Webnovel Feedback Roasts For the Fearless

[hell_yeahMylike]

What is webnovel ;-;

 

[Anonjohn20]

this was the literary equivalent of watching paint dry in grayscale while someone whispers sci-fi nouns in your ear

His idea of biting wit is grumbling into his specs like a guy who just found out his VPN expired. I kept waiting for the sarcasm to arrive, but all I got was lousy emotionally sedated muttering between tech instructions t-shirt.

I can’t tell if he’s traumatized, constipated, or just vaguely inconvenienced. He’s not wrestling with morality. He’s not affected. He’s not anything. He sighs. He thinks "huh, that’s weird", like a Skyrim NPC. Then he walks out and continues doing literally nothing of consequence. If this were a video game, Arkam would be the AI-controlled tutorial guy you follow for five minutes before he dies in a scripted cutscene and you never think of him again.

The stakes are always theoretical. The conflict is "might exist later." And somehow, somehow, the story has the gall to end each chapter with what I assume are supposed to be cliffhangers, like "we need to talk," or "what’s beyond the door?" Spoiler: the answer is always nothing.

?????

The roaster is back! 10/10

 

[JayMark]

But answer me this roaster,

'If a webnovel has lost its webnovelty, is it still a webnovel?'

 

[Anonjohn20]

But answer me this roaster,

'If a webnovel has lost its webnovelty, is it still a webnovel?'

Without the novelty, its just a...

 

[Worthy39]

?????

The roaster is back! 10/10

The being all writers fear...

 

[Maya_Dere]

kill a child

I would’ve paid for that

Calm down, satan.

 

[Boko]

Completely new author here. Would love some constructive criticism to help me improve. Specially need tips for writing a synopsis. I consider mine to be horrible and would love any general tips or guidelines you could give.
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1982723/to-kill-a-void-lord/

 

[AimeEmile]

I read three chapters of your webnovel, and I’ve got to be honest—it was like being gently euthanized by boredom. I had this opened for a week on my tab on my new PC, and playing video games I had missed for four years were more fullfilling than to revive this thread from no PC induced hiatus. This wasn't just a dull read, hell no, this was the literary equivalent of watching paint dry in grayscale while someone whispers sci-fi nouns in your ear and asks you to feel something while my mind was saying "play Yakuza 7 instead, at least it has better idiots than this thread". I read a lot of bad stories—I eat wattpad-tier flops for breakfast when I have will to suffer—but this one? This one deserves its own flavor of sedation. You don’t read The Pristine so much as you lapse into it, like falling into coma after overworking and sleeping late because of a new PC after a week.

Let’s start with the obvious: yes, all the "elements" of a story are present. There’s a guy. There’s a mission. There’s fog, a bunker, some alleged trauma, and a future so generically dystopian it might as well be a setting template called "CyberGrimePunky_003." But here’s the thing—those elements aren’t a story, they’re props. They sit there like set pieces in a half assed ARG some high schooler made in his spare time. Your webnovel reads less like a narrative and more like a speculative thought experiment that got lost on the way to becoming a plot.

Just reading the synopsis alone is like watching someone Google "how to write cool sci-fi" and then refusing to scroll past the first result. It’s that dry. "In a world torn by war and shrouded in fog…" I swear I’ve read that line six thousand times and every single one was just as disposable. What’s your angle? What’s your twist? What separates this from a high school creative writing prompt handed in by a guy who accidentally signed up for the wrong class? Absolutely nothing.

And then there’s Arkam, the so-called protagonist, who has all the depth of a cereal box and half the charisma. He’s supposed to be sarcastic, I guess, but "sarcastic" here is just code for "vaguely annoyed and barely coherent." His idea of biting wit is grumbling into his specs like a guy who just found out his VPN expired. I kept waiting for the sarcasm to arrive, but all I got was lousy emotionally sedated muttering between tech instructions t-shirt. At best, he’s a dull cop with a back brace. At worst, he’s a blank slate wrapped in tactical gear who exists to walk down corridors and occasionally toss children off a bridge—literally.

