How utilitarian of you. All right, there is plenty that works really well in your writing, but I'll focus on what isn't.
1. Your melodramatic sentences makes parsing what is actually happening difficult.
Sounds like she is either stabbing him or electrocuting him with some sort of magic.
There it is again. If he's talking about breasts, fluffy had better indicate that he's also been turned into a furry. Otherwise, probably not fluffy.
Next, your narration lacks some focus.
Looking down, Zach saw a glistening white sword with glowing cyan runes. Wincing in pain, he saw this sword had been firmly stabbed into his bloodied stomach. Turning back, he saw the woman had a pair of horns growing from the top of her head, the legs of a satyr and long flowing bat-like wings draped on the floor coming from her hips.
It's like, "Wait, forget about the sexy horn lady for a moment, you've been stabbed! You're bleeding out! How the hell are you focusing on anything else?" Also, when the subject of a paragraph changes, you need to make a new paragraph. Sword in stomach and sexy bat-lady each deserve their own paragraphs.
Next, the protagonist is not reacting like a person would in real time.
I don't care what world I was isekaied to. If I had a sword in me, I would be melting the f down. And if someone tried to pull it out without clearly showing me that they weren't just going to let me bleed out? I would bite them! Now, not everyone would go that far. But they would definitely be resisting. There would, at the very least, be a sense of urgency. Instead we calmly go into the next paragraph with less fuss than if it had been a splinter:
Again with:
Normal human reaction: "What the hell are you talking about, crazy lady?!"
About 8 paragraphs later, the protagonist is calmly taking in all his surroundings. All of which would usually be fine. But we, as the readers, have just met three characters, in a world we don't know, with the protagonist having been stabbed, and then saved by a healing spell. It's a lot of chaos. And there's no paragraphs to just ... sit and decompress everything that has happened. We're just off to the next thing, like it's a checklist. Which keeps everything feeling surreal in not the sort of way that you want. Again, if the protagonist would just respond like a real person and have a brief mental breakdown, this problem would probably go away.
There is no way for the protagonist to know this yet, or even the previous:
Then we get a long description which, in isolation, would be fine. But we have rushed through so quickly, that we as readers have no idea how the protagonist can be calm and rational enough to just slowly and methodically watch all this.
You need to assume that people do not know what fantasy species stereotypes look like in your world:
Next, your protagonist lacks any sort of unique presence so far. He doesn't act and he barely reacts. And when he does react, it's just generic questions that tell us nothing about him as a person. I don't mean his backstory. I mean something about his character beyond ... person. By the point we get to his denial, it's already starting to get old.
Next, you have a *small* allowance for keeping things away from your audience, when the protagonist is trying *not* to think about something. But by the third ...
... it starts to feel like you are just playing keep-away with critical information to preserve artificial intrigue.
Next, there is a lot of ecchi-styled pervy observation like:
But you never have the character making those observations actually react to any of it. So it just starts to feel like the author trying to artificially get us horned up arbitrarily.
I'll take a quick break from the barrage of critique to say I appreciate the drawn illustrations.
I've not been on Scribblehub long. But I'm already tired of this cliche. The protagonist glibly commenting that they've been isekaied like it's the most normal thing in the world. It's a tired thing that's just about in every story. And it's so lazy. Part of the interest in these stories is how people react to the unexpected. And all that potential is just ripped out from under the story each and every time this happens.
Then we get to the first sort of real reaction, and it's played off as a joke that goes on fooooorrreevvverrr.
In the words of the immortal Strongbad: "Too long, clanky, too long!"
Actually, going into the demon lady's perspective is a welcome break in pace. But here, your troubles with saying things that the reader has no context for (exposition) comes out swinging.
None of that means anything to me.
I mean ... mood. But also, you haven't shown us anything to make this funny. the protagonist has literally not done ... anything! There's nothing to even be in agreement for hating him for.
Nevermind, kill the fucker.
This feels artificial, his tactical thinking. Again, because we know nothing about who he is as a person. So why is he suddenly premeditating tactics like he's an experienced spy?
I think I'm going to stop here. If you do all the revision you need, the end of the demon meeting will be the conclusion of one very long chapter. Again, you're doing a lot of stuff well. But, as you requested, I put all my energy into the problems. I hope it helps, best of luck.
Brutal! Just what I was looking for. Thank you very much and I'll do some readjusting.
I want to go through each point because I wanna try and explain what I was trying to get across, plus to collate my thoughts (Plus you spent all the time reading and writing this so I should give more of a response than just 'thanks' right?) ((I swear I'm not just being defensive!))
