My first Lightnovel: The Apartment that eats Feelings

[KobaYuka_LN]

The Apartment that eats Feelings
to my Novel

19-year-old university student Rina moves into a suspiciously cheap apartment in Setagaya-ku to study at Shinsei University. It's quiet, clean and oddly soothing. Soon she notices how emotional pain disappears overnight when she cries, screams or is heartbroken. The apartment seems to swallow up her negative emotions. At first it's a miracle. But then... Her memories become increasingly hazy, her reactions dull, she begins to feel nothing even in moments that should shake her. And it gets even worse: the more unfeeling she becomes, the more others in the building feel things they shouldn't – panic attacks, inappropriate guilt, phantom grief. And slowly, this phenomenon seems to be engulfing her completely.


This is my first ever Lightnovel/Webnovel i publish (still ongoing, i just started!) but ofc. i´d love to get feedback, what to do better, whats good and all that.
Especially as i am not a native english speaker, i can always improve <3.



What to expect?

• Psychological Horror & the Dealing with your own psyche and feelings
• a queer female protagonist
• Mystery
• first person POV (and in between 3rd Person) --> 2 POVs
• Part of a bigger series, so whatever happens, might be important to other stories to come

Its my first ever Lightnovel/Webnovel i write and also publish <3

 

[StoneInky]

The Apartment that eats Feelings
to my Novel

19-year-old university student Rina moves into a suspiciously cheap apartment in Setagaya-ku to study at Shinsei University. It's quiet, clean and oddly soothing. Soon she notices how emotional pain disappears overnight when she cries, screams or is heartbroken. The apartment seems to swallow up her negative emotions. At first it's a miracle. But then... Her memories become increasingly hazy, her reactions dull, she begins to feel nothing even in moments that should shake her. And it gets even worse: the more unfeeling she becomes, the more others in the building feel things they shouldn't – panic attacks, inappropriate guilt, phantom grief. And slowly, this phenomenon seems to be engulfing her completely.


This is my first ever Lightnovel/Webnovel i publish (still ongoing, i just started!) but ofc. i´d love to get feedback, what to do better, whats good and all that.
Especially as i am not a native english speaker, i can always improve <3.



What to expect?

• Psychological Horror & the Dealing with your own psyche and feelings
• a queer female protagonist
• Mystery
• first person POV (and in between 3rd Person) --> 2 POVs
• Part of a bigger series, so whatever happens, might be important to other stories to come

Its my first ever Lightnovel/Webnovel i write and also publish <3

First Impression:

I like the synopsis, tells me everything I need to know. It reads a tad rough, but not to the point it will put off readers. Maybe space it into more paragraphs to make it more readable.

I'll add some extra advice: it's best not to try for a series if this is your first novel. I have been there before, lol, and it's better to write something short, or at least something that can stand alone without any extra volumes. You can turn it into a series later after completing it, if that is your thing, but the novel shouldn't require it. Anyway, things looks good so far. Let's see if the execution is equally great.


Thoughts on the Novel:

Beautiful prose. You painted the scene you had in mind without wandering too far into background exposition, and without overloading us with details—at first, anyway. Lovely. I continue to read, and we get a delight of a conversation that clues us in about what's to happen.

We got a description of a woman... and hold on, detail overload. The guy shouldn't have been able to see her features clearly if she was outside, yet he commented on weird details like her nose. Creepy, you should edit that.

Then we keep going, and now the real problem in this novel is clear. Things are too vague, muddy, and repetitive. Details are passed over without clarity because you want to seem mysterious. Because you want to build atmosphere. But it leads nowhere. Even the conversation sounds like it's hinting at a dozen different things at once without actually telling us what is going on. And this problem consistently runs throughout the whole novel, even in chapter 1 and 2.

Chapter one. Forget what I said about there not being background exposition. Here, you shove it into my face. Her achievements and history are not important, and her diary is just a summary of the entire chapter. Trim the entire thing and make it way shorter.

Then we get another problem; sudden tone whiplash. The MC turned from creeped out to happy completely. Real people do not switch emotions that fast. Even if she's excited, reminding us of the previous creepy atmosphere with subtle hints will help the change in tone feel more gradual.

Same when she loses her emotions of sadness, but this time it's a pacing problem. Your sentences turned short, choppy, and awkward. Your setting descriptions have so much detail, but these new sentences do not. The actions, the conversations, I cannot envision them inside my mind properly. Edit and make it more natural, please.

Last problem, I see little grammar mistakes. Run your novel through a grammar checker and it should be fixed.

Conclusion: A novel with lots of passion, beauty, but hasty execution. Which is understandable if this is your first novel. And even if it wasn't your first, I still think this novel will be loved by its audience. The atmosphere and world building and characterization was great, it just had a few detail problems. Anyway, good luck!

 

[KobaYuka_LN]

Hello StoneInky
Thank you so so much for your feedback.
Yes its my first ever novel. Even so i am writing for a long time already (even so not in english) it was mostyl in roleplaying kind of stuff.

Your feedback really helps me a lot and i will totally work on some of it!


Hopefully i can change the parts that are off, and keep improving!

Thanks so much <3