Mar 2023
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Mar 2023
Apr 2023
Hayka
Mar '23
Kelheor

long sentence are kinda my style. I'm aware it's a hassle but I can't make the sentences shorter. Same with the pause. It needs to be that way. It wouldn't work in one line.
Yes that passage is kinda meant to be read more than twice to be fully understood, and that will only be understood once the ideas are fully explored. It's a passage in volume four so it needs some context. The part with "A wrong truth from a wrong pov can hurt more than a lie" is an idea explored in later chapters of volume one.
Basically, just like how truth differs from person to person and each person has their own side of the truth, blame can also be subjective. Reality and Fault are meant to be set in stone, at least based on the points mentioned in previous volumes.
What the character is saying there is "In my case, the truth is I am to blame. In reality, it is my fault" Meaning that there are no excuses for her, and that she herself is ready to accept it. There are a lot of internal monologues and struggled like that one. I wonder if it's a good idea to write like that, but I can't really help it. It just came out that way. I know it doesn't have an audience.

also, I can see nothing wrong with the "This abandoned building" I actually think it reads better than "the abandoned building" the main character doesn't start the story with a "once upon a time" he just starts with "this is where I am this is what I'm doing"...also keep in mind that the first chapter is a bunch of pages torn from a diary.

Hayka
Mar '23
Katzalcoatl

I will. I'll talk to some friends who are more experienced, and also get some beta readers

Katzalcoatl
Mar '23
1
Hayka

After reading what you wrote in the image above I have to agree with @Kelheor. Various sentences are hard to understand.

To use a different example than kelheor.
What do you mean by "This story I'm about to tell, this story of wants and cravings, has absolutely no value to it, because everyone who reads this as an outsider can tell, ...."

To clarify I do think your story has potential. I just don't think your thoughts are getting conveyed to the reader the way you want it to.

I noticed you want to emphasize the words fault, truth, reality, and blame. In this particular case it is correct to repeat the same words over and over since it is an artistic way to express a point.
Assuming you didn't want to emphasize those words then I would suggest using synonyms instead of being repetitive.

Repeating words can be a way of boring readers. Imagine an action novel saying "and he punched the bad guy" 20 times in a row. The fight would be super boring. That is where synonyms and other techniques in writing come in.
(Again this last thing mentioned probably doesn't apply here considering you are trying to emphasize the words mentioned before in an artistic manner.)

Katzalcoatl
Mar '23
Hayka

If long sentences are your style. You have to be careful to make them understandable. Actually, not understandable... I used the wrong word. You have to make sure the idea you are trying to convey gets accross to your reader.

In our mind something may sound correct but that doesn't mean our reader will necessarily realize what you are referring to.

cherrystark
Mar '23

I skimmed the first few paragraphs and in my opinion, your opening reads like a high schooler trying to try angsty, gothic poetry. The writing style isn't necessarily bad, it's just that I lost the action in the prose.

The biggest advice I can give is to focus on showing us what's going on. I know the phrase "show not tell" is common but it's true. Readers are experiencing the story through their mind's eye which is like a metaphorical camera lens. You open with the sentence "The abandoned building is about to collapse." The sentence implies immediate urgency. It does not work with the idea that people would frequent the building for parties or to end it all. But showing the way the building looks and smells will bring the building into focus for the readers.

*I also have to note that most people don't actively think about what they're doing. It's more like their bodies act and then their minds catch up. This is why testimonials on reality TV shows are filmed after the event. They are just reacting to the events on the screen. This also explains why eyewitness reports are not always accurate. A person isn't really processing what they've seen. Characters often are the same. They react to the situation in front of them and then they are able to explain their thoughts afterword.