> Your melodramatic sentences makes parsing what is actually happening difficult.
1) Guilty lol, I wanted to try and make it sound airy and not quite grounded. Probably a bad idea to try and confuse the audience in the first sentence.
> There it is again. If he's talking about breasts, fluffy had better indicate that he's also been turned into a furry.
2) The two soft fluffy things are supposed to be her satyr leg thighs that he's resting his head on. Need to explain that better
>It's like, "Wait, forget about the sexy horn lady for a moment, you've been stabbed! You're bleeding out! How the hell are you focusing on anything else?" Also, when the subject of a paragraph changes, you need to make a new paragraph. Sword in stomach and sexy bat-lady each deserve their own paragraphs.
3) Yeah they should probably be separate, bat babe being first as well then describing the sword in chest.
> Next, the protagonist is not reacting like a person would in real time.
4) Yeah I haven't properly explained that main guy is absolutely out of it right now, and he's also just not feeling any pain, or feeling anything so he's just struggling to process what's going on still.
> About 8 paragraphs later, the protagonist is calmly taking in all his surroundings.
5) Yeah in terms of the brief mental breakdown I was going for the "Freeze" response instead of "Fight or Flight", the proper mental breakdown is saved for when he discovers the
real problem.
>There is no way for the protagonist to know this yet
6) Omniscient third person narrator, just because Zach is clueless about everything doesn't mean I want the readers to be! I mostly read high fantasy and sci-fi so perhaps my standards for jargon and randomly detailed explanations is out of sync with this site lol
> Then we get a long description which, in isolation, would be fine. But we have rushed through so quickly, that we as readers have no idea how the protagonist can be calm and rational enough to just slowly and methodically watch all this.
7) Yeah I didn't want Zach to be calm I wanted him to be looking at everything with a dopey "huh?" on his face as he was dragged to his room.
> You need to assume that people do not know what fantasy species stereotypes look like in your world:
8) Ah yeah over correction from another draft where I massively over explained fantasy creatures descriptions and bogged the entire pacing down.
> Next, your protagonist lacks any sort of unique presence so far
9) Ah boo :(, I like to think we do get there eventually but yeah all of this is making me think I should flip some scenes around.
>... it starts to feel like you are just playing keep-away with critical information to preserve artificial intrigue.
10) Hmm yeah this is me assuming too much genre-awareness of my readers isn't it? In my head I'm thinking "well it's so obvious what's going to happen we're just waiting for captain slow's penny to drop.", this is me trying to build up for a joke.
> Next, there is a lot of ecchi-styled pervy observation
11) Hehe, yea. But I'm not
directly aiming for horned up I'm just writing phrases I think are funny descriptions of the ecchi designs I've concocted. Bat wings draped around the hips like a mini skirt sounds mildly funny right?
> I'll take a quick break from the barrage of critique to say I appreciate the drawn illustrations.
12) Thank you! If I could draw faster and more consistently this would've been a web comic.
>Then we get to the first sort of real reaction, and it's played off as a joke that goes on fooooorrreevvverrr.
13) This is perhaps the biggest structural issue with this chapter and I'd say the root of a lot of issues. I was hoping that I could delay the punchline and let it build and build and build until this
absolutely hilarious scene. This is his penny dropping moment and finally going "ah fuck I know what's going on" and reacting poorly to it, the mental breakdown you were looking for earlier. Though I've failed to engage you enough for it to be inciting it seems. The idea is that Zach is a genre savvy nerd and he's now trying to figure out "Well fuck what kind of isekai is this, I'm clearly in the body of some big bad, and those were the big bad's henchman, am I in trouble or what?!"
Too clanky, too long :(
> But here, your troubles with saying things that the reader has no context for (exposition) comes out swinging.
14) I get this piece of feedback towards how I speak in real life, it's a problem lol. I just wanted to quickly get across Nuhades is big cool chad guy and he's scary and he's muscle and awesome.
>I mean ... mood. But also, you haven't shown us anything to make this funny.
> Nevermind, kill the fucker.
15) Ah, perfection. Though I need to sprinkle more things in the beginning.
>This feels artificial, his tactical thinking
16) Yeahhh I'll need to sprinkle a lot more things in the beginning won't I
>I think I'm going to stop here. If you do all the revision you need, the end of the demon meeting will be the conclusion of one very long chapter. Again, you're doing a lot of stuff well. But, as you requested, I put all my energy into the problems. I hope it helps, best of luck.
17) I greatly appreciate all of this feedback! Geniunely very helpful. I am curious what stuff you think I did well, mainly because I want to know what appeal I should be trying to lean into.
