

Edited: "Just one more." I muttered under my breath as I reorganized the haphazard pile of books yet again as evening approached. Sunday was the slowest day of the week, and boredom begat listless de-cluttering. In my mother's minuscule bookstore with rat-trails for isles there was only so much to be done. Just five minutes until I'm free. A tap on my shoulder woke me from my clock monitoring.
"I'd like to get this one, please." I turned to the woman and blinked my surprise. Her face dappled with neon animal stickers, accentuated by her cotton candy pink wig dripping with plastic hairpins and sequins. Her outfit a mash-up of a rainbow cardigan and a black tutu trailing glitter made my eyes ache.
"Ah, come over here." I said. It was the first time someone dressed in the Harajuku style stopped in at our dusty little bookstore. At least she only has one book. Just three more minutes, you're almost out of here

Now, you may have noticed that I changed almost everything about this paragraph, including the use of the word Fujoshi. I'll get on with the more technical stuff first: The first paragraph of your novel has to establish a time, place, and feel. So, I did that. I established the time of day and week, the place being a bookstore, and the feel of being cramped in said bookstore. This gives your readers more input to work with to build an image in their minds eye of the setting. Your first paragraph lacked a lot of reader information that, because I didn't have any, in my minds eye when I read it looked like a 7-11. Now, if your character was running a similar kind of store that wouldn't have been so bad, but she's not. She's in a bookstore and those have a completely different feeling from a corner store. These are things to consider when you create a scene, and particularly for your opening scene. If your readers aren't given enough information to create an image in their minds eye, they'll put your book down.

To that end, the use of the word "Fujoshi" is out of place here. This book takes place in Japan, but is written in English. You've established this character is Japanese so, the girl she see's in the shop wouldn't be a "Fujoshi" to her, she'd be dolled up, dressed up, gaudy, overdressed, etc. Sprinkling in out of place words is another way to lose readers because it breaks something that you need: The suspension of disbelief1. This word broke mine immediately upon reading because it struck me as odd and caused me to stop paying attention to the narrative. Now, Japanese language is a love of mine. I've been studying/speaking it since I was a kid, and this still struck me as out of place. Imagine someone who isn't a speaker in any capacity coming across this word, people don't want to have to stop reading the work to look something up. So instead they'll use that as a barometer for the rest of your book and put it down. You have to define your terms.

In lieu of Fujoshi, I used Harajuku style. Why? Because it's eye catching. Instead of a word like "bespectacled" (which can mean anything if you're not being clear as to what on the girl is bespectacled. I had no idea how to imagine this girl based on that descriptor alone) I used an actual style of dress. I also assumed the reader wouldn't know what I was talking about, so I described the girl and included the word "style". That way, the reader has a base-line of what I'm talking about, and they don't have to look it up in order to understand what I've said. They can go "Oh it's the name of a clothes style" based on the information given. So I inform the reader, I create a little more tension by treating it like one of those odd moments in the service industry where you get a bunch of strange customers JUST before closing, and then have her literally counting down the minutes. You have to remember that a scene is more than just showing what's happening, it's creating the feeling of what's happening.

Now, I know that's a lot for just a first paragraph, but the problems you've run into there are endemic to the rest of your work. NOW that's not to say that any of it is bad. The trouble you're having happens with ALL first drafts, hell even with second, and third drafts. It's okay! This is just how crafting a narrative looks in the raw, and editing is all part of the process. To get on with some technicals: your biggest overall problem which will shape the way your write and how your book is read, is Passive Voice. Your entire story is written in it. Now, Passive Voice DOES have its place, but when it supersedes the action and waters down your descriptions, it's a detriment. It's MUCH harder to deal with Passive Voice in the First Person POV than any other so, it's okay that you've run into this hitch. The good thing is that, now that you're aware of it you can fix it.

The biggest problem you face with regards to this, is use of adverbs (-ly) words. Instead of making your description active and keeping me in the action, you use an (-ly) word that takes the reader out of it. I'll make an example so you can see the difference between a scene with use of -ly and without. (I'll also include other things that make your narrative passive so you can see how it happens):

Original: The gorilla finally emerged from the shop and without pause charged blondie, who jumped back, but was still knocked to the ground on impact. The tracksuit girl sidestepped a heavy punch and blondie rolled back up. The three of them squared off. The smaller two circled in opposite directions trying to get behind him. Forced to pick a side, he grabbed the girl by the arm and held her for a heavy swing of his fist. Before he could put proper momentum into it, she viciously cracked a fist into his side, throwing him off.

Edited: The gorilla burst from the shop and charged blondie, knocking her to the ground. She scrambled to her feet, she and her partner circling the big man like velociraptors awaiting an opening. He lunged up from the street and swung at blondie again, grazing her abdomen as her knee cracked him in the chin.

Now, you'll notice I've put some things in bold AND changed the fight scene. To start: Everything you see in bold are the unnecessary words that slowed down the scene. When you're writing a fight scene you want it to be quick because fights that happen in real life, generally are. This fight between the three of them took WAY too long. When you write a book you're not writing for cinema so you don't have to make a fight scene act like one you'd see in a movie. Doing that slows down the writing and makes your reader put the book down. It's better to have a fight scene that's good and short, than overlong and over described.