And that’s another thing—what is it with this story and people slowly opening doors and walking into rooms full of absolutely fucking nothing? I have never read a more committed sequence of box-checking. Arkam enters a room. He looks around. He sighs. He fiddles with his gear. He mutters about jammers. Repeat for 1100 words. This is less a sci-fi thriller and more a gameplay description made by an AI just by looking at 1 360x240 cropped screenshot. We’ve got entire chapters where the most dramatic tension is "I wonder if the keypad will work" or "this crate is empty, too." My guy, if this is what you’re bringing to the narrative table, at least let a rat jump scare someone or a drone malfunction and kill a child. Something. Anything. I would’ve paid for that bunker to detonate and end this plot right there, starting actual story of some actual OP MC investigating why that brat had died in that easy mission.

Second chapter tries to yank the emergency brake and drop some trauma. Sure, a pregnant woman in a bunker, some children, sexual violence, a warcrime’s worth of "feel bad now" vibes. But, it’s like watching an actor break into sobs before recording has even started. It’s all cue and no build-up. You want me to feel something about that someone and her kids? Try writing her as a person first, not as a live-action plot device dumped into the bunker like a DLC backstory pack. "Please, sir, help us" is not dialogue—it’s the cheapest moral bait you can throw on the page, and it has the narrative nutrition of dry cereal.

And also, Arkam’s reaction? I can’t tell if he’s traumatized, constipated, or just vaguely inconvenienced. He’s not wrestling with morality. He’s not affected. He’s not anything. He sighs. He thinks "huh, that’s weird", like a Skyrim NPC. Then he walks out and continues doing literally nothing of consequence. If this were a video game, Arkam would be the AI-controlled tutorial guy you follow for five minutes before he dies in a scripted cutscene and you never think of him again.

Chapter 3? Chapter 3 is where the story should escalate, but given the quality of a snowball (that needs to become an avalanche for a good story) those two chapters before, it doesn't. That's reality. Instead, it pivots to bridge logistics. Children are assigned to squads like it’s Cyberpunk Babysitter Simulator 2079. The only real twist is that Arkam suddenly becomes Olympic-level child-yeeter, hurling them off ledges with no warning. Why? Because it’s more efficient, apparently. Because the author thought action was needed but forgot what tension feels like. And then after all the jumping, all the planning, all the exposition, they open another door... to nothing. Again. More empty crates. More silence. More artificial mystery stretched thinner than a mood in an elevator.

There’s no antagonist. No thing called urgency. No ticking clock that's about to explode. No goal beyond "explore this rust-covered void and think some thoughts about it." The stakes are always theoretical. The conflict is "might exist later." And somehow, somehow, the story has the gall to end each chapter with what I assume are supposed to be cliffhangers, like "we need to talk," or "what’s beyond the door?" Spoiler: the answer is always nothing.

This entire novel reads like someone wanted to write a cyberpunk story but forgot why. There’s no intent. There’s no theme. There’s not even an attempt at an idea beyond "man in bunker with gadgets meets some NPCs and walks around." It’s a shooter game script without the shooter. Just corridors, jammers, tech babble, and cold canned dialogue recycled from every post-apocalypse sloppile ever written.

If this were a writing prompt in a class, and I were your overly smug, heavily caffeinated English teacher, I’d slap a C- on the front page, write "some effort here, but no vision," and then go drink whiskey under my desk. Because that’s what this story demands—not critique. Not encouragement. Just a tired sigh and the slow realization that you wrote 10,789 words about a man walking through hallways.

Look. If you want to improve this, there’s one question you need to ask: what’s your twist? Because "sarcastic soldier goes into bunker" is not a story. "Sarcastic" isn’t a twist. "Fog" isn’t mood. "War" isn’t depth. Pick something—anything—and do something with it. Blow up the setting. Turn the rebels into clones. Make the AI go rogue. Give Arkam a secret. Hell, make the bunker a spaceship. Something.

But as it stands, The Pristine isn’t pristine. It’s sterile. Clean, quiet, and absolutely lifeless.