** I hope this makes sense.

Hayka
Mar '23
1
Katzalcoatl

Yeah, I am emphasizing those words, since the whole prologue is about them.
And with that line,
If you read the explanation I wrote above, you'll know that the character believes blame is a concept that differs from person to person, whereas fault is a more concrete concept that we will be able to see it once we look at it from an outsiders view. What she's saying is that not only does she blame herself, the main conflict of her story will be completely her own fault. Context: the girl is Naomi's sister (the one on the rooftop) and Naomi kills herself after living with the main character. In her funeral, her desire to understand her sister, what made her kill herself, and what was going on inside that brain of hers gave her the ability to read minds (she actually reads peoples strongest emotions like sorry, joy, and lust)
She contacts the main character via some suicide notes, which makes the mc meet new people and help them with their issues. (it's kinda similar to Bunny Girl Senpai and Monogatari here) At the end of volume three, she goes insane. Hearing people around her without being able to take all the pain something she couldn't handle. Her name is Naya Mitaki which is a wordplay on Nayami Taki (Nayami means troubles and worries and Taki means waterfall). Naya can't wash away everyone's troubles, because she'll end up becoming filthier and filthier as time passes, so at the end of volume 3, she gives her own note to main character, telling him she'll off herself in three days, challenging him to do whatever she can. At the end of volume three, she finally wishes for the power to go away despite all the guilt she felt for not being able to help anyone anymore.
In this volume (volume 4) since she was given a supernatural ability due to her desires before, it's easier for her to get one again. In the events of the first 3 volumes, she ends up getting closer to mc, and after the whole drama of her power was over she starts wondering if he'll ever need her again and spend time with her (Because that's everything she'd experienced. She was always relied on. She was always the one helping.) She starts thinking that now that everything is over, she is no longer needed and starts separating herself from the main cast, which ends up creating another supernatural power within her. The ability to stop time. She ends up trapping mc and herself in a frozen world for three hours a day, just to spend more time with him. During the volume she is asked "are you sure it's not you" to which she replies with the monologue "I already know it's my fault"

So at the end of volume four, she finally admits that it was her, and in a frozen world that lasted for 3 hours, she ends up facing everyone she was never able to help, face her guilt, face her desire, see her dead sister again, who tells her "it was her fault that I died. You never helped me, you never helped anyone,, you just stood there, watching from afar"
She goes through a lot of heavy stuff there and accepts a lot about herself, and at the end, mc congratulates her on finally getting over the time-freeze thing, and asks her to be his friend, and from that day, he starts taking one request per day from her, to make her learn how to ask people for help since she spent years being the one understanding others and seeing their pain. He ends up being the one who understands her after ages.

So yeah, here's the plot till volume 4. So the part where she says "I am to blame and also it's my fault" makes sense...the part where she says "This story of wants and cravings has no value and there's no plot twists and it's pointless" also makes sense...because she always knew she was the one responsible for the anomaly. The part where she comments on a wrong truth from a wrong point of view makes sense, because she always heard everyone's truth and she began learning how sometimes truths can hurt more than lies.
the part where she says "it might be a mishap or a natural flaw in the flow of life" is a reference to how she got her power back then; the exact same words were used when she explained what happened at the funeral by the way.
the part where she said "it's quite selfish of me" hints at the way she sees herself, which is the main conflict of the story, and what causes the illusions at the end of the volume, where she faces all sorts of people she couldn't help, who kept calling her "selfish" for just staying back and being sad for them while they suffered.
"I am the secret twist, and I'm the one who will be confronting it. With a cold, expressionless voice, I will be confronting myself" one of the illusions she sees, is herself. The other Naya who watched everything as an outsider and tells her that it was her FAULT for leaving all of those people alone. So our Naya had to learn to not BLAME herself even if she had something to do with it all, which results in the frozen world to finally start moving again, and puts an end to that particular power...

ight...here's context, and now the image makes more sense...It might look like non-sense but there's a lot of context with what the character is saying that the readers will pick up little by little as they read it again to get full context. I'm okay with being vague. That's how this series is. I want the reader to think of the stuff the characters say and come back to them later, finding some new concepts and connecting them to something else and realizing what the character actually meant.

Hayka
Mar '23
cherrystark

this is the diary of an emo 20 year old
lines from next chapter:
“And what’s with that melodramatic little story, anyway? I felt like I was reading some hardcore rom-com novel., or a philosophical journey of self-discovery. Hey, are you okay?”

the mc has a lot of flaws and gets a lot of character development and learns to grow up and change the way he sees the world

Read the synopsis of the whole story above. I think I'm actually doing pretty well with my character depth.

cherrystark
Mar '23
Hayka

I did not read any of the other previous comments because I did not want their comments to influence my notes. I read a few more chapters and I stand by my first reaction. It's too vague. The first chapter is incredibly long. While the narrator sounds like an emo kid, we have no idea about his name, age, background, or anything to give us a reason to root for him. How is he connected to Naoki or whatever her name is? Why did he go to the roof?

