K_Jira
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2021
- Messages
- 229
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- 83
Thank you for the thorough stoning! I appreciate the harshness and I feel like you touched on some things that I've been blindsided aboutAs someone who adores QT and BL, I think I was harsh on this one, lmao. Sorry. I can feel the potential, but the execution is a smidge away from perfection. May finish reading in my freetime.
First Impression:
The title tells me what to expect. The cover is nice and doesn't look like random slop, lmao.
The synopsis tells me the protagonist is Shen Yuan, and the ML is whoever Shen Yuan is ordered to terminate. It tells me the general tone and vibe of the story, and the background, so I can rest assured this will be decent quality.
Now what I dislike about the synopsis. The way the sentences are structured make them non-intuitive and disconnected from each other. I had to reread several times to understand the contents. Especially this paragraph:
The synopsis is also written in a way that brings attention to the words 'war hero', but it's said the ML is an enemy, making readers wonder who is the real ML, or whether they are the same person. In a QT BL, readers expect to know who the ML is beforehand.
There is not yet clarity what Shen Yuan's goal is. The writing makes it sound like Shen Yuan has to awaken the General, but it does not explain how that is connected to him having to fight or kill the ML. I think you should pay more attention to clarity.
Thoughts on Early Chapters:
The prose pulls me in. The first few sentences are really good, and it smoothly transitions into a descriptive scene. No abruptness or awkwardness here. The chapter is very well written. You chose the right place to start things in. It's not too confusing or boring, it's just right.
I'll nitpick some details now, lmao.
This paragraph was just a tad long? In any other chapter it would have been fine, but you want to grip people into the novel at chapter one. It was still awesome, but the immersion felt slightly delayed because of this:
There's another problem with sentence structure. A few sentences here and there are confusing. This sentence, for example, makes it sound like someone named Irk is tightening his eyebrows:
This sentence makes it sound like he regretted giving the benefit of the doubt as he was told people were pricks. Not after:
The dialogue is realistic, and shows Shen Yuan's personality well. I suggest spacing it out into two paragraphs. Other than that, I love the dialogue, and I love Shen Yuan, he is such a clever sassy thing:
There is an info dump on the neural chip. I like it being there to clear things up. It made the setting less confusing. However, it also drags down the pacing and felt skimmable, so I suggest tightening the explanation.
This part feels like you sped up the pacing a little. You went slow with tons of descriptions, then switched it abruptly, using one sentence to describe Shen Yuan leaving, and another one for Gao Lang. I suggest adding monologue on Shen Yuan's thoughts like you did at the beginning of the chapter. It'll help with tone and pacing consistency:
Chapter one ends with an info dump about the General. I think you tried to explain away the confusion in the synopsis, but there is too much exposition that slogs down pacing. Everything feels skimmable. But if the reader did skim this part, they would end up confused about this novel. This is a big issue.
Chapter two. It starts off nice, and I love the descriptions, but they drag on for too long. There is no transition to Shen Yuan's sensory details unlike what you did for Chapter one. It feels like you are telling instead of showing, which drops the immersion.
From this paragraph onwards, the pacing speeds up. Again, you switch the tone and pacing abruptly and write in simple sentences. I suggest adding more sensory and reactive details to make things feel more immersive:
This issue gets especially bad when Shen Yuan meets Mu Chen. This is the first meeting with the ML, but it feels anticlimatic.
I kept reading, and the charm from Chapter one was gone. It was still good, just not what I expected. If Chapter one was slow and tense, Chapter two and onwards was rushed and without that deep atmosphere and detail. I quit here.
Conclusion:
A novel that has a strong start, interesting plotline, and likeable characters. The dialogue is very fun, and the scenes are chosen well.
However, at times it feels like it's telling instead of showing. This is likely why the novel feels mechanical. The pacing drags with explanations when it shouldn't, and rushes when it needs details to build atsmophere and tension. The synopsis can also benefit from more clarity, but it's a lesser issue compared to this.
It's still a fun novel. Better than many Chinese translation BLs I've seen. It just felt like it could be better.
To be honest, this is a very experimental story for me. My previous QT works are very clear on who the ML is and I usually wrote a lot of flirting between MC and ML from early on. None of them have a rocky relationship through out the story (basically their own dog food world), so I wanted to try writing something different.
I did think of putting this in the synopsis, but I didn't want it to be too long though maybe I was too focused on not making it too spolier-y. Noted
I do have sort of a line limit when I write considering I'm writing a webnovel and remember wanting to split this into two paragraphs, but I wasn't sure how to split them without looking choppy. I'll keep in mind to be more strict about it from now on.
This honestly caught me off guard
I didn't think it could be misread like that! I tried to switch and mix sentence structures so that they don't have repetitive beginnings, but I guess I wasn't being too careful about it At first, it should be shorter, but I ended up prolonging it so that the first world could cleanly start in the next chapter. I guess I should've just made it a prologue without worrying about word count
I'm not actually a descriptive writer compared to other authors in my previous stories, that's why I thought of putting more descriptions of the surroundings/settings/items/etc. this time, but I guess—again—I got too caught up in it that I failed to balance things. (And why did I even describe the uniform that long? I don't know ;;)
I purposefully didn't set up Mu Chen as ML-ish from the very beginning since I want to keep the tension low between him and MC at first since MC himself has his attention on the general more and instead focus on building up the general's attachment to MC first. I guess it didn't work as well as I intend it to
I have a problem that I can't write one story for too long and I was trying to get out of a slump when I wrote this story. To motivate myself, I put a limit of a number of chapters per world, so maybe that's what caused the pacing to be whack.
I guess what I need to improve now is polishing my pacing and sharpen my sense to pick the right moments to quicken or slow things down.
Thank you for reading through it
This is a very helpful insight! I'm currently writing for BLP's antho submission and I'll do my best to fix the things you point out and redeem myself