It aligns both genuine advice and some brutal roast. That's an artform in of itself.

 

[A_veil_of_red_ink]

I read three chapters of your webnovel, and I’ve got to be honest—it was like being gently euthanized by boredom. I had this opened for a week on my tab on my new PC, and playing video games I had missed for four years were more fullfilling than to revive this thread from no PC induced hiatus. This wasn't just a dull read, hell no, this was the literary equivalent of watching paint dry in grayscale while someone whispers sci-fi nouns in your ear and asks you to feel something while my mind was saying "play Yakuza 7 instead, at least it has better idiots than this thread". I read a lot of bad stories—I eat wattpad-tier flops for breakfast when I have will to suffer—but this one? This one deserves its own flavor of sedation. You don’t read The Pristine so much as you lapse into it, like falling into coma after overworking and sleeping late because of a new PC after a week.

Let’s start with the obvious: yes, all the "elements" of a story are present. There’s a guy. There’s a mission. There’s fog, a bunker, some alleged trauma, and a future so generically dystopian it might as well be a setting template called "CyberGrimePunky_003." But here’s the thing—those elements aren’t a story, they’re props. They sit there like set pieces in a half assed ARG some high schooler made in his spare time. Your webnovel reads less like a narrative and more like a speculative thought experiment that got lost on the way to becoming a plot.

Just reading the synopsis alone is like watching someone Google "how to write cool sci-fi" and then refusing to scroll past the first result. It’s that dry. "In a world torn by war and shrouded in fog…" I swear I’ve read that line six thousand times and every single one was just as disposable. What’s your angle? What’s your twist? What separates this from a high school creative writing prompt handed in by a guy who accidentally signed up for the wrong class? Absolutely nothing.

And then there’s Arkam, the so-called protagonist, who has all the depth of a cereal box and half the charisma. He’s supposed to be sarcastic, I guess, but "sarcastic" here is just code for "vaguely annoyed and barely coherent." His idea of biting wit is grumbling into his specs like a guy who just found out his VPN expired. I kept waiting for the sarcasm to arrive, but all I got was lousy emotionally sedated muttering between tech instructions t-shirt. At best, he’s a dull cop with a back brace. At worst, he’s a blank slate wrapped in tactical gear who exists to walk down corridors and occasionally toss children off a bridge—literally.

And that’s another thing—what is it with this story and people slowly opening doors and walking into rooms full of absolutely fucking nothing? I have never read a more committed sequence of box-checking. Arkam enters a room. He looks around. He sighs. He fiddles with his gear. He mutters about jammers. Repeat for 1100 words. This is less a sci-fi thriller and more a gameplay description made by an AI just by looking at 1 360x240 cropped screenshot. We’ve got entire chapters where the most dramatic tension is "I wonder if the keypad will work" or "this crate is empty, too." My guy, if this is what you’re bringing to the narrative table, at least let a rat jump scare someone or a drone malfunction and kill a child. Something. Anything. I would’ve paid for that bunker to detonate and end this plot right there, starting actual story of some actual OP MC investigating why that brat had died in that easy mission.

Second chapter tries to yank the emergency brake and drop some trauma. Sure, a pregnant woman in a bunker, some children, sexual violence, a warcrime’s worth of "feel bad now" vibes. But, it’s like watching an actor break into sobs before recording has even started. It’s all cue and no build-up. You want me to feel something about that someone and her kids? Try writing her as a person first, not as a live-action plot device dumped into the bunker like a DLC backstory pack. "Please, sir, help us" is not dialogue—it’s the cheapest moral bait you can throw on the page, and it has the narrative nutrition of dry cereal.

And also, Arkam’s reaction? I can’t tell if he’s traumatized, constipated, or just vaguely inconvenienced. He’s not wrestling with morality. He’s not affected. He’s not anything. He sighs. He thinks "huh, that’s weird", like a Skyrim NPC. Then he walks out and continues doing literally nothing of consequence. If this were a video game, Arkam would be the AI-controlled tutorial guy you follow for five minutes before he dies in a scripted cutscene and you never think of him again.

