Feedback please

Terabite

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Feb 15, 2022
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I am a new author who has just recently started writing my first story.
At the moment, I have only published 4 chapters, but I intend to write more.
I would like to ask for some advice and feedback on this story so that I can make it better.
English is not my native language, so any notes on grammar are welcome.
Thank you for your time and help.
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foxtrotter

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Mar 4, 2022
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Generally with English, the less words, the better. Makes it more clearer and easy to read. For example, for the title of your novel, perhaps instead of "I have a feeling that something is wrong here" (which is a mouthful), maybe something like "Something is wrong here" might be better -- removing the filter words.

Synopsis seems fine, although I may suggest chucking it in ChatGPT to clean it up / see if it can come up with ideas that might improve it. I like that your synopsis is clear, concise and simple, but I feel it is lacking a bit of information/detail to give a potential reader a better feel of what the story is about.

Chapter 1 : Clear, concise writing. Nice. I like it. Very easy to read. The beginner's guide part could be cleaned up a little bit. Again, chuck it into ChatGPT and see if it can help you clean up the narrative to make it easier to read. Coz that section imo seems a bit needlessly wordy. For example:

Greetings, Agent № 1026. This guide has been created to ensure that you have all the information you need before you begin your missions.
Your main objective is the destruction of the Children of Destiny.
The Children of Destiny are people with unique abilities and luck given to them by the world. They may not seem special at first but don’t be fooled. Their main power is to become extremely powerful in a short period. Once this has happened, all you can do is pray for a painless death.
You have several choices about how to proceed during missions:

You can revise and simplify to something like below (this is just for example purposes):

Greetings, Agent № 1026,

You have been chosen to destroy the Children of Destiny.

The Children of Destiny are people with unique abilities and luck given to them by the world. They may not seem special at first but don’t be fooled. Their main power is to become extremely powerful in a short period. Once this has happened, all you can do is pray for a painless death.

You have several choices about how to proceed during missions:

Looking at the above, spacing might also help to improve the readability of the text.

Another sentence that stuck out to me is the below (especially in regards to the bolded text):

It scared me that I would have to kill someone. I grew up in a society where this was unacceptable. It was quite difficult to accept that I would be doing it now.

As I mentioned, one of the most important part about story writing is eliminating unnecessary text to make the text flow and easier to read. The bolded sentences above are things that should probably be taken for granted and shouldn't even need to be said. It's like stopping the middle of my story to explain that I have two eyes or two legs, or something that detracts from the story and just sticks out as jarring.

Instead of explaining common human morality, I would probably replace it with the MC's thoughts and feelings (hence why I didn't bold the first sentence above). Something like (again this is crudely written for example purposes): "Kill someone? Are these guys for real? The largest thing I've ever murdered were bugs, and somehow I'm being expected to kill another person?"

All in all, it was a good start, I liked it. The only other critique I have would be to extend the text a bit as it seems rather plain at the moment to capture a reader's initial interest at chapter 1. For example, developing the character more to give readers a better insight to MC's personality would be a good idea for chapter 1.
 
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