She was supposed to be dead. Not injured. Not unconscious. Dead. Because nothing in Neo-Veridian ever looked that still and survived.
Yet—she moved. Barely.
A faint sound slipped out of her. Not speech, not a cry—just something broken enough to prove she was still there.
“…mm…”
I stopped. Not a gradual pause. Not hesitation. Stopped.
well, it doesn't help that the first minute of reading has this pattern three times. it's the most famous/obvious ChatGPT pattern, the triple negative. Or negative sentences in general. Ctrl+F the word "Not" or "n't" to make it more obvious. "The sky wasnt green. Not red. Not black. Just blue. Empty. Endless. I didn't just look at it -- I
stared."
The other is how choppy it writes, with a bunch of one or two word sentences for zero reason.
The words left before I could stop them. Then—it hit.
AI.
The recognition didn’t come as thought. It came as resistance. Cold. Immediate.
Ironic hahah
Automatic. Final.
I turned. One step. Then another. Distance opened between us. Good. That made it easier.
I kept walking. Because stopping is how things start to matter. And things that matter don’t leave you alone.
It really, really loves writing this way, but it's borderline unreadable. Choppy and monotone. Like trying to make it sound like a tense horror scene or something.
That wasn’t noise. That wasn’t interference. That was pain. Real. Unfiltered. Alive.
Like really, it's fine to be direct and write "The young girl was in immense pain." It's easier to read, clearer to understand, less overly dramatic (as a random example).
The entire chapter is like this, which makes it hard to understand what's actually
happening. (mostly, nothing?)
If I had to, I think I could condense the whole chapter in one sentence? "The main character passed by an almost-dead girl in a rainy, Cyberpunk city, tried to ignore her, but turned back and looked at her again." The writing is quite vague.
It's a bit too much text for this little to "happen", if you ask me. So it makes me skim or want to skim and skip over text.
The second chapter is better because there's dialogue (even though it's technically the MC talking to themselves). Note, at this time, I don't even know the gender of the MC.
In chapter three, the (thoughts?) in parantheses are a bit of an odd style choice, not sure I've seen that before. Since we're already in 1st POV, technically everything we're reading are the MC's thoughts. Or he says them out loud. So this third type of "dialogue" is unusual.
I'm still mostly skimming, because things are happening quite slowly. This chapter was "I took her home and laid her on the bed in my room.", with heavy "I'm so lonely" / depressing / self-loathing vibes in the background.
Then, this is the most interesting part of the story so far, when he's touching her skin to fix her, when she's starting to wake up, and their first conversation and reactions. The most "real" part. It's a lot more "fun" than everything else so far!
In chapter 5, a big complaint is how often dialogue starts in the middle of a paragraph. This makes it more difficult to spot / notice / read. As often as possible, I think you should start the paragraph with the dialogue line. And there's not need to seperate a sentence into 4 different ""-chunks, with descriptions in between all the time:
That look was too familiar—it was conditioned fear, not random panic. Her arms moved slightly in a desperate attempt at escape, a mistake that only flared her pain. “Don’t move,” I said. My voice wasn’t loud, but it was final. Her body froze, not out of understanding, but because she couldn’t decide what obedience would cost. A broken sound escaped her, barely human in its instability.
I exhaled through my nose, maintaining a distance that served as its own language. “...Just so you know,” I began, my voice staying even. “I treated your wounds. And this is my room.” I paused, letting the reality sink in. “If you want to leave… then leave.”
In chapter 6, I'm not sure how he knows her name is Lilith. Or, it's unclear if "Lilith" is someone else, like his cheating ex-gf. A complaint I have about this chapter is that too many characters are introduced at once, in rapid succession. Makes it a bit impossible to remember them, or care. I presume the characters from his workplace will be irrelevant.
In chapter 8, I don't think the "slurp slurp slurp" noises match the prose so far. Minor complaint.
Also, I certaintly don't like sentences like this:
...something had already started to change. Something small. Something fragile.
Something neither of us was ready to name.
Basically every chapter has this copy pasted in it at least once or twice, it started to annoy me. It's vague and not saying anything, my eyes are starting to twitch seeing it again and again. Similiar with the "Tch..."-ing all the time. Maybe it's fine in moderation, but not being spammed like this.
In chapter 9, again, 3 POVs, a bunch of overthinking/reacting/vague descriptions for a: "They woke up, ate breakfast and exchanged their names before he left for work."
Chapter 10 was where I stopped. Hope some of these criticisms will be useful, I wasn't trying to be mean!
So, most of all I'm struggling with the style of writing, and it being very heavily "AI assisted", and everything happening too slowly. Like time keeps slowing down, like in those Indian melodrama shows, he can't glance at her without it being described like this:
Then she saw me.
Her body stiffened—just slightly.
Enough.
Our eyes met.
The room stilled.
Not empty. Not distant.
Something else settled there—quiet, undefined, impossible to ignore.
Neither of us looked away.
And for a moment—
I forgot what she was.
It's just a bit much, and starting to get repetitive.
Good luck, the story idea is certainly interesting!