Chapter 3? Chapter 3 is where the story should escalate, but given the quality of a snowball (that needs to become an avalanche for a good story) those two chapters before, it doesn't. That's reality. Instead, it pivots to bridge logistics. Children are assigned to squads like it’s Cyberpunk Babysitter Simulator 2079. The only real twist is that Arkam suddenly becomes Olympic-level child-yeeter, hurling them off ledges with no warning. Why? Because it’s more efficient, apparently. Because the author thought action was needed but forgot what tension feels like. And then after all the jumping, all the planning, all the exposition, they open another door... to nothing. Again. More empty crates. More silence. More artificial mystery stretched thinner than a mood in an elevator.

There’s no antagonist. No thing called urgency. No ticking clock that's about to explode. No goal beyond "explore this rust-covered void and think some thoughts about it." The stakes are always theoretical. The conflict is "might exist later." And somehow, somehow, the story has the gall to end each chapter with what I assume are supposed to be cliffhangers, like "we need to talk," or "what’s beyond the door?" Spoiler: the answer is always nothing.

This entire novel reads like someone wanted to write a cyberpunk story but forgot why. There’s no intent. There’s no theme. There’s not even an attempt at an idea beyond "man in bunker with gadgets meets some NPCs and walks around." It’s a shooter game script without the shooter. Just corridors, jammers, tech babble, and cold canned dialogue recycled from every post-apocalypse sloppile ever written.

If this were a writing prompt in a class, and I were your overly smug, heavily caffeinated English teacher, I’d slap a C- on the front page, write "some effort here, but no vision," and then go drink whiskey under my desk. Because that’s what this story demands—not critique. Not encouragement. Just a tired sigh and the slow realization that you wrote 10,789 words about a man walking through hallways.

Look. If you want to improve this, there’s one question you need to ask: what’s your twist? Because "sarcastic soldier goes into bunker" is not a story. "Sarcastic" isn’t a twist. "Fog" isn’t mood. "War" isn’t depth. Pick something—anything—and do something with it. Blow up the setting. Turn the rebels into clones. Make the AI go rogue. Give Arkam a secret. Hell, make the bunker a spaceship. Something.

But as it stands, The Pristine isn’t pristine. It’s sterile. Clean, quiet, and absolutely lifeless.

Man... I even forgot that I posted this here... but damn, it gave me some laughs and chuckles.
I didn't post anything on the story for two months...
And damn... If you have read the 4th chapter, maybe the story got some twist, but it's pretty late for a twist or anything, like why did I wait so late?
Maybe in the first chapter, I should've written a conversation about a rebel attack or something, not some chit-chat.

But I'm happy ur back...

 

[harrydouthwaite]

Okay... I think I'm ready to submit something to this thread. I have five completed chapters.

Sixes and Sevens

A Trains On The Brain series story. When you're all at sixes and sevens, you feel overwhelmed and unable to cope. That's how twelve-year old Robin feels a lot of the time, but as he enters his preteen years in 2006 his world begins to change in many ways which leads...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[Worthy39]

Okay... I think I'm ready to submit something to this thread. I have four completed chapters with the fifth chapter half-done.

Sixes and Sevens

A Trains On The Brain series story. When you're all at sixes and sevens, you feel overwhelmed and unable to cope. That's how twelve-year old Robin feels a lot of the time, but as he enters his preteen years in 2006 his world begins to change in many ways which leads...

www.scribblehub.com

You did not just title your story after brainrot... unless there's actually a deeper meaning there, but the title alone is gonna get an individual roast, whether it was intentional or not. Though I'm sure that title will attract quite a few readers, so good job.

 

[JayMark]

You did not just title your story after brainrot... unless there's actually a deeper meaning there, but the title alone is gonna get an individual roast, whether it was intentional or not. Though I'm sure that title will attract quite a few readers, so good job.

Cool, I'll name my next book 'Adventures of Chimpanzini Bananini.'

