Read the first 4 chapters. I thought it was really good. I'd say anyone reading this story should read at least up to there before giving any judgment, you need to read up to there to kinda know what's happening. Those 4 make a solid prologue, establishing the main characters motive, the motive of this expedition, the threats in this world, and enough about the magic/mystery that I care to learn more about them. Your dialogue/descriptions are well written/captivating. I enjoyed it.
Hey @justincarbunkle Thank you for reading the first four! I am so sorry hadn't checked the forums in a while and didn't realize I got a bite!
I'll read yours this week and get back to you!
@justincarbunkle I read the first few
Plot: The humor / plot is niche and not really a niche that engages me, but it seems like the premise to the first chapter is that your protagonists are forming a DINK club where the second starts to go into an immortality counseling. I think the comic foundation is that the protagonists are immortal and have formed some nihilistic viewpoints and the comic seems to be them traversing that.
Content/Art: The art style feels old-school and maintains a good balance of that, it's very consistent throughout the episodes. Sometimes the ending/starting portions of the panel make the overall comic feel choppy.
The red text and font choice feel like an opportunity to improve. To me, it doesn't fit into the comic's art style and detracts from the flow.
I hope this feedback is helpful!
I will do that when you read hit like on the page your on so I know how many pages you read and I will read that many as well! if you add a comment I will do the same!
Here is my link.
P.s. I subbed to your book as well.
@Krysteena I've reviewed the first three chapters and have a few notes!
The plot so far is interesting - I'm curious about Kaysi's powers as well as D's. There's a lot of potential for those to expand and to create an intriguing story around.
The pacing feels good throughout the chapters from the narrative perspective. The childhood memory in the first where the kids are all playing is immersive. Same as the conversation between Kaysi and D and the bully who wanted to date Kaysi.
I think the the biggest opportunities are mechanical like grammar and sentence structure. After that, sensory details and more immersive dialogue tags.
I'll highlight a few areas of opportunity below:
Quotation Mark Usage
It looks like you're wrapping quotation marks around each sentence a character speaks. Instead, when a character is speaking, all continuous dialogue should be wrapped within a single set of quotation marks. If there's an interruption to the dialogue like a dialogue tag or an action would you break the quotation marks out.
One other thing I noticed is that some sentences don't close out the quotation marks properly and bleeds into dialogue tags.
Here's a sentence where both quotation items come up:
Sentence Structure
Many sentences start with "She" or "I". Since it's a first person narration, it's can be challenging to avoid that from happening, but mixing up sentence structure keeps the reader immersed. I feel like this can be alleviated two different ways: Purely focusing on sentence structure, or inserting more sensory details within your story.
Here's an example of a few sentences in a row that start with "She" from Ch 1:
What's written: "She was super intelligent, won the spelling bee, and liked to read mystery books. She would solve the mystery before she even finished the books.
Possible approach: "Last year, Micah won the spelling bee. It seemed effortless with her intelligence. Her favorite genre of books were mysteries. She would always solve the mystery before finishing the book."
Other smaller mechanical items
Sensory Details
Your story has great interactions, but something I had thought felt missing during the first three chapters are more descriptions of the world that your characters are in.
What does the schoolyard look like? Was the summer where summer school took place a particularly hot or mild summer?
Overall Thoughts
There are a lot of great interactions and elements that create a strong foundation to your story! Tidying up the grammar elements, varying sentence structure, and adding a few more details about the environment along the way can really help keep the reader immersed!
I hope this is helpful!
I've read through the first ten episodes and I'm really liking your story and style so far! I really like the way you blend sentence styles and vocabulary to really solidify the atmosphere, as well as how you take the time to flesh out the characters or make them feel 'more alive'. I'm not an expert on writing or reviewing, but I do get a strong feeling of quality in your storytelling and worldbuilding!
Here's my novel if you'd like to give the first few chapters a review.
@StrayCat, I'd love to do a review swap! I'll try to get my review of yours done asap, at latest I'll have it to you by next Saturday 
If you have the time, you can check out my active project below. I would love feedback; I'm planning on doing a major round of edits and revisions after Arc 1 wraps up this year so I'll be taking it into account for everything, not just future chapters! If you have the time to read anywhere between the first 5 to the first 10 chapters, it would be invaluable 
Hi Raspberry thank you for reaching out! I'll check yours out shortly, I'm moving a bit slow on reviewing but I'll let you know when I start reviewing!
no worries at all @StrayCat I'm gonna try and do my review of yours tonight, but it depends a bit on how cooperative my work assignments are lol
thanks for starting this thread!
