Still need reviews (characters and plot)

Aims 2020-01-28 19:11:54 UTC #1

Hey, so I have two series and one of them has some views but no subscribers, and the other has some subscribers but none of them seems to be reading(which is really strange btw. Like, why would you subscribe to a series and then not read it). I've been posting them on the forum and even made posts about them on my Tumblr and Twitter, but they don't seem to bring any new subscribers (or readers for that matter).

I'm looking for reviewers to tell me what I'm doing wrong(plot and characters). Thank you in advance for your time. (And please read at least three chapters before giving a review… Cause I can assure you, that you won't be able to grasp anything just from reading the first episode)

xabelmind 2020-01-28 22:07:14 UTC #2

Okay, this comes from a fast review, but let's see if I can help

First: Have you interacted with others work since you started posting?

Before ask, you have to give: Give others the attention you're looking for and they'll feel more inclined to do the same for you.

Second: I took a look to the first chapter of "Sneaking on piano keys", it looks well-structured, no big errors at first sight

The only thing I would point to would be to retire that first ad chapter. Links to your other stories are already at the end of each chapter, so avoid throwing off possible readers that are already enticed by the summary and wanna know a bit more with an useless ad.

Third: I took a quick look to the first chapters of "Sucked into the game" and I found an odd detail:

There's no narration in the dialogues. I spotted it right away because I have the same problem, so I write the dialogues and then I go back and include what the characters are doing and feeling. You seem to have the same problem here, you may know what the characters are doing with their hands, their expressions and other nuances, but the reader doesn't and that makes the dialogue loose all interest.

That's my three points of advice, hope I helped

IndigoShirtProd 2020-01-28 22:27:47 UTC #3

Well for one, Sneaking on Piano Keys begins with you telling the reader to look at something else even before they know if they like the story they clicked on. This story is also barely a month old on Tapas; it's going to take time for people to find and be interested in it.

Let's look at your synopsis first.
"After years of homeschooling and appointments with a psychologist, Max has finally been considered ready to go back into the outside world, and everything goes well for a while, but then karma and puberty decide to strike him down and now he has to pretend to be normal or he might end locked up for "being crazy", which isn't easy when the dead (many of which are mangled in some manner making them horrifying to look at) are begging you for help.

You have some overly long sentences and some unnecessary information. Information the reader could and should learn about while reading. Here's my edit:

"After years of homeschooling and appointments with a psychologist, Max has finally been considered ready to go back into the outside world. Everything goes well for a while, but then karma and puberty decide to strike him down. Now he has to pretend to be normal or he might end locked up for "being crazy", which isn't easy when the dead ~~(many of which are mangled in some manner making them horrifying to look at)~~ are begging you for help.

Instead of being one long uncomfortable sentence, it's three more manageable sentences.

I'm only going to speak on the first two episodes since that sets the tone for how the story is going to go.
You started the story with a character waking up, and while this isn't a no-no in terms of writing, it is cliche and shows inexperience.

You have a few typos, and your sentence structure is wildly all over the place. Again, some are distractedly too long. Others are to the point, but not in an interesting way. For example:

"He spent the last few years taking classes at home so he wouldn't fall behind the other kids of his age, studying Portuguese so he could do something as simple as ordering a pizza and he went to appointments with a psychologist to help him cope with the changes in his life"

This is a paragraph in itself. It could easily be split into two or three sentences, like so:
"He spent the last few years taking classes at home so he wouldn't fall behind the other kids of his age . Max studied Portuguese so he could do something as simple as ordering a pizza . He also went to appointments with a psychologist to help him cope with the changes in his life"

I mentioned before that it's cliche to start a story with the character waking up, and it is, but you can always make it more interesting to show off a character moment. Maybe instead of Max waking up on time and perfectly ready to start the day, you have tired from a sleepless, excited night. Maybe his aunt or uncle come in to wake him up, but he's already awake and they catch him practicing how he's going to introduce himself to his peers with his cat. Maybe he's late, and there has to be something extreme and lucky to happen for him to get to school on time. Something, anything else could work.

I think the mention of Max needing therapy should've come up later when it was plot relevant. Maybe he had a tough time at school that first day and he comes home and fiddles with the piano keys. Then there's the opportunity for his aunt to come in, ask him about his day. They have character moment together and the reader is informed of the psychologist. And then you can also have the aunt remind Max that he could play for rich people one day. Boom. Three birds with one scene. Literature is all about informing the reader in the most efficient and interesting way possible. (Also even if the psychologist is mentioned in the synopsis, there is a chance that someone will skip it and get right into the story.)

This is just a personal gripe, but I found the use of -hyphens- to show speech confusing and frustrating. If it's an aesthetic thing I understand, but using "quotation marks" is just as well and you won't turn off readers that way.

I don't really care for Daniel's introduction. . . or Max's. Probably because I don't know what they look like. Maybe physical descriptions are hard for you, I can understand that. Even if that's the case, you should still take the time to right a sentence or two describing your characters.

