Oh, dear you, poor author. I've read three chapters, and had the urge to go to work instead of procrastinating while reading this. You’ve spent two years crafting this story, and yet reading it feels like slogging through the rough draft of a first-time NaNoWriMo attempt, duct-taped together with misplaced melodrama, filler dialogue, and a vague hope that sheer effort might substitute for quality. You’re writing a webnovel, but it seems like you think you’re directing a visual novel or a stage play for an audience that’s already invested in your characters. Newsflash: they’re not. You didn’t earn that investment. You’ve got readers slogging through what feels like someone’s “artsy” attempt to drag out a plot that doesn’t exist—and you dare to call it a story? Let me break it down for you.
Let’s start with your synopsis, which sounds like you intentionally published your inner monologue instead of a synopsis of the story. The italicized dialogue (which didn't get italicized because synopsis doesn't have that function in SH proper) and the overreliance on vague, melodramatic "They're all dead! How did this happen?" nonsense sets the tone right out of the gate: this is going to be a slog of overwrought emotions, surface-level stakes, and an exhausting refusal to get to the point. You think italicized stage directions are compelling? They’re not. They’re cringe. This isn’t Tumblr in 2012, and your readers aren’t here for live-action roleplay energy. If your synopsis is supposed to hook us, it feels like you’ve just tied a brick to a fishing line and hoped for the best.
Your story doesn’t even read like a webnovel—it reads like the transcript of a poorly acted radio drama or the script for a visual novel where the art and sound design are supposed to carry the experience. Guess what? In prose, there’s no art. No music. No slick visuals to distract us from the fact that your pacing is abysmal and your characters are flatter than cardboard cutouts. You’ve replaced prose with theatrical gimmicks, but instead of pulling us in, it alienates us because the story feels lifeless, as though you were scared to commit to the very medium you chose. Every page reeks of insecurity about whether the audience is paying attention, so you over-explain every emotion, pad every scene with filler banter, and douse it all in unnecessary, repetitive details.
Your ethos is in the gutter. The world-building? Laughable. You’ve got this gigantic, mysterious wall that stretches into infinity—a genuinely cosmic horror concept—but you treat it like a nothingburger. Is it a government secret? A cosmic anomaly? A supernatural phenomenon? Nobody tells about it, least of all your characters, who discuss it with the same enthusiasm they might reserve for a mildly interesting meme. How does the wall affect the world? How do people feel about living near this eldritch monstrosity? You don’t care to explain, so why should we care to read?
And your characters? My God, your characters. Obinai Nobunaga is supposed to be your protagonist, but he has the charisma of a wet paper bag and the agency of a rock tumbling downhill. He doesn’t do anything. He’s just there, smoking weed, muttering half-hearted apologies, and existing solely to get yelled at by his mom and teased by his friends. His biggest accomplishment so far is not choking on his joint. Darren is "quippy stoner comic relief #472," Angel is "emotionally distraught friend with zero complexity," and Maria is "angry parent who repeats herself for 2,000 words." None of these people feel like human beings. They’re archetypes—bad ones—trapped in a plot that doesn’t know what to do with them. Where is the ethos? Where is the believability? Nowhere. It’s buried under piles of shallow pathos and the faint stench of a half-baked story.
Speaking of pathos, congratulations on letting it ruin however much little narrative potential you had. Pathos is supposed to evoke genuine emotion, but you wield it like a sledgehammer (due to focusing on the CHARACTERS FIRST, not the atmosphere), smashing the subtlety out of every scene. You don’t let the reader feel anything because you’re too busy telling them what to feel. Angel’s voice cracks. Obinai’s stomach churns. Maria exhales sharply. Do you think we’re goldfish? Do you think we need every single emotion spoon-fed to us with stage directions? You don’t even trust your characters’ dialogue to carry emotional weight, so you prop it up with clunky narration that adds nothing to the story.
And let’s talk about logos—or rather, the complete absence of it. Your story is a structural disaster. Chapters 1 and 2 drag out two sentences worth of plot over several thousand words of filler. What happens? Obinai smokes weed. Darren makes some jokes. Angel cries about his missing sister. Maria calls Obinai home for a lecture. That’s it. That’s your plot for the first two chapters. Did you think this pacing would keep readers hooked? By Chapter 3, we’re still stuck in the same scenes of guilt, scolding, and vague pathos, and the plot hasn’t advanced an inch. This isn’t storytelling—it’s even worse procrastination than me right now but with punctuation.
And don’t get me started on the dialogue. You’re clearly proud of how “natural” it sounds, but it’s nothing but fluff that detracts from the plot. Most of the dialogue is either filler banter (that gets looped twice or thrice) that doesn’t move the story forward while characters repeat the same emotions over and over again like poorly written NPCs. Darren’s jokes aren’t funny, Angel’s sadness is one-dimensional, and Maria’s lecture is the verbal equivalent of a broken record. Worst of all, the dialogue actively sabotages the story’s pacing by stalling any forward momentum. If I wanted to listen to endless, pointless conversations, I’d just join a Twitter thread.
Your pacing is the real villain here. Three chapters in, and we’ve gotten nothing. No stakes, no urgency, no reason to care. Jasmine’s disappearance? Mentioned, then ignored. The wall? Occasionally name-dropped, but never explored. The quakes? Barely relevant. You had three chapters to build intrigue and momentum, and instead, you gave us banter and lectures. You’ve squandered every opportunity to create tension or mystery because you refuse to get to the point.
Here’s the hard truth: your story is boring. It’s bloated with filler, dragged down by shallow emotions, and completely lacking in focus or structure. You claim to have spent two years working on this, but what have you actually accomplished? Two years of “lore” doesn’t mean anything if you can’t deliver it in an engaging way. Right now, this reads like you’re stalling for time because you’re scared to commit to the actual plot. You have a decent premise—a mysterious wall, government conspiracies, and disappearances—but you’ve buried it under a mountain of pathos and filler so thick that no reader will bother digging through it to find the good stuff.
You need to wake up. This isn’t a visual novel, a play, or a screenplay. It’s a webnovel, and webnovel readers don’t have the patience to slog through pages of fluff before the plot starts. If you want your story to succeed, stop wasting everyone’s time with pointless banter, endless descriptions, and the same tired emotional beats. Tighten your pacing, develop your characters, and for the love of all that is holy, make something happen.
Right now, your story isn’t a webnovel. It’s a beautifully wrapped gift box with nothing inside but crumpled paper and stale air. Fix it. Or accept that your story will fade into obscurity, forgotten faster than Obinai’s excuses for sneaking out.
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