 

[harrydouthwaite]

Funny enough... no.

The phrase "I'm all at sixes and sevens" means that you are in a state of confusion, disorder, or disarray. You might feel disorganized, overwhelmed, or unable to cope with a situation.

It's a coming-of-age story where the autistic protagonist (12-13 years old) experiences a lot of changes in a relatively short time, which upsets him and leads to him experiencing this state of confusion and disarray.

 

[Anonjohn20]

You did not just title your story after brainrot... unless there's actually a deeper meaning there, but the title alone is gonna get an individual roast, whether it was intentional or not. Though I'm sure that title will attract quite a few readers, so good job.

So my title, "The Skibidi futa Rizzler," is a no-go?

 

[Tempokai]

If anyone desereves it, it is me. Harder daddy.

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/554511/the-dark-element/

I read the first three chapters of this webnovel, and somewhere around the second act of Chapter 2 I started to wonder whether I was the problem. Maybe I had grown too tired from overworking. Maybe I wasn’t in the “right mindset” even though I rested for two days already. Maybe I just didn’t “get it”, and then I remembered that I’d been staring at the synopsis tab for an entire week like it was a tax form, and during the actual writing of this roast, I fell asleep at 7 p.m. like a dying pensioner and didn’t regain consciousness until 11. It’s 2 a.m. now. My soul feels like it’s been left on read by this story and not in a "u up" way.

Let’s not dance around the fire. If this webnovel had dropped in the 1990s as the opening act of a forgotten third-rate fantasy paperback, I’d have called it “decent for its time,” stuck it on a dusty shelf next to Dragonlance knockoffs, and gone about my life. But this is webnovel territory—the land of trope-mined crack fiction and immediate dopamine hits. And, in that savage arena, this opening is not bad. No, no, that would be something, it’s meh. And not the fun kind of meh, like a disappointing Netflix show you finish out of spite. This is the meh that drains you slowly, like an artsy YT video game documentary channel that whispers lore into your ear as it bleeds you dry for 2 hours.

The synopsis is where the death begins. Not the narrative death—that comes later—but the slow, quiet demise of any reason to care. A synopsis is supposed to be your flashy little pitch. A hook, a wink, a gun on the mantelpiece with a post-it note that says “Will Fire in Chapter 3.” What I saw instead is a “something something X will happen because MC is MC”. It doesn’t tease a twist, it doesn’t exploit a trope, it doesn’t offer a bizarre high concept. It just says “Joshua is normal and things happen, probably.” It reads like the placeholder text someone left before writing the real synopsis but forgot to update before publishing. I'd say it’s a quiet funeral for reader interest.

Then we hit the prologue, and oh, what a monument to structural failure it is. The writing style is purple enough to be classified as bruised. Everything is described as if the narrator is being paid per metaphor and hates every second of it. There’s an ancient war, a looming darkness, a ruined fortress, a half-sentient squire, a guy named Walthier who’s probably important but feels like an expired fantasy action figure—and none of it matters. None of it is grounded in known context, and the unknown context—the mysteries we’re supposed to be teased with—is doled out with all the grace of someone dumping puzzle pieces onto your lap and then stealing the box. I don’t know who anyone is, why the world is ending, what the “Dark” actually is, what a Syche does, or why the narrator needs to be this deeply insufferable while monologuing.

There’s no tension because readers will have no grip. Mystery needs grounding. This prologue is like being handed a conspiracy corkboard but all the photos are not connected at all. The big reveal? The narrator murders a squire for vaguely whatever reasons and then gets atomized by magic fire in the most emo death spiral imaginable. It’s like watching Voldemort get ghosted and go full Hamlet in a steam bath.

And then, Chapter 1 happens. A shift so abrupt it may have given the few remaining readers whiplash. Suddenly, we’re following Joshua, a kid in a coat walking through mist, hoping to be murdered. And I wish I could tell you that was a joke. It’s not. He’s literally baiting a local ghost because he’s bored. You know what? I didn't hate it. He’s quirky, dumb, weirdly charming, and actively trying moving the story forward. Which makes the prologue even more insulting, it didn’t need to exist at all. This chapter gives us a proper protagonist with a relatable motive (even if that motive is "summon cryptid for clout") and a grounded setting. Sort of.

