Hello AdOtherwise
this Daikon prepared a portion of feedback for you
Before I start, I have to say that your novel gave me a lot of trouble.
I think your story is very ambitious, and the fact that it has already over 300 chapters just proves that you are very determined. Your idea is quite unique, and using diseases as a power sounds interesting. People seemed to also enjoy it, so the question is: why do you struggle with retaining readers?
The way I see it, there are a few issues at play.
First, the infodumping.
It is imho the biggest crime you're committing in your novel. While I can let it slide in the first chapter, since it was still within the acceptable range, chapter 5 is nothing more than a glossary entry. I understand that you wanted to explain how the powers work here, but serving it like an encyclopedia article is not the way to go about it.
You are writing a novel. Information about the world should naturally result from your writing. Giving the reader a list with dry descriptions of what each grade does is only going to make people not want to read it. It feels like I'm reading notes for an exam and I need to memorize what each step does.
I thought that maybe it was something that you were struggling with at the beginning and improved on it over the course of 300 chapters, but picking a random chapter, 310, proved me otherwise.
Not only you are infodumping, you're also doing it in the most horrendous way -- MC having a big exposition monologue. No. Just no. I'm not reading any of that.
If you feel the need to just come out and slap your readers with a wall of text full of unadulterated explanation of what is/was happening, then you did something wrong.
Infodumping does nothing but overwhelm your readers with information. Nobody is reading your novel to study. Spread it throughout the book, serve it sparingly when it's needed. Intersperse it across your narration and dialogue.
Timeline, action, flow.
Another thing that was really bothering me when I was reading your novel was the way you break the flow. It took me a moment to realize, but the way you structure some of your scenes is completely backwards.
Cain sees how a crow is eating the dead body, which terrifies him and makes him panic. As a result, he peed his pants. This is the natural flow of how things happen: realization > outburst of emotion and adrenaline > reaction.
The way you structured this scene, however, is: reaction > realization > outburst.
Because you placed the reaction as the first step, the impact of this scene gets completely lost. Simply rearranging stuff would make it have a lot more "punch".
It's like with the diagram of how 3-act structure works in books:
You can see here how along the progression of the story, the events cause the tension to rise. It goes for a while, until it reaches a break point, it is a place where the tension is peaking. At this point, something begins to be resolved, causing the tension to go down, giving the readers some time to breathe.
It is relevant for entire series, book, acts, chapters and even scenes.
You want to first build the tension, wait until it reaches it's maximum and then deliver the resolution to diffuse it.
Even without further edits to smoothen things out this flows so much more naturally.
There are also mishaps like:
If you use a construction "As x..., y...." it means that while "X" was happening, "Y" occurred. It means that action "X" cannot be finished, while "Y" occurs.
Going back to the quotes:
1. Saying that "he brought..." means that he had already finished the action. He brought it. It was there. Since it was a completed action, there's no way for something to occur duriat. Sng tho "as he brought... he started..." is a logically incorrect sentence. It would be better to say "He brought the wheelbarrow and started digging" or "As
soon as he brought his wheelbarrow, he started digging".
2. "To get one's bearings"
means to take a moment to orient yourself, get your emotions under control, or prepare for something—to acclimate to your surroundings or situation in some way so that you can take some kind of action. (courtesy of
Reddit).
Then again, you say "got his bearings". "Got" means that he already finished orienting himself, making it impossible to examine himself during that.
"While getting his bearings, Cain examined himself curiously." or "Cain examined himself, trying to get his bearings."
Language
The previous section hints at a much bigger issue with your writing. It often feels like I'm looking at a chapter built from a premade sentences. As if you were cutting them from a newspaper and gluing them together on a piece of paper.
Oftentimes I encountered very weird phrasing or word choice.
This makes no sense. Him not knowing was a price to pay for being treated well?
It's either a "tell-tale sign" or more the way humans speak: "...that was the only tell."
To feel disdain is to feel contempt for something or someone regarded as unworthy or inferior. So Cain thought that the rich were inferior to him? He doesn't even know anything about them yet and he already sees himself as someone better than them?
To mope - to be unhappy and unwilling to think or act in a positive way, especially because of a disappointment. So what I'm getting from it is that Cain woke up, started "rustling his body" (?????????), groaned and went "uwuwuwuw
I'm so poor and unlucky uwuwuwuwu"? Because this is essentially what "moping" means.
There's a lot of repetition too:
There are issues with logic:
So he either had still a youthful playfulness in him or he was old, bitter and grumpy. This characterization is contradicting itself. A person who is bitter and withdrawn won't have "youthful playfulness" in their eyes. Their eyes are going to be blank, expressionless and at best are going to burn with hatred.
When you create a character, you give them personality and whenever you write a scene with them, you have to ask yourself if this is how this kind of person would act under these circumstances. Otherwise, you risk making you readers feel like they are reading about a bunch of people with split personality disorder.
Okay, so I know that your story is all about controlling diseases and stuff, but I have to complain about this.
If there's a plague running amok in a society, no sane people are going to be dealing with them like this. Those who died from a contagious disease will be usually burned or at least use lime when burying them in the ground. It's to prevent the disease from spreading further.
You, on the other hand, tell me that not only the plague victims aren't handled with at least a dose of care, but Feick also takes off bloodied clothes and gives them to someone who is not immune to any of the pathogens?!
No amount of mental gymnastics is going to make me buy any of this.
Now, before I end, I have to talk about your chapter 4, because the nosedive in the quality was so big that almost gave me whiplash.
Ground. Floor is at home or on a terrace. Ground is everything else.
Very wonky sentence.
Thank you for giving me this invaluable insight. I wouldn't have guessed that planks, rocks and even a metal pipe on the ground are objects.
First of all, this sentence sounds like it was written by an elementary schooler who's vocabulary can be counted on the fingers of one hand. "A look of thrill filled his face" how about "he looked thrilled"? Why overcomplicating so much?
"he screamed in agony". It was a fast, violent action, so you want to make sure that you portray it as such. Saying "proceeded to scream" slows it down and stretches it. It loses the impact.
Have you ever seen anyone kicking with anything else but a leg (or either part of it)?
No. The answer is no. Then there's no reason to say that "he used his foot to kick" because "kick" in itself is carrying the information that there was a feet involved (we know it's not a knee from the context).
How did he fall to the ground if he was already on the ground?
If he fell any lower, he would clip out of bounds and I doubt you want to write your world like Bethesda makes their games.
ಠ_ಠ
No.
My dude, what are they? Tik-tok children with the attention span of a goldfish? If they were tormenting him for barely a minute, then all they could do was to kick him twice maybe three times. If they got bored that fast then there's no way in hell Cain would end as a literal puddle.
My dude... Bro... We get it. He was massacred. We get it. You don't have to hammer it in every other sentence that Cain was a mess of gore and blood and flesh and hughhhuwaaaaa pshhhhhh bleeehhhh... We get it.
You know, to shock your audience it's not enough to just keep saying "IT WAS SO TERRIBLE LIKE A COMPLETE MASSACRE LIKE SERIOUSLY BELIEVE ME IT WAS SO GROSS AND GORY AND OMG PEOPLE FAINTED". The more you throw at people the more desensitized they are. The key is to use it sparingly. Enough to make them flinch, but not enough for them to tune it out.
There is a lot more that I could point out, but that would require me to spend another couple of days to do so and this is something I simply have no time to do.
I hope that it will at least give you a starting point.
Good luck and happy writing!