You only have a few paragraphs to convince readers to continue reading the book. I felt like I was thrown for a loop when I went to the second chapter, but I still felt like I didn't learn anything about the narrator's background. It's too vague.

The problem a lot of young writers fall into with first-person POV is that they assume their character's voice does all the heavy lifting for them. No matter where you decide to start the story in first person, we as the readers need to see every moment of it. We have to watch them walk into the therapist's office. We have to watch them relieve the incident through a dream or in this case a journal entry. As is, we as readers don't get that.

Hayka
Mar '23

The readers don't HAVE to know the background. The guy has no name. He's a nameless character throughout the five volumes I've planned for plot-related reasons.
His background is not revealed because
1- There's a character who will be introduced later as a childhood friend. That's where we get more background. Also there are chapters called "A Glimpse At The Past" that give little bits of context from the past

2- I can't just tell everything first chapter. Because for one, it'll be even longer and more boring to start with mc's childhood years and have him reminisce those memories.

if you find it too vague, then that just means I'm on the right track; it's not supposed to make too much sense when you read it for the first time. The story will come full circle when it ends. If you read the synopsis above, then you'll know that everything I wrote actually connects to something, and if I come out and say "this is this this is that" it just won't really work.
It's supposed to be vague like that. Check out my image above and read my synopsis if you haven't to know what I mean, and tell me what would happen if I made the image simpler to understand. Won't it lose most of its charm?

I won't change the vagueness. I will try to make those vague moments and lines easier to understand though, but I can't tell everything, because my novel relies on being vague and odd.

candiedcotton
Mar '23
Kelheor

Ya'll are both right. They're grammatically incorrect, but grammatically incorrect isn't always bad in writing. After all it ain't a school essay.

I'm an avid fan of Stephen King, and very fond of getting my hands on anything he's ever said or wrote about writing stories. One thing he speaks about often, is that following grammar rules to a T will ruin your work.

But he also says that you need to fully understand and be able to use the rules in order to break them in all the right ways. I always liked that.

For me, a solid story is all about the flow. I want to be able to read it out loud and sound like I'm having a casual conversation. Comfortable, not straining to understand terms or lengthy sentences or too much flowery hoobaloo (but I want just a little bit of flower; just a dash of writer personality strewn through it for the perfect recipe).

candiedcotton
Mar '23

OP:

Holmes, you can't ask for critique if you're gonna argue it to death. That isn't going to help you. I get that you put a good bit of passion into this work and I can see and appreciate it, but remember this; the moment you, as the author, need to explain your work to the crowd, is the moment you've made a mistake.

It's the moment you need to step back, suck it up and accept that you need to make changes if you want to convene what you're trying to get across. Everyone has to go through it. I've knocked things out of my work that I really loved countless times.

Artists shouldn't ever have to explain their work. Literary or visual or any sort of artist. The work should always explain itself.

Katzalcoatl
Mar '23
candiedcotton

Wow. :astonished: I did not know this saying. It is amazing. I truly do learn one new thing every day.
I am truly left in awe. It is such a simple concept.

Hayka
Mar '23
candiedcotton

Ahhh you're right; I shouldn't really argue, but if I cut the vagueness of my work, a core part of the story is gone, since it's mostly about abstract ideas, and weird concepts. Like that one sentence I talked to you about. I can't delete "She was there, but she wasn't until she no longer was" just because it sounds vague to some people. I could've easily written "the girl wasn't appreciated and is now dead." but where's the fun in that? I love playing with words and making good lines that make people read a book more than once and understand little by little what each line means. I could follow some plan like a robot and make a story I'm not satisfied with considering the weird concept. I do use normal writing in my other works like Lawful/Lawless which is going to be a long-running fantasy, but for this...
Show Me needs weirdass stuff like this because it adds to the charm and it fits the odd scenes I write in it.

candiedcotton
Mar '23

I totally get what you're trying to do.

First and foremost, you're a good writer. You have good ideas, and you're good at visualizing abstract ways of telling a story. That's an excellent skill to have.

The problem is when you overuse it. If you reel it back a bit and are more specific of where you want to be more abstract or get more into a sort of 'poetry' field, it will actually have a greater impact.