@StrayCat , here's my review! I've read chapters 1-10 so far, and I'm here to stay. Love the story! If you ever want a review in the future as you keep working on it, I'm happy to do so.
my notes
Cover and title art are gorgeous and really match the tone of your story, awesome choice
description: really evocative and mysterious, and a good length. The only suggestion (and I mean suggestion as in a possible thing to try rather than an explicit improvement, as stylistically you might want to discount it) is to see if you can also write a description with less in-world terms and a more thematic focus, and compare how people respond to it.
Copy / quality of writing
One of my biggest takeaways was the quality of you writing - it is beautifully descriptive, consistently grammatically correct and with few copy issues, and the imagery you use is gorgeous.
Minor things (suggestions for tighter prose, greater clarity, etc.)
A minor thing I recommend - and something I'm hyperaware of because I do this all the time- is to make sure your use of adjectives and adverbs doesn't make your prose feel awkward or clunky. I don't think you overwhelm anything overall, and I don't say this to take away from my overall assessment of your writing, but I found myself thinking occasionally that the descriptions could be trimmed slightly without sacrificing the strength of your descriptions or narrative. Personally, I like words a lot lol so I prefer to write as I please first with everything I want to say and then I cut it down to something more streamlined later (that said, my active novel now has not undergone any significant editing, and I know it needs it). I'm sure you already have your own editing style and I don't mean to overexplain here, im pretty much just ranting about how much I like words.
The other minor things I noticed was a bit of a tendency toward longer complex sentences (again, a thing I do all the time every day so I feel weird pointing it out haha). I don't know if you have an editor or beta reader or anything available, but it might be worth a round of editing a bit for clarity if you want to keep fine-tuning it. Shortening sentences here and there might make your descriptions feel more streamlined too without you cutting much of your writing.
Example (from 1.2): "Erith surveyed the sifters within the clearing, more than a hundred in number, their faces, a blend of fear and excitement, still echoing the Warden's intensity."
Suggested changes for clarity: Erith surveyed the sifters gathered in the clearing. Their faces, more than a hundred in number, echoed the Warden's intensity with a blend of fear and excitement.
related to the clarity bit, watch out for the occasional extra comma - to save yourself time some sort of grammar checker might work? Personally I used to like grammarly for catching things like that but I quit using it when they started beta testing all the AI add ons. I haven't found a replacement since. So I'm open to suggestions on that for myself haha
but again, most of that is stylistic, so take it as you will. Tl;dr is edit a bit for clarity and conciseness.
The beginning:I absolutely love the opening chapter. You immediately have action, smooth dialogue that contextualizes the characters relationships, and you avoid an info dump. Personally, I like your slower reveal of the bare facts of the who/what/when/where/why over the first four chapters. As someone who tends towards the info dump and over-narration especially in my first drafts, I enjoyed how you integrated that information into active chapters. That's my subjective take - it certainly wouldn't hurt to have those questions answered sooner, but I think your set up is preferable to succumbing to the information dump.
Your characters dialogue is especially strong too, and I think you do a good job of balancing giving the reader the needed context while avoiding the telling / not showing trap.
And my last comment I had was how well you convey the experiences of the characters. Your description of their physical environment and feelings is almost visceral at times. It makes it all the more engaging to read.
In order to comment more on things like pacing and character development etc, Id need to read more, but everything I've read so far is awesome.
In conclusion, truly beautiful work. I'm looking forward to reading the rest! Thanks for sharing and keep it up!
PS, sorry for the ironic wall of
chaotic text wherein I wax poetic about the values of conciseness and clarity
The central premise is “cartoon characters being aware they’re trapped in a never ending cartoon”, and their reactions to that. I should make an introduction chapter that better explains that/grips the reader more than my current first chapter. I hope you got some enjoyment out of the writing despite this.
I might get rid of the title/date text, or make them smaller. I liked envisioning each page as its own comic strip, but it does ruin the flow a bit when I’m telling a longer stories with them.
The font I chose was an afterthought. Usually it’s just set on the default setting in Procreate. You’re right, I should change it to something more fitting with the art style, something curvier/handwritten looking.
The red text I think I just chose to be different. It doesn’t really add anything. I might get rid of it/just make it a really dark red.
Thank you for the feedback! Wish I knew you wrote this earlier (website didn’t notify me about your mention).
Hey @eternityoz I read the first 9 episodes and have compiled together some notes!
Plot Thoughts
I think the initial background of the realms, the waves, the Final Event, and the Calamity are were all really engaging. The stakes increase. I felt invested. Episode 6 was intense. Beyond that, the story continued to build intrigue and I can see a great journey ahead for Kaito.
Areas of opportunity
Environment Details
Character reactions / Emotions
Minor Grammar Corrections / Breaking up Paragraphs
I hope this review is helpful! Your story has fantastic elements within it. Keep weaving in immersive details of your world and how your characters are going through your world!
Thank you so much for this feedback I'm grateful for you taking the time!
I'll be picking up your story over the weekend and will begin reviewing I hope to get back to you shortly!
Thank you for your feedback and I'll definitely be keeping your advice on descriptions and grammar in mind as I go back to edit the earlier chapters over time!
Hi @raspberry590 I've read the first 10 episodes and am back with my review!
Plot Thoughts
The premise is fantastic and creates great potential. Learning about the Saintess and how she felt about her position, her previous vision, and her future was intriguing. The Ceremony set the stage, and the Saintess' breaking point before hand led well into it.
Areas of Opportunity
Paragraph Structure
The biggest opportunity I see is the structure of the paragraphs. The overall flow of the narration is immersive, but breaking out the paragraphs would help a lot. There are plenty of Mobile/App users on Tapas, and many of them will be detracted by the paragraph structure.
The other thoughts around the paragraphs is a missed opportunity to creating pacing and emotional/impactful beats.
I took a passage which was around half of a paragraph and split it into separate lines to see if I could show a difference and added a few italics along the way.
Here's the passage as it was written:
It was clear from his tone that Kielan was disgusted.
Honestly, I agreed with that sentiment, albeit for different reasons. An outsider, witnessing the ceremony? Everything in the ceremony was meant to be sacred and holy, completely sacrosanct. That was to say, it was supposed to be secret. If an outsider saw how my visions worked, they would notice that I was not a proper Saintess. And while I thought it was inevitable that it would become public knowledge someday, and while I even hoped it might become public sooner rather than later, that did not mean anyone should learn about it before a new Saint appeared.
Here's the passage broken out into different lines with a few italics added for additional emphasis:
It was clear from his tone that Kielan was disgusted.
Honestly, I agreed with that sentiment, albeit for different reasons.
An outsider, witnessing the ceremony?
Everything in the ceremony was meant to be sacred and holy, completely sacrosanct. That was to say, it was supposed to be secret.
If an outsider saw how my visions worked, they would notice that I was not a proper Saintess.
And while I thought it was inevitable that it would become public knowledge someday, and while I even hoped it might become public sooner rather than later, that did not mean anyone should learn about it before a new Saint appeared.
Em Dashes might help
This one is preference - Em dashes are great with breaks in sentences and helps give a little bit more of a narrative flow. Overusing them gets jarring for the reader, but here's the same paragraph with em dashes added
It was clear from his tone. Kielan was disgusted.
Honestly, I agreed with that sentiment—albeit for different reasons.
An outsider, witnessing the ceremony?
Everything in the ceremony was far too sacred, too holy for an outsider to intervene. Completely sacrosanct—that was to say, it was supposed to be secret.
Besides, if an outsider saw my visions, they would undoubtedly see I was not a proper Saintess.
And while it was inevitable that it would become public knowledge—while I even hoped it might become public sooner rather than later, that didn’t mean anyone should learn about it before a new Saint appeared.
Sentence Structure
Occasionally sentences feel clunky that take the reader out from the immersion.
“Movements a bit jerky as though she were hesitant or unsure, the priest pulled what looked like a large black ladle from somewhere in her voluminous robes.”
“After her last swallow, the Saintess lowered the ladle, carelessly allowing the remaining Holy water to fall back into the Spring, the droplets gleaming and casting new shadows before they hit the pool.”
Character Voice
I felt while reading that the Saintess had a voice to the narrative that I could follow, but once I started reading Erik, his voice felt the same. I looked back and noticed that their sentences and word choice feel very similar. I'd
First person narration could benefit from varied sentence structure to better pace the narration. It can add emotional beats.
Sensory Details
I think you've done a great job of weaving in detail to the narration. Details about what the Saintess was wearing was threaded well into Episode 4 when Emilia is helping the Saintess with putting on her ceremonial accessories.
Occasionally, sensory details feel forced:
Indigo seems to be a deliberate color for the character, but I felt that the first time we learn about the Saintess' indgo robes, they off-handedly mentioned "My indigo robes" and then moved on. Through the narration see if you can find opportunities to bring up more details such as why the robes are indigo.
Here's another example where "the droplets gleaming and casting new shadows before the hit the pool" feels a bit forced.
“After her last swallow, the Saintess lowered the ladle, carelessly allowing the remaining Holy water to fall back into the Spring, the droplets gleaming and casting new shadows before they hit the pool.”
Overall Thoughts
The plot is engaging. It's got elements that left me thinking about what comes next. The characters are dynamic, and feel layered. I could feel the Saintess' disdain for Kielan—the character dynamics are wonderful. Your narration is immersive, and I feel it could truly shine with refinements to sentence and paragraph structure.
I hope this review is helpful! Sorry it took me a little longer than I expected!