To continue on that vein, the best cure for this is to avoid adverbs (in a fight scene) and use better words for describing what's going on. If you can think of one word to take the place of 3, use that one word. This will do wonders for your pacing1 and pacing is also VERY important. If your pacing is bad, it breaks the flow for the reader and they put the book down. Pacing IS one of the harder things to get right because it fluctuates throughout the story, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but it needs to be in balance in order to keep the readers invested.

Now, with regards to your story as to its content: Reading through you have one major problem on page 2 (or post 2). The thing is, it was really stupid of these Yakuza to take someone who very clearly isn't living on the street. Hell the tattoo'd woman went into her shop and KNEW she lived there. That means that A. A mother is looking for her and would call the police B. They have witnesses taking her because they started a row in Kim's shop that caused physical damage to the scene and C. Having her on in any capacity is a liability. Now, if the Yakuza approached her with an offer, that would make more sense. She's poor, her store needs the money, she could do it without her mother's consent which then begets a moral dilemma for her to deal with as she goes further, and further down the rabbit hole. There are tons of ways to make this work and the way you have it, makes no sense.

It actually makes less sense because Xianying says that Kairi's mother is a "good customer" so abducting her daughter again, breaks my suspension of disbelief because they'd essentially be eliminating a "good customer" by creating desperation, which leads to cops. If her mother pays her dues on time and is poor, and the Yakuza know they've got a strangle hold on her, it makes more sense for them to make Kairi an offer rather than kidnapping her. The trouble you're having here isn't with the premise, just the set-up. This could be a GREAT premise, stories where a character is in a tight spot and having to take the hand of the devil in promise for a better life are interesting stories. How far will someone go? How far can they be pushed? What will happen when their conscience gets in the way? There are so many interesting angles to approach with a story like this.

So your overall premise isn't a bad one, but in the execution the big question you should always ask yourself is: What is the best way to logically get what they want? This applies to protagonist and antagonist. If they're doing things that make no sense to get something, then it ups the chances of your audience being put off. Now, that's not to say they can't screw up or make mistakes as characters because those are part of being human and fallible, BUT so long as you establish context for those moments they should be fine. You just have to know when things don't make sense and then edit the scene until it does. Here's a resource about scene structure1 and all the different subcategories that go with it.

Another thing: Tracksuit. Give her a name way before the club scene. If you're going to be using her constantly it's very distracting to have her only being referred to as "tracksuit" instead of her name. Now, if it was her nickname that'd be one thing, but it isn't so it only serves to distract and was another moment I was derailed waiting for her to be called by her name. To add to this: in the scene where Kairi is confronting everyone we get a character soup1 moment where too many characters are being introduced at once, (by appearance rather than name) when the only important one that she starts to jive with is Xianying. You can still introduce your characters but you need to stagger it because your audience is going to have trouble remembering everyone if you throw them in simultaneously. In this case, have Wild Hair and Xianying, since they seem to have more a head about what's going on, be in the scene with Kairi.

Everyone else is just the peanut gallery making comments that get in the way of the story development. Give people names. I went through that entire scene with "Wild Hair", "Tracksuit", "The Blonde", "Blue Velvet Suit", "Tattoo Woman", which, by the way, were inferences because I had no names to go by and that scene I had to re-read to figure out who was saying what to whom after a while because, again, no names. I'd say, get everyone out of that room that isn't directly important to the story, having five people conversing who have no names save Mako, made the scene way too confusing. Bottom line: Too many characters, empty out the scene and have her meet everyone more naturally.

You do have a problem with calling people by descriptors instead of names, which actually reduces the chance of your readers caring about their involvement. Now, if this was a novel where everyone WENT by those names, it would be different. If you had "Blue Suit" as a nickname, people would probably call her "Suit" or "Blue" which is immediately identifiable as a name and something the reader can attach their idea of her to. Likewise if Wild Hair was actually called that, she'd probably get called "Wild" or "Hair" etc. for all nicknames. You need a reference point for your audience, think of it like programming. In a program you have to give something a name or the program doesn't know what to do with it. Same goes for people reading your story, you don't give them a reference point, they won't know what to do with it and if that persists, they put down the book.

Now, you'll notice I used the phrase "put the book down" or some variant thereof several times throughout this. There is a reason for it. I did this, because it mirrors every time I had to stop reading your story in order to process a scene or when I was so confused or distracted by the narrative that I had to stop reading for a moment before I started again. I put those in there as a way to give you a barometer as to how frequently that happened while I read through the first few pages. Don't worry! This is normal stuff that happens so having an insight into where and how is the best way to fix it. Just bear these in mind as you go and you'll have an easier time catching yourself when you've hit a snag.

Phew okay, hahaha lots of feedback so congrats if you've reached the end! Don't forget, your story isn't a finished piece yet and that's okay! Everything you've run into here is something that happens to everybody while they hone their skills and work at their craft. Mistakes are good because they make for great learning tools and can help you add to your repertoire of skills. I think that with a little time, some editing and re-arranging of elements, you'll get your story crisp and in good shape. You've already shown initiative in the editing process so you're right on track where you should be. I hope the links I've provided and the break-downs I've included help you as you go.

All the best!

-Syn.