Sort of—because then the genre blender kicks in. One second we’ve got horses, the next second pickup trucks, then ghosts, then real injuries, then hospital visits, and somehow it’s all set in a world with thermal vent rice farming and combustion magic. The story wants to be modern fantasy, folklore horror, rural mystery, and post-apocalyptic dystopia all at once. And then Chapter 2, where the pacing dies of natural causes. Nothing happens for several paragraphs except for Kael, the brooding brother, having breakfast and being mad about it. The story briefly pretends to be self-aware—having the narrator mock you for skipping the prologue as if it wasn’t the very reason people left—before diving into another round of tonal roulette. One minute it's sarcasm, the next it's heartfelt family drama, and by the end we find out their mom's dead. Oh. Cool. Thanks. That would've been emotionally effective if any of the prior tone supported it, but instead it lands like someone dropping a piano during a stand-up set.

Here’s the thing: you can’t build tension or mystery by refusing to commit. The tone jumps from A to B to C without warning. The worldbuilding is dumped in half-sentences and out-of-place lore scraps. There’s no single narrative line—just dangling threads taped together by confused ambition. Horses and ambulances and magic can coexist, sure, but not when they’re shoved together in the first few chapters with no sense of when or where we are. A world can be weird, but it has to feel real. This doesn’t. It reads like someone tried to recreate a story from memory while half-asleep and got distracted by another genre halfway through.

And that’s the real issue: it’s all practice. It feels like someone’s rehearsal for a better draft. Plot points don’t happen naturally, they’re jiggled like keys in front of a toddler. There’s no sense of natural progression, as it starts with too many disconnected elements, none of which are strong enough to carry the others. Instead of branching out from a single, central narrative thread—say, Joshua dealing with his powers and his sick mom—we’re flung into lore backwash, tonal whiplash, and ambient fog.

The only solution I can think of, is to burn it down. Start again. Center the story on Joshua, in a modern world with ancient traditions, where Syche magic is something half-forgotten, half-feared. Sure, it's a cliché, but it's far better than the thing you wanted to do with that opening. Set clear tone boundaries, build your mystery with known and unknown elements balanced like actual stakes, and for the love of structure, ditch the prologue. Place it in chapter 20 where it truly belongs, after MC finds it in a book somewhere, explaining something instead of just being a doorstop nuisance.

Because what I see here isn’t bad, it’s worse. It’s wasted potential. It’s a story with characters that could shine (if they were properly advertised), a world that could intrigue (if it was streamlined), and a premise that could work (if the synopsis showed the proper twist)—but only if the author stops trying to write four stories at once and just tells one well.

And now it’s 2:19 a.m. I am covered in the ghost sweat of confused narration, haunted by fog metaphors and unused plotlines. May whatever reader still trudges through this mess after me find the strength to forgive—and move on.

 

[Worthy39]

I read the first three chapters of this webnovel, and somewhere around the second act of Chapter 2 I started to wonder whether I was the problem. Maybe I had grown too tired from overworking. Maybe I wasn’t in the “right mindset” even though I rested for two days already. Maybe I just didn’t “get it”, and then I remembered that I’d been staring at the synopsis tab for an entire week like it was a tax form, and during the actual writing of this roast, I fell asleep at 7 p.m. like a dying pensioner and didn’t regain consciousness until 11. It’s 2 a.m. now. My soul feels like it’s been left on read by this story and not in a "u up" way.

Let’s not dance around the fire. If this webnovel had dropped in the 1990s as the opening act of a forgotten third-rate fantasy paperback, I’d have called it “decent for its time,” stuck it on a dusty shelf next to Dragonlance knockoffs, and gone about my life. But this is webnovel territory—the land of trope-mined crack fiction and immediate dopamine hits. And, in that savage arena, this opening is not bad. No, no, that would be something, it’s meh. And not the fun kind of meh, like a disappointing Netflix show you finish out of spite. This is the meh that drains you slowly, like an artsy YT video game documentary channel that whispers lore into your ear as it bleeds you dry for 2 hours.