You can easily write: "Max was a kid of thirteen years, with tanned skin, dark brown hair and almond sea green eyes. His round nose scrunched up due to the cat hair in the air, which caused his scarred hands to brush it away."

And while those sentence may not describe your actual character, it does give whomever reads a clearer idea of Max in their heads while also raising some questions, such as: Why is his skin tanned and why does he have scarred hands? Is it because of his cat, or is it because of something else?

The dialogue is curt, uninteresting and stilted. The conversation between Daniel and Max isn't the worst but I feel as though it could have been executed better.

Lastly, I don;t really understand who Max is. Now may that gets better as chapter goes on, but as for right now, I, and anyone who reads the first two episodes, doesn't have even a little bit of an idea of what t expect from this character.

I'm not going to read Sucked into the Game. I'll just say, if you find any similarities in that story and Sneaking on Piano Keys, then refer to the critique I gave here. There's not a lot of intrigue for these stories from my own perspective, even though I like the premises. I mean I loved ParaNorman which has a similar premise to SOPK and I like murder mysteries which is similar to SITG. It's a matter of execution. You're very early on in terms of posting to a platform so as you get better you'll have more eyes on your work.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

Aims 2020-01-28 23:42:31 UTC #4

Thank you for the review, I'll review my writing them. But I feel as I should give a few clarifications:

1: The story is set in Portugal, we don't' do the "putting the new student on the stand and force them to talk about themselves" here. Here, when you're the new student, you sit, and pray that no one goes "hey that's my seat, get out".

2: The narrator is omnipresent, but in other to keep the action fluid I avoid stopping it for descriptions. The readers will receive hints of a character face, etc. if another character is thinking about them or analyzing them or if it can be fit in a description of a movement. For example:
Chapter 4 - "Elisa wasn't really sure what to say. She had never been good at talking with boys, but Max's intimidating aura was making her especially nervous. Elisa tried to calm herself down and avoid looking at the scar he had across his face."

3: And the hyphens thing. That's just how we write here. And honestly, quotation marks make everything way more confusing like:
It's supposed to be this: "character talking"character is quoting something" description of a movement"character is talking again"
But this is why I understand until I get the cotext after reading it three times:
"character talking"description of a movement" character is talking again" another description.

Again, thank you for your review and advice.

edanmorez 2020-01-29 00:40:21 UTC #5

Can you define storywise? Plot? Grammar? Character development?

Aims 2020-01-29 00:48:22 UTC #7

I'm talking about the plot and characters.
Thank you.

edanmorez 2020-01-29 00:49:29 UTC #8

I shall take a look. I'm new here, nice to meet you. But I have been writing recreationally for a while.

Aims 2020-01-29 00:52:51 UTC #9

I also really like writing recreationally, especially because if I don't write them, the stories I create as I'm trying to fall asleep won't just let me rest lol.

edanmorez 2020-01-29 00:57:24 UTC #10

haha, best way to write. The more practice we get, the better the stories we tell.

edanmorez 2020-01-29 01:25:04 UTC #11

Hello again, so I read the first chapter. I know different languages use different things for speech, but I feel like your story starts in the wrong spot, so it comes off like a summary.
You talk about how he learns to cope with whatever he went through via the psychologist's descriptions, but there's no hook, no intrigue.
Try starting off with some action like:
Max Costelllo stared out the car window as his mother drove into his new school. It was a tall red-bricked building surrounded by trimmed green grass. It radiated a sense of authority. It seemed like the sort of place where one knew the teachers didn't allow the students to get away with any form of bullshit. As the car slowed near the drop-off zone, bright-eyed students navigated through the maze of vehicles in the parking lot and pushed their way through the glass double doors of the front entrance. They wore uniforms. They all sported black vests, but while the boys wore baggy khaki pants, the girls wore plaid skirts. Max sunk lower into his seat, wanting to disappear. His throat was tight with worry. His hand tapped his thigh. He liked to keep his hands busy. He found it prevented him from thinking about other things.... Things that could destroy one's sanity.

Try to be subtle like that. Slowly introduce things from the psychologist, but also give the reader a view of Max's surroundings, and try to build his character.

Aims 2020-01-29 07:43:23 UTC #12

I see, thank you.
But can you read the next few chapters while you're at it?

Aims 2020-01-29 07:50:37 UTC #13

Cause like, there's literally a description of his new school in the second chapter.

Iris-Grimoire 2020-01-29 13:38:30 UTC #14

I just want to make a tiny point because I don't have time to make a fair review of the novels, and also good points were already made - but I want to make a note about your hyphen use.

I'm from Brazil, so we use a similar writing system(and I do prefer it even if so many fonts break with it). But the problem is, Tapas is an English-based website. It's important to write for you above bending to the trends, but it can't be all your story - and formatting problems like that will push new readers away because they're confused by the hyphen use, and that'll end up frustrating you in the end. I don't post my novels here but I do have a little bit of experience writing for fun and not just comic scripts, and it took some time to get used to apostrophes for dialogue, but it was very much worth it when it came to getting feedback. So uh, give it more thought once you have the time.