Going back to Stephen King because I love that man. The Stand is one of his really famous works. It's older, but it's genuinely amazingly written. There's a guy in it who often talks about MOON. "M-O-O-N, that spells MOON." Nobody knows what the hell he's on about. The readers have no idea what's going on with that, nor even the other characters. It stands out not because it's particularly impactful itself, but because it is an abstract thing that is different than the rest of the non-abstract story. It makes itself interesting, curious, and mysterious because it is unique within the book. But if everyone was babbling random things that made no sense, MOON would be lost in the sea of oddities.

You have the capacity to write very emotionally impactful moments. But if you swallow all those moments into a drumming sea of endless alike moments, they lose their impact entirely. It becomes a mindless thrum of noise, rather than a grand crescendo.

Use those long sentences in an impactful way. Find their moments. Give me a lengthy, detailed sentence of someone panicking when the last straw hits and they can't breathe, and I will feel like I, too, cannot catch my breath. I will feel what they are feeling.

You just need to find the right moments.

Hayka
Mar '23

hmmm...this one makes sense. I'll think of other ways to use it. Good thing is, the more comfortable I got with writing this story, the less and less those weird moments got. The image was a prologue from volume four, and it does its job of dropping the reader in the weird moment of the character starting their arc. If you want more context I wrote an explanation below it. But I do use less of that when it's a normal scene, it gets less to the point where I was wondering if it was missing some of that poetic moments, but I found a balance later on after around 5 chapters. The first chapter didn't go through much change because I couldn't think of a better way to start the story. I just added a lot more details and it ended up being almost double the length of a normal chapter.
I'll see how I can make it better

cherrystark
Mar '23
Hayka

Yes, we do. We do not need to know everything but we have to have something that roots us in the story. A vague poetic opening can often leave readers incredibly confused. It's the same idea of why dream openings aren't popular. The dream or in this case, journal/flashback doesn't immediately tie in with the rest of the plot so it becomes useless dead weight. You only have a few paragraphs to convince readers to keep reading and buy your book.

You misunderstood what I meant by "background". We do not need to know every little thing about the MC in the first chapters. What I was referring to were things like a calendar reminder to say "Do Journal Assignment" or have the MC throw a ratty notebook in front of his therapist and have him say "I did it." It only takes a few words to establish a character's relationship without adding more fat to the chapter and slowing things down.

I went back and looked more at the thread. Was that random pic you added the synopsis? How was I supposed to know that that was the synopsis? I thought it was more poetry and skipped it. It still doesn't give me any insight about I, the reader, am going to experience in the plot. The blurb/synopsis is the reader's first taste of your work. If they can't understand the blurb, they aren't going to keep reading.

You asked for feedback to help you prepare to publish on Amazon, and that is what I'm giving you. It is completely up to you about how you use it. I have learned first hand how hard it is to sell your work. You only have a few seconds to convince a reader to stay with you.

You are not a bad writer as others have said. I just wish you understood that vagueness does not equate to mysteriousness. Readers love feeling a detective as they full all the pieces together. The work has to be clear enough for them to recognize the important clues so that when they are referenced again, they will make the connections.

Fine. I do hope you go through this and try to clear things up. I hope you remember as well that if you have to explain plot elements in a thread like this, you did not do a good enough job explaining them. Readers won't have the luxury of asking you to explain elements directly to them. If they don't understand what's going on, they will stop reading. I know it's blunt, but it needed to be said.

Best of luck.

Hayka
Mar '23

that's not the synopsis. That was a part of volume four
I explained everything up to volume four in a post below it where I give more context about it, because without knowing what that context is, you'll just find weird nonsense...lemme just copy paste it here too.

handwriting_20230309113154_via_10015_io.jpg1015x1436 920 KB

Yes that passage is kinda meant to be read more than twice to be fully understood, and that will only be understood once the ideas are fully explored. It's a passage in volume four so it needs some context. The part with "A wrong truth from a wrong pov can hurt more than a lie" is an idea explored in later chapters of volume one.
Basically, just like how truth differs from person to person and each person has their own side of the truth, blame can also be subjective. Reality and Fault are meant to be set in stone, at least based on the points mentioned in previous volumes.
What the character is saying there is "In my case, the truth is I am to blame. In reality, it is my fault" Meaning that there are no excuses for her, and that she herself is ready to accept the blame for what she has done.