The synopsis is where the death begins. Not the narrative death—that comes later—but the slow, quiet demise of any reason to care. A synopsis is supposed to be your flashy little pitch. A hook, a wink, a gun on the mantelpiece with a post-it note that says “Will Fire in Chapter 3.” What I saw instead is a “something something X will happen because MC is MC”. It doesn’t tease a twist, it doesn’t exploit a trope, it doesn’t offer a bizarre high concept. It just says “Joshua is normal and things happen, probably.” It reads like the placeholder text someone left before writing the real synopsis but forgot to update before publishing. I'd say it’s a quiet funeral for reader interest.

Then we hit the prologue, and oh, what a monument to structural failure it is. The writing style is purple enough to be classified as bruised. Everything is described as if the narrator is being paid per metaphor and hates every second of it. There’s an ancient war, a looming darkness, a ruined fortress, a half-sentient squire, a guy named Walthier who’s probably important but feels like an expired fantasy action figure—and none of it matters. None of it is grounded in known context, and the unknown context—the mysteries we’re supposed to be teased with—is doled out with all the grace of someone dumping puzzle pieces onto your lap and then stealing the box. I don’t know who anyone is, why the world is ending, what the “Dark” actually is, what a Syche does, or why the narrator needs to be this deeply insufferable while monologuing.

There’s no tension because readers will have no grip. Mystery needs grounding. This prologue is like being handed a conspiracy corkboard but all the photos are not connected at all. The big reveal? The narrator murders a squire for vaguely whatever reasons and then gets atomized by magic fire in the most emo death spiral imaginable. It’s like watching Voldemort get ghosted and go full Hamlet in a steam bath.

And then, Chapter 1 happens. A shift so abrupt it may have given the few remaining readers whiplash. Suddenly, we’re following Joshua, a kid in a coat walking through mist, hoping to be murdered. And I wish I could tell you that was a joke. It’s not. He’s literally baiting a local ghost because he’s bored. You know what? I didn't hate it. He’s quirky, dumb, weirdly charming, and actively trying moving the story forward. Which makes the prologue even more insulting, it didn’t need to exist at all. This chapter gives us a proper protagonist with a relatable motive (even if that motive is "summon cryptid for clout") and a grounded setting. Sort of.

Sort of—because then the genre blender kicks in. One second we’ve got horses, the next second pickup trucks, then ghosts, then real injuries, then hospital visits, and somehow it’s all set in a world with thermal vent rice farming and combustion magic. The story wants to be modern fantasy, folklore horror, rural mystery, and post-apocalyptic dystopia all at once. And then Chapter 2, where the pacing dies of natural causes. Nothing happens for several paragraphs except for Kael, the brooding brother, having breakfast and being mad about it. The story briefly pretends to be self-aware—having the narrator mock you for skipping the prologue as if it wasn’t the very reason people left—before diving into another round of tonal roulette. One minute it's sarcasm, the next it's heartfelt family drama, and by the end we find out their mom's dead. Oh. Cool. Thanks. That would've been emotionally effective if any of the prior tone supported it, but instead it lands like someone dropping a piano during a stand-up set.

Here’s the thing: you can’t build tension or mystery by refusing to commit. The tone jumps from A to B to C without warning. The worldbuilding is dumped in half-sentences and out-of-place lore scraps. There’s no single narrative line—just dangling threads taped together by confused ambition. Horses and ambulances and magic can coexist, sure, but not when they’re shoved together in the first few chapters with no sense of when or where we are. A world can be weird, but it has to feel real. This doesn’t. It reads like someone tried to recreate a story from memory while half-asleep and got distracted by another genre halfway through.

And that’s the real issue: it’s all practice. It feels like someone’s rehearsal for a better draft. Plot points don’t happen naturally, they’re jiggled like keys in front of a toddