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Sep 2024

Thank you so much for the feedback.

I've always had a hard time describing sceneries and locations because I haven't been able to figure out the balance between giving a vivid enough imagery for the viewers to be immersed into the setting and overstuffing the text with superfluous details that distract from the story, but will certainly try to work more on that.

By the way, am I allowed to "upgrade" the package at a later time?

I've always found that subbing/liking/commenting on works that I'm not actually reading to be disingenuous, but I don't have a lot of time to read too many other works right now.

@SwordSong Anytime, it was a pleasure to read your opening! I very much get what you mean and have that same conflict, often. It's a thousand times easier to see it in someone else's story than your own (talking about myself here).

And, regarding an "upgrade", you absolutely can. I set the OG time limit to this weekend because once my work week starts, I won't be able to get it done as promptly—but my motivation in making this thread was to offer support anyone to who supports me, so the spirit of that is always in effect.

@BreeBaxter It was super fun to read! I'm glad you found the feedback useful, always happy to help. Cheers!

@miyaskya Thank you for the kind words and for reading! It's my first time writing action so it's super helpful to hear that the battle came across vivid and not... just a confusing, hot mess :sweat_smile:

I'll try and more diligently keep up with everyone's work (probably after the AF Tourney ends and I get my life back) thanks for playing along with me!

Thanks :blush:.
I do put like really really gruesome flashback of riona past and I was like would be putting it in the first chapter make sense? I decided to use the flashback whenever I saw a chance to showcase riona trauma response.

I was honestly going to do a regression trope but I felt like then riona wouldn't be same character she is now if she didn't become a slave.

thank you for taking your time to read it! Your advice is super helpful and I'm going to binge read your chapters :hugging:

@TheSequence Gave the first chapter a read through! I’m not sure if you’re looking for feedback on anything specific so I’ll just give my general impressions. I like the dynamic between the two siblings and their personalities come through in their dialogue. I do think this chapter could benefit from some proofreading just for grammar, spacing, punctuation etc because it’s pretty rough in some places. The chapter is on the shorter side so there isn’t a ton I give feedback on in terms of pacing or plot, but keep it up :+1:

@Vayvaction happy to help! And I think that’s a good idea to start weaving that background story and history from the opening scene to the present in so it’s layered with the story. Thanks so much for all your support as well :yellow_heart: I really really appreciate it

I'm having a lot of fun with reading everyone's work and would love to keep going! So if anyone lurking wants to get in on this, I'm always game (unless the title changes to 'closed') --just a little slower to get feedback out during the work week

&& if you're someone who has already been reading and supporting TNK, please consider all services pre-paid, I appreciate you greatly :bow: and I am more than happy to do anything I can to support you back

(tbh I don't know whether to put this thread under reviews/feedback, novels, or promotions, I'm sorry :sob:)

10 days later

Package C, Level of intensity 9.9, Paid, Please

I am a new author and have been paranoid and worried about doing justice through my limited writing skill to the vibrant and beautiful stories that exist only in my head. I know that i can do so much better with the help of clear constructive criticism.


Wow, I didn't expect anyone to find this thread again! Order received for @MeadowHaven :ballot_box_with_check:

I'm behind on my publishing deadlines and need to catch up this weekend so it will take me longer than usual to finish the review. Possibly until Sunday/1st half of Monday for a proper 9.9 crit, but I'll tag you when I post it in the thread so you're notified right away when it's ready. Thanks for your support! :yellow_heart:

That's fine I understand, and I appreciate it. having clear and strict publishing deadlines is important.

The Sun - War of Gods Begins

Synopsis:

In a world where gods walks among the mortals, a young boy named Aryan is unexpectedly thrust into the divine realm, Following an untimely accident, he awakens not as the boy he once was, but as the Radiant Luminary—one of the most being in the world, The sun god- Aurelion Blaze.

As he grapples with his new existence, he uncovers a dangerous truth—gods are not the pinnacle of creation. An ancient race to ascend beyond even godhood has begun, with deities vying to steal each other’s authority.

Amid the chaos, alliances crumble, and a hidden war erupts, threatening to unravel the fabric of the universe. With powers far beyond his understanding and enemies on all sides, Orion must navigate this treacherous path, where even gods can fall. The war of Gods has begun.

I hope you'll give it a try. Thank you :pray:

Lastly, How you liked the cover? Tell me if it seemes cringed.

@MeadowHaven done! Here you go, thank you so much for your support and for participating--it means a lot, and I hope you get something useful out of it.

Since you asked for a 9.9 critical lens, this review might come off as harsh—but I hope you don’t get discouraged, I’m just trying to be as specific as possible to give you an outsider’s POV on your work.

Engagement/Pacing: The engagement isn’t bad per se, but the pacing of the story is jarring. It spends a lot of time on some moments and breezes through others that you could have done a lot more with. If you spent more time writing out how Lu goes about killing drunk rats/what exactly the struggle is/how he gets better, that quest completion would have been much more satisfying. Instead, we get a lot of banter up front between Lu and Morgan and everything in-game is just a speedrun. Try and be consistent with the time you spend on the scenes you choose to write. If you don’t think a scene is important, describe what happened in a few lines and move on to the meat of the story you want to tell—otherwise it just starts to feel like reading SparkNotes/bulletpoints of Luther’s diary instead of his story. His epic journey. His quest. Right now, it’s clear that there are stakes, but Luther seems to breeze right over them in a way that doesn’t feel very believable.

Writing: The story could benefit from a good copy-edit. There are a lot of grammar errors, tense inconsistencies (switching from past to present tense for example—I think where the Game Master was introduced), and spelling errors. For example, at one point I remember reading mopping instead of moping. A general pointer for you—break up the dialogue with narration and your writing will sound much more natural. Right now, your characters are just monologuing at each other, not conversing. I pulled out a section so you can see what I’m talking about here:

“Lu! Lu! Lu! Oh, come on Luther! Get up! Oh great you’re finally awake! Did you forget what day it is? Life Sentence is finally being released today in less than half an hour! You would have had more time, but you kept ignoring my friendly wake-up calls. So, I had to resort to desperate measures to wake you up sleeping beauty!”
“Okay, okay just don’t call me Luther again it makes me sound like a balding supervillain or something, and while we are at it. The nickname Sleeping Beauty dies here and now as well. Also, don’t you dare wake me up like that again I was having a very nice dream. Are we understood? Just keep calling me Lu like always, because I sounds so much cooler!”

Vs.

“Lu! Lu! Lu!” Morgan's voice sounded increasingly exasperated. “Oh, come on Luther, get up!”
Luther groaned, turning his face back into his pillow. “Five more minutes,” he mumbled.
“Ohhh, no you don’t! Did you forget what day it is?” Morgan snatched the pillow away. “Life Sentence is finally being released today, in less than half an hour!” She whacked Luther with the pillow when he opened his mouth to complain. “You would have had more time, but you kept ignoring my friendly wake-up calls,” she explained, without an ounce of sympathy, “so, I had to resort to desperate measure to wake you up, Sleeping Beauty!”
/I stopped here because I think you can probably see what I was getting at

General: In short, your story has potential, but your fundamentals need work. For example: The opening paragraph, in my opinion, has way too many adjectives/adverbs/description—reading it out loud, it gets borderline comical, which I do not think was your intention. I get the sense that you were going for epic, but I think you overshot it by a good margin. A good tool to use for self-editing is to go in and delete all the adjectives/adverbs and re-read your writing without them. It will become clear which ones add real value/meaning/nuance/change the writing and which ones are just filler. There’s a fine balance between too little and too much, and I think you err on the side of too much, which can bog down the flow of an otherwise good story. Instead of an action scene, the first paragraph reads like poetry. That’s not necessarily bad, but I don’t know if that’s what you’re going for.

I can’t speak much to the characters/characterization since you’re just getting started, except to say that after Luther self-identifies as Lu, you should probably stick to calling him either one or the other in the narrative.

I think you have a fun idea and I can see glimpses of the vision you have for this! Good writing is just good editing, no first-draft is going to be perfect. Just keep going, get in all the practice you can, and always re-read your work after a few weeks to see a) what you might have missed, and b) how far you’ve come. I hope this was helpful! Again, this is all just my subjective opinion so I'm not saying any of this is correct/the best way/etc. Just my two cents, based on my personal taste.

that is very helpful thank you. and don't worry I'm not offended it was exactly what I needed