SIXTEENTH UPDATE! (Replies 186-205)
***Yes, I'm still doing this. Merry Christmas, y'all~
Offshoot Petals @BarBarKetrab
-I...don't know what happened in Episode 2. Did they just rip off a false eyelash...?? The narration makes it sound as if they tried to self-harm or something, but I just can't figure out what the visuals are supposed to be showing.
-So bST doesn't understand jokes...but they have enough of a concept of humor to call Cinna's comment a 'quip', rather than just assuming they were trying to talk normally and simply correcting their use of 'anyone'....?
-Why would they have to pay bills for burning firewood...??
=Okay, so...it's clear that you can write. Like, your writing sounds good. It just doesn't make any sense. Jokes barely even get set up, let alone land; the characters' expositional comments are obviously contrived; and that part where you narrate what's funny about the MC's reaction, rather than actually letting them say something funny...yeesh. =/
Oddly enough, it's at the point where if your art were just a little better, you'd probably have a lot of fans...because if you're not really paying attention (and many readers don't) the dialogue is natural-sounding enough to feel like quality work. Even if it really isn't.
Trial Run @chestnutriceeee
-Wouldn't it be better for the person whistling to know what song they were whistling...rather than calling it a 'classic piano song'...? Plus, if you're going to use the music as part of your narration, it's better if the reader gets a chance to imagine that as part of what's happening, and they can't do that if they don't know what the piece is, or at least what the mood of the piece is.
=In a nutshell, it's pretty amateurish...but on the high-side of amateurish. You have a good flow of ideas, and you write dialogue well, but you're just lacking in technique. My biggest piece of advice is that you should write more personally, with a narrative voice that sounds like an actual person living through these events, and not like sarcastic narration over a teen's cartoon. ^^; Like, the story has such a violent edgy mood, but from the way the protagonist speaks I get the feeling that I'm not actually supposed to take this stuff seriously or think any of it is actually cool...because they're treating it all like a joke.
Crossing Our Paths @Edel_Li
-I dunno how I feel about the character intro part of the prologue...I think when other authors do this, they usually go one of two ways: either Option A, weaving the character intros almost imperceptibly into the action by simply having the characters take turns doing things, or Option B, using their narrator’s privilege to just describe the characters outright, like “sit tight while I tell you who these people are, and we’ll get back to the plot in a minute”.
Your technique, on the other hand, seems to be kind of in the middle…? The intros are definitely woven into the setting, if not the action, but they’re also very blatantly obvious considering how detailed they are. It’s just kinda...weird.
=I’m just...bored. I do think it’s a good book; it will definitely entertain people who are looking for their fantasy fix, but there’s not really anything unique about its setup or its characters so far.
Night Lights ~Lopier @limitlesssan
-This isn’t a critique against you specifically, but I have to wonder why the ‘mafia’ is so popular to write about all of a sudden? Especially among young amateurs...I don’t want to gatekeep, but I feel like there just ARE some genres that you really can’t write well without some broader life experience, which many amateurs simply do not have.
If you just want to write an action-adventure with guns, do that; the point of stories about mafia/yakuza/other gangs is to spotlight the pressures of loyalty, twisted morality, and needing power and influence as collateral just to retain some semblance of self. It’s not supposed to be just another quirky setting...anyway, rant over.
-Although the story hasn’t even started yet, Chapter 0 feels immersion-breaking simply by virtue of sounding so...immature. Like, it reads like the voice of a young child coming up to you to talk about their random little thoughts.
The novel description (which is actually fairly well written) seems to be describing a mysterious story with dark undertones, and then you open up the novel and immediately get hit with an awkwardly-worded ‘narrator talks to you’ moment that’s trying DESPERATELY to sound cute and informal. =/ One thing you don’t want to start a novel with is an intro chapter that feels like a betrayal.
-And on that note, no, I’m not interested in ‘Lonan, and then Ashley and Raiden’. I don’t know who they are. ._.
It’s one thing for a narrator to mention/talk about other characters as if the reader should know them; it’s quite another thing for a narrator to just blatantly tell the reader that they know and are eager to hear about other characters...like, that’s just a falsehood. It’s not true, and if it becomes true later on, the reader should get to decide that, not the author.
This can work if the reader is simply a stand-in for an audience that exists within the world of the story, but I see no indication of that here.
-’Higher criminal activity area’??? Are you kidding me…? ಠ_ಠ
=Okay, in conclusion: this novel feels borderline disrespectful. The tone is just so wrong...you’re writing The Godfather as if it’s a cute schoolgirl anime-- but instead of being fun and clever, it’s just blindingly ignorant. It’s as if crime and death and murder are just empty aesthetics, rather than real concepts that actually affect the story. You bring them up, and just toss them aside like “oh, that guy got shot lol” “This character said something creepy lmao”. It’s just...why??
What’s worse, you actually decided to continue with the quirky ‘narrator talks to you’ storytelling in Chapter 1 instead of working to establish any semblance of gravitas whatsoever. Again, why?? I don’t understand why you’re using such a dark setting if you’re so completely unwilling to engage with that darkness, even ironically. It doesn’t make ANY sense to me.
I really thought that the huge 7-month gap between Chapters 0 and 1 indicated some kind of overhaul, or at least maybe you realized that the story might be difficult to write with such a nonchalant tone and put in the effort to at least make it entertaining. But I don’t see any of that. It just looks like my first impression (y’know, the one that led to the rant) was correct, and that you don’t actually have any interest in ‘mafia’ as a concept outside of an excuse for your characters to casually talk about killing people.
