Looking for feedback

[N3fari0n]

HI Everyone,

This is my first time writing something like this. I would love your honest opinion. Feel free to roast me as much as you want. I will take it positively, as I want to improve my writing.

Ascension of the Dark Prince

While raiding a dungeon, a group of adventurers unleashes a horror that should have been kept sealed. Now, that demonic entity is trying to break free and send the world into a dark age.

www.scribblehub.com

 

[DismaiNaim]

Opening paragraph— you present a band of characters who are self-aware or their nature. This could be interesting if you pull it off right.

Is Alicia and Allicia the same person?

This is expository: "The spells of this type provide additional information about the enemy." It states explicitly what can easily be inferred from the context, and drags the narrative.

You have choppy sentence structure. One example: "The boss also summoned minions—skeletal warriors and shadowy wraiths—emerging from the darkness. But they were cut down by the party’s silver-rank damage dealers" this should be one sentence with a comma. Think about a rhythm, where each sentence carries a beat. You'll want to vary your beats so that it doesn't get too monotonous.

In keeping with the gameified nature of the narrative, you bypass the five-senses almost entirely. There's some visuals, but even these are scant. For example: "a barrage of arcane bolts" (factual, non-sensory) could be written as "streaks of blue light crackled through the musty air" (sight, sound, and smell). Obviously you don't have to write it this way, but you need to find something to draw your audience into the world.

It starts to heat up when the boss monster comes back to life, but before that there's no conflict. Most readers are going to quit before they get to this point. One way to overcome that is by introducing the conflict in the beginning and then tracing out how they got there. Hunger Games does this—starts off with "today was reaping day" which sounds dark and ominous, then goes on to describe her family and feeding entrails to her cat, and you end up several pages in before she explains what reaping day is.

"Complete panic set in among the party" show, don't tell. I felt the panic growing earlier, keep that up. That whole paragraph is expository, please get rid of it.

After the party dies, it wouldn't be out of place to say something about how many lives they have left. That's what I would do. Your story. Ignore this comment.

Also, you have chapter 2 twice.

It seems Alicia is your MC. It took way too long to figure that out, and there's no character development. Who is she and why should I care about her?

 

[N3fari0n]

Opening paragraph— you present a band of characters who are self-aware or their nature. This could be interesting if you pull it off right.

Is Alicia and Allicia the same person?

This is expository: "The spells of this type provide additional information about the enemy." It states explicitly what can easily be inferred from the context, and drags the narrative.

You have choppy sentence structure. One example: "The boss also summoned minions—skeletal warriors and shadowy wraiths—emerging from the darkness. But they were cut down by the party’s silver-rank damage dealers" this should be one sentence with a comma. Think about a rhythm, where each sentence carries a beat. You'll want to vary your beats so that it doesn't get too monotonous.

In keeping with the gameified nature of the narrative, you bypass the five-senses almost entirely. There's some visuals, but even these are scant. For example: "a barrage of arcane bolts" (factual, non-sensory) could be written as "streaks of blue light crackled through the musty air" (sight, sound, and smell). Obviously you don't have to write it this way, but you need to find something to draw your audience into the world.

It starts to heat up when the boss monster comes back to life, but before that there's no conflict. Most readers are going to quit before they get to this point. One way to overcome that is by introducing the conflict in the beginning and then tracing out how they got there. Hunger Games does this—starts off with "today was reaping day" which sounds dark and ominous, then goes on to describe her family and feeding entrails to her cat, and you end up several pages in before she explains what reaping day is.

"Complete panic set in among the party" show, don't tell. I felt the panic growing earlier, keep that up. That whole paragraph is expository, please get rid of it.

After the party dies, it wouldn't be out of place to say something about how many lives they have left. That's what I would do. Your story. Ignore this comment.

Also, you have chapter 2 twice.

It seems Alicia is your MC. It took way too long to figure that out, and there's no character development. Who is she and why should I care about her?