If you read the explanation I wrote above, you'll know that the character believes blame is a concept that differs from person to person, whereas fault is a more concrete concept that we will be able to see it once we look at it from an outsiders view. What she's saying is that not only does she blame herself, the main conflict of her story will be completely her own fault. Context: the girl is Naya, Naomi's sister (the one on the rooftop) and Naomi kills herself after living with the main character. In Naomi's funeral, Naya's desire to understand Naomi, what made her kill herself, and what was going on inside that brain of hers gave her the ability to read minds (she actually reads peoples strongest emotions like worry, joy, and lust)
She contacts the main character via some suicide notes, which makes the mc meet new people and help them with their issues. (it's kinda similar to Bunny Girl Senpai and Monogatari here) At the end of volume three, she goes insane. Hearing people around her without being able to take all the pain something was she couldn't handle. Her name is Naya Mitaki which is a wordplay on Nayami Taki (Nayami means troubles and worries and Taki means waterfall). Naya can't wash away everyone's troubles, because she'll end up becoming filthier and filthier as time passes, so at the end of volume 3, she gives her own note to main character, telling him she'll off herself in three days, challenging him to do whatever he can. At the end of volume three, she finally wishes for the power to go away despite all the guilt she felt for not being able to help anyone anymore.
In this volume (volume 4) since she was given a supernatural ability due to her desires before, it's easier for her to get one again. In the events of the first 3 volumes, she ends up getting closer to mc, and after the whole drama of her power was over, she starts wondering if he'll ever need her again and spend time with her because she's not helpful anymore (Because that's everything she'd experienced. She was always relied on needed. She was always the one helping.) She starts thinking that now that everything is over, she is no longer needed and starts separating herself from the main cast, which ends up creating another supernatural power within her due to her new desire. The ability to stop time. She ends up trapping mc and herself in a frozen world for three hours a day, just to spend more time with him. During the volume she is asked "are you sure it's not you?" to which she replies with the monologue "I already know it's my fault"

So at the end of volume four, she finally admits that it was her, and in a frozen world that lasted for 3 hours, she ends up facing everyone she was never able to help, face her guilt, face her desire, see her dead sister again, who tells her "it was your fault that I died. You never helped me, you never helped anyone,, you just stood there, watching from afar"
She goes through a lot of heavy stuff there and accepts a lot about herself, and at the end, mc congratulates her on finally getting over the time-freeze thing, and officially asks her to be his friend, gives her his unconditional friendship, and from that day, he starts taking one request per day from her, to make her learn how to ask people for help since she spent years being the one understanding others and seeing their pain. He ends up being the one who understands her after ages.

So yeah, here's the plot till volume 4. So the part where she says "I am to blame and also it's my fault" makes sense...the part where she says "This story of wants and cravings has no value and there's no plot twists and it's pointless" also makes sense...because she always knew she was the one responsible for the anomaly. The part where she comments on a wrong truth from a wrong point of view makes sense, because she always heard everyone's truth and she started to learn how sometimes truths can hurt more than lies.
the part where she says "it might be a mishap or a natural flaw in the flow of life" is a reference to how she got her power back then; the exact same words were used when she explained what happened at the funeral by the way. "I don't know what happened, whose fault it was, or who should be blame. The rational take would be that it was an unnatural flaw in the flow of life." Here she uses the word "natural" because she's more used to it, and a concept alien to everyone else has become the norm for her.
the part where she said "it's quite selfish of me" hints at the way she sees herself, which is the main conflict of the story, and what causes the illusions at the end of the volume, where she faces all sorts of people she couldn't help, who kept calling her "selfish" for just staying back and being sad for them while they suffered.
"I am the secret twist, and I'm the one who will be confronting it. With a cold, expressionless voice, I will be confronting myself" one of the illusions she sees, is herself. The other Naya who watched everything as an outsider and tells her that it was her FAULT for leaving all of those people alone. So our Naya has to learn to not BLAME herself even if it was her FAULT. In other words, to accept her flaws, which causes the frozen world to finally start moving again, and fine.

ight...here's context, and now the image makes more sense...

That pic is just the beginning of volume four, and if you don't read up to that point and pay close attention, you'll lose everything that was meant to be there. So you can't find meaning by just skimming through some chapters because each part of dialogue kinda helps with getting the idea.

Hayka
Mar '23
cherrystark

I know I know.
Maybe it makes more sense to me, because I'm the one making it. I should make some stuff clearer I guess