Critique me.

[HungrySheep]

Is it immersion breaking? Because i am new at this and previously when i started reading i felt huge paragraphs were little tiring.

It feels really weird for me, yeah. Huge paragraphs aren't great to look at either, you're right. I find that the best length is about three or four sentences depending on the context. Of course, dialogue needs to be split up whenever a different person speaks, but the rest is mostly contextual.

 

[Tempokai]

Is it immersion breaking? Because i am new at this and previously when i started reading i felt huge paragraphs were little tiring.

Paragraphs are essentially an idea isolated in the text from other ideas. Each new paragraph essentially resets the short term thinking. If you make every single sentence a new paragraph, it will feel clunky for readers, even if they don't know why they're feeling that way.

Also, hide your dialogue tags better. People don't need to know who's speaking if you already did the action tag beforehand. Don't overuse other dialogue tags besides said, because it can be immersion breaking. Use them when you know the context of the emotion is murky enough to warrant it.

 

[c37]

It feels really weird for me, yeah. Huge paragraphs aren't great to look at either, you're right. I find that the best length is about three or four sentences depending on the context. Of course, dialogue needs to be split up whenever a different person speaks, but the rest is mostly contextual.

Noted, I'll keep this in mind while writing the next chapter. Also, what did you feel while reading it.

 

[Eldoria]

Oh i might include more than that... btw can you review my book if you have some spare some time.

Why do you want my feedback? You can see... my feedback is so honest that authors who aren't mentally prepared might get discouraged or frustrated.

The last new author I gave feedback to didn't even respond, acting as if I "never existed."

In the past... a new author even deleted his account immediately after receiving my feedback.

Sorry, I'm very picky about giving feedback. After all, I don't want to hurt anyone with my honesty.

 

[c37]

Paragraphs are essentially an idea isolated in the text from other ideas. Each new paragraph essentially resets the short term thinking. If you make every single sentence a new paragraph, it will feel clunky for readers, even if they don't know why they're feeling that way.

Also, hide your dialogue tags better. People don't need to know who's speaking if you already did the action tag beforehand. Don't overuse other dialogue tags besides said, because it can be immersion breaking. Use them when you know the context of the emotion is murky enough to warrant it.

So you are saying that words like asked,said need to be used less?

Why do you want my feedback? You can see... my feedback is so honest that authors who aren't mentally prepared might get discouraged or frustrated.

The last new author I gave feedback to didn't even respond, acting as if I "never existed."

In the past... a new author even deleted his account immediately after receiving my feedback.

Sorry, I'm very picky about giving feedback. After all, I don't want to hurt anyone with my honesty.

eh you can't be worse than my parents, hit me.

 

[Tempokai]

So you are saying that words like asked,said need to be used less?

Nope. BELLOWED, SCREAMED, DISCOMBOBULATED, SCHLONBONKODATED, MUTTERED, CROAKED, and so on and so forth. If the dialogue happens, and the reader knows the context of the dialogue, reader will infer the emotion from the text itself. Let's say A's wife died. A is sad. A is grieving to B. The readers know A is grieving, and is angry.

You don't need to know that A is screaming because the dialogue is screaming. "A screamed" at the end is counterproductive. Hell, in this context, a dialogue tag is counterproductive, because you could add some movement indicating "I'm angry and I will move" as a indicator of who will be speaking and emotion. There are use cases for those dialogue tags as I said, but using it on each and every dialogue cheapens the effect and mentally breaks the immersion when they're piled up everywhere. It shows incompetence instead of the story. Dialogue tags work when they're invisible.

 

[c37]

Nope. BELLOWED, SCREAMED, DISCOMBOBULATED, SCHLONBONKODATED, MUTTERED, CROAKED, and so on and so forth. If the dialogue happens, and the reader knows the context of the dialogue, reader will infer the emotion from the text itself. Let's say A's wife died. A is sad. A is grieving to B. The readers know A is grieving, and is angry.

You don't need to know that A is screaming because the dialogue is screaming. "A screamed" at the end is counterproductive. Hell, in this context, a dialogue tag is counterproductive, because you could add some movement indicating "I'm angry and I will move" as a indicator of who will be speaking and emotion. There are use cases for those dialogue tags as I said, but using it on each and every dialogue cheapens the effect and mentally breaks the immersion when they're piled up everywhere. It shows incompetence instead of the story. Dialogue tags work when they're invisible.

Okay you are right, i did use those tags a lot.

 

[Eldoria]

So you are saying that words like asked,said need to be used less?

I'll give you a little immersive recipe based on my research... an immersive narrative is one that cleverly hides the narrator's voice and lets the characters interact in their world so that the reader can see or feel the scene in their own head.

Filter words like "he said...", "she felt...", "he thought...", etc. are the narrator's voice explaining to the reader who is in the action.

A good scene lets the characters act and dialogue organically. Each character is unique, has a personality, so they can be distinguished from each other without tags.

Of course, there are exceptions when the scene is too dense, where dialogue tags are necessary to prevent head hopping... or during character introduction.

 

[c37]

I'll give you a little immersive recipe based on my research... an immersive narrative is one that cleverly hides the narrator's voice and lets the characters interact in their world so that the reader can see or feel the scene in their own head.

Filter words like "he said...", "she felt...", "he thought...", etc. are the narrator's voice explaining to the reader who is in the action.

A good scene lets the characters act and dialogue organically. Each character is unique, has a personality, so they can be distinguished from each other without tags.

Of course, there are exceptions when the scene is too dense, where dialogue tags are necessary to prevent head hopping... or during character introduction.

what about a character's thoughts? Should i just describe how they are feeling instead of writing their thoughts?

 

[Eldoria]

what about a character's thoughts? Should i just describe how they are feeling instead of writing their thoughts?

You can use italics for character thoughts (monologues).

But...

In practice, that theory is quite difficult to apply in web novels. This is because web novel readers can come from any chapter, whether the beginning, middle, or end. As a result, new readers don't have a grasp of character identity.

Therefore, the use of filter words in web novels is more practical for new readers, allowing them to quickly understand scenes and context—without needing additional context from previous chapters.

 

[Joyager2]

First, I want to echo what other folks have been saying. Putting every sentence on a new line is really not the way to go about things. It pulls a lot of the weight from your storytelling, makes what you've written tough to read, and is generally messy. Stick to standard, 5-8 sentence paragraphs that begin and end with new thoughts or break when they start to get too large and unwieldy.

You also have a number of simple mistakes that are worth reviewing. Every now and then you'll name a specific noun without writing the necessary 'the' before it which, while understandable, isn't a very god stylistic choice. You also have a few spelling errors and other, small sentence construction problems.

More pressing than all of this, though, is your overall story structure. It seems like there's a story you want to tell, but that it requires a fair amount of backstory that your worried readers won't be able to pick up later. The result is that you have a three-chapter prologue that moves very, very quickly through a bunch of scenes and events without letting any of them have any real weight. This makes your story feel rushed and isn't an especially strong opening. A good rule of thumb is that if, in the same chapter, you have a break that says, 'The next day' and then just a paragraph later another one that says, 'Several days later,' then you're moving too quickly or not pacing the chapter especially well.

I think your best option to fix this is start where you actually want to start: Chapter 1. Your story is about Ananke on the opposite side of the World Crack. Everything that that leads him there,everything that happens in 0.1 and 0.2 (not the prologue, which I think you could cut altogether) is just prelude. All of it can be summarized early on with some clever, well-paced introspection from Ananke and snippets inserted here and there throughout the rest of your story. An excellent example of how to do this, in line with the kind of story you're writing, is Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires, where one of the protagonists, the disgraced knight Thomas, has his fall from grace explained across numerous chapters in flashbacks and dreams, allowing Buehlman to get started with the real story from page one.

Finally, you have a few more issues with clarity in your scenes, especially when there are several characters. That's a problem for later down the road, though. I'd focus on the other issues first, because overall, I think you have a really interesting idea on your hands. It just needs a fair amount of polish.

 

[c37]

First, I want to echo what other folks have been saying. Putting every sentence on a new line is really not the way to go about things. It pulls a lot of the weight from your storytelling, makes what you've written tough to read, and is generally messy. Stick to standard, 5-8 sentence paragraphs that begin and end with new thoughts or break when they start to get too large and unwieldy.

You also have a number of simple mistakes that are worth reviewing. Every now and then you'll name a specific noun without writing the necessary 'the' before it which, while understandable, isn't a very god stylistic choice. You also have a few spelling errors and other, small sentence construction problems.

More pressing than all of this, though, is your overall story structure. It seems like there's a story you want to tell, but that it requires a fair amount of backstory that your worried readers won't be able to pick up later. The result is that you have a three-chapter prologue that moves very, very quickly through a bunch of scenes and events without letting any of them have any real weight. This makes your story feel rushed and isn't an especially strong opening. A good rule of thumb is that if, in the same chapter, you have a break that says, 'The next day' and then just a paragraph later another one that says, 'Several days later,' then you're moving too quickly or not pacing the chapter especially well.

I think your best option to fix this is start where you actually want to start: Chapter 1. Your story is about Ananke on the opposite side of the World Crack. Everything that that leads him there,everything that happens in 0.1 and 0.2 (not the prologue, which I think you could cut altogether) is just prelude. All of it can be summarized early on with some clever, well-paced introspection from Ananke and snippets inserted here and there throughout the rest of your story. An excellent example of how to do this, in line with the kind of story you're writing, is Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires, where one of the protagonists, the disgraced knight Thomas, has his fall from grace explained across numerous chapters in flashbacks and dreams, allowing Buehlman to get started with the real story from page one.

Finally, you have a few more issues with clarity in your scenes, especially when there are several characters. That's a problem for later down the road, though. I'd focus on the other issues first, because overall, I think you have a really interesting idea on your hands. It just needs a fair amount of polish.

So you think i should cut prologue section all together? or just prologue one? Because after reading your review i feel like i can show the "losing grace" part through flashbacks.
edit- I've removed 0.1,0.2 chapters so that i can integrate them later as flash backs.

First, I want to echo what other folks have been saying. Putting every sentence on a new line is really not the way to go about things. It pulls a lot of the weight from your storytelling, makes what you've written tough to read, and is generally messy. Stick to standard, 5-8 sentence paragraphs that begin and end with new thoughts or break when they start to get too large and unwieldy.

You also have a number of simple mistakes that are worth reviewing. Every now and then you'll name a specific noun without writing the necessary 'the' before it which, while understandable, isn't a very god stylistic choice. You also have a few spelling errors and other, small sentence construction problems.

More pressing than all of this, though, is your overall story structure. It seems like there's a story you want to tell, but that it requires a fair amount of backstory that your worried readers won't be able to pick up later. The result is that you have a three-chapter prologue that moves very, very quickly through a bunch of scenes and events without letting any of them have any real weight. This makes your story feel rushed and isn't an especially strong opening. A good rule of thumb is that if, in the same chapter, you have a break that says, 'The next day' and then just a paragraph later another one that says, 'Several days later,' then you're moving too quickly or not pacing the chapter especially well.

I think your best option to fix this is start where you actually want to start: Chapter 1. Your story is about Ananke on the opposite side of the World Crack. Everything that that leads him there,everything that happens in 0.1 and 0.2 (not the prologue, which I think you could cut altogether) is just prelude. All of it can be summarized early on with some clever, well-paced introspection from Ananke and snippets inserted here and there throughout the rest of your story. An excellent example of how to do this, in line with the kind of story you're writing, is Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires, where one of the protagonists, the disgraced knight Thomas, has his fall from grace explained across numerous chapters in flashbacks and dreams, allowing Buehlman to get started with the real story from page one.

Finally, you have a few more issues with clarity in your scenes, especially when there are several characters. That's a problem for later down the road, though. I'd focus on the other issues first, because overall, I think you have a really interesting idea on your hands. It just needs a fair amount of polish.

I also wanted to ask you, is the chapter 1 interesting enough? I want to know if my chapters are hooking readers or not.

 

[K_Nishi]

Hi! I read your prologue on the Scribble Hub and wanted to share a few thoughts.

First, I personally really enjoy dark fantasy, so I’m genuinely interested in where this is going. The tone is grim and unsettling in a good way, and the chapel/ritual imagery is strong.

A few suggestions that might make the prologue even more immersive:

• Opening hook: I think the prologue could start more strongly if it begins with the section where “A man was walking down the street on his way home…” That scene immediately creates tension and mystery, and it feels like the core “hook” of the prologue.
• Timeline realism: If the city is being massacred and collapsing that quickly, one month is possible, but it might feel even more believable (and more frightening) if the timeframe is shorter—like days or a couple of weeks—so the corruption feels sudden and unstoppable.
• Neil’s betrayal clarity: Neil’s betrayal is a big emotional moment, but right now it’s explained very quickly, so it can be a little hard to fully “feel” it. If there were a more concrete scene showing how Neil set it up—fear, coercion, a curse, a ritual, a painful price he paid, etc.—I think it would hit much harder and pull readers in more deeply.

Overall, I like the dark atmosphere a lot, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the story develops. Thanks for sharing it!

 

[c37]

Hi! I read your prologue on the Scribble Hub and wanted to share a few thoughts.

First, I personally really enjoy dark fantasy, so I’m genuinely interested in where this is going. The tone is grim and unsettling in a good way, and the chapel/ritual imagery is strong.

A few suggestions that might make the prologue even more immersive:

• Opening hook: I think the prologue could start more strongly if it begins with the section where “A man was walking down the street on his way home…” That scene immediately creates tension and mystery, and it feels like the core “hook” of the prologue.
• Timeline realism: If the city is being massacred and collapsing that quickly, one month is possible, but it might feel even more believable (and more frightening) if the timeframe is shorter—like days or a couple of weeks—so the corruption feels sudden and unstoppable.
• Neil’s betrayal clarity: Neil’s betrayal is a big emotional moment, but right now it’s explained very quickly, so it can be a little hard to fully “feel” it. If there were a more concrete scene showing how Neil set it up—fear, coercion, a curse, a ritual, a painful price he paid, etc.—I think it would hit much harder and pull readers in more deeply.

Overall, I like the dark atmosphere a lot, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the story develops. Thanks for sharing it!

Damn! you've just given me a good hook with that suggestion. Thank you so much for reading.

 

[Daeron]

I think this is my own personal taste, but i feel like the story plot breaking at chapter 2.
Chapter 1 about arena, using short paragraph might be work, but chapter 2 should be more narrative based, since the pace of the story slower here.

 

[c37]

I think this is my own personal taste, but i feel like the story plot breaking at chapter 2.
Chapter 1 about arena, using short paragraph might be work, but chapter 2 should be more narrative based, since the pace of the story slower here.

So you think i should explain the stuff more in the chapter 2?

 

[Daeron]

So you think i should explain the stuff more in the chapter 2?

Depend on your intention or context, but i felt like losing the plot at chapter 2.

 

[c37]

Depend on your intention or context, but i felt like losing the plot at chapter 2.

okay i think i understand why you feel like that.
@Daeron I wanted to know if you were able to feel the transition between the flashback and present or not.

 

[Daeron]

okay i think i understand why you feel like that.

Maybe you can make context or plot each chapters first for 10 chapters? So your plot will not stray too far when you write it. And you can expand the story or narrative based on designated context or plot for each chapters.

I learn this from other writers thou, and i think it was good idea.

 

[c37]

Maybe you can make context or plot each chapters first for 10 chapters? So your plot will not stray too far when you write it. And you can expand the story or narrative based on designated context or plot for each chapters.

I learn this from other writers thou, and i think it was good idea.

Okay so i missed the reason for the backstory trigger in chapter 2.