Thank you so much for your feedback. I will correct/improve the areas you have mentioned. There are a few things I would like to clarify

1. Allicia is a typo. I will correct it.
2. Alicia is not the MC, but the story does evolve around her. More of her backstory will come soon.
3. I have divided chapter 2 into two parts as it was getting too long for a single chapter. I hope you continue reading.

Again, thank you so much. Your feedback is the first I have received, so it's kind of special to me.

 

[naosu]

Looked at your first start up. It looks good. good pace also. You could keep it going!

There is 1 thing I would bring up... when I look at a story as a reader, I don't like point of view changes. I know some people started this to get story chapters going and pique curiosity. (A little can be OK, usually at the beginning.) But when people read, they tend to think, OK, this character is me, so I'll picture myself as x character. So POV changes can actually harm a story long term, but they have some short term gain.

Another concept is... have you seen the TV series Black Summer?

The Black Summer story has an amazing startup. But then they killed the story, and killed its potential by having the only part of the story be point of view changes where too little of the plot is accomplished. By the time you finish both seasons you realize, the story didn't go very far because it spent too much time linking all these points of view into just a few bullet points in the plot that didn't really progress because it spent too much time going over the same plot steps in the POVs. (This is a good example to study, but not for a good route.) IF they had instead of just doing point of view changes going in circles chasing its tail, and had gone somewhere with the plot and episodes instead that TV series would have probably have made a killing and had tons of seasons. But they goofed up.

This doesn't mean you can't use POV changes, but just don't do them too much.

...

I hope you can post on my feedback request in return.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Another concept is... have you seen the TV series Black Summer?

The Black Summer story has an amazing startup. But then they killed the story, and killed its potential by having the only part of the story be point of view changes where too little of the plot is accomplished. By the time you finish both seasons you realize, the story didn't go very far because it spent too much time linking all these points of view into just a few bullet points in the plot that didn't really progress because it spent too much time going over the same plot steps in the POVs. (This is a good example to study, but not for a good route.) IF they had instead of just doing point of view changes going in circles chasing its tail, and had gone somewhere with the plot and episodes instead that TV series would have probably have made a killing and had tons of seasons. But they goofed up.

Kind of a tangent here but that sounds like soap opera plotting; they do things in "quick takes" - had someone explain this in terms of gaming, that the action follows one character until EITHER they meet one or more other main character(s) (in which case the action freezes and moves to a DIFFERENT one - UNLESS all the main characters are now together, then it stays with the group until someone leaves), or they hit a point where they have to determine the success or failure of an action (i.e. roll the dice, draw a card, play a slot machine), at which point the action moves to the next character before the "viewer" sees the outcome.
It can work if the viewer or reader is invested in most of the characters, but if you're just getting started and have more than three or four characters, it's going to just look like a mess pretty quickly.

 

[N3fari0n]

Kind of a tangent here but that sounds like soap opera plotting; they do things in "quick takes" - had someone explain this in terms of gaming, that the action follows one character until EITHER they meet one or more other main character(s) (in which case the action freezes and moves to a DIFFERENT one - UNLESS all the main characters are now together, then it stays with the group until someone leaves), or they hit a point where they have to determine the success or failure of an action (i.e. roll the dice, draw a card, play a slot machine), at which point the action moves to the next character before the "viewer" sees the outcome.
It can work if the viewer or reader is invested in most of the characters, but if you're just getting started and have more than three or four characters, it's going to just look like a mess pretty quickly.

Thank you. You could not have said it better. A switch of perception or viewpoint works when the transition is smooth, there is less back and forth. In the novels I read, if the viewpoint changes between more than three to four characters, I immediately lose interest. That being said, I think it's important not to follow the same character all the time to avoid tunnel visioning. Imagine an encounter between a godlike being and a child at some point in the story. If you always follow the godlike being's perspective, you will miss out on what others, in this case the child, think about him. I think it allows for better world-building, as a world is a different place from different people's pov.

 

[naosu]

Yes. Interesting isn't it? Both of you had good comments. And yes my point wasn't to say you can't do POV changes, but just to not overdo them and go too far. It can work like Nefarion said.

Also, isn't it interesing to have this cooperation and mutually building each other up?

Nefarion do you also write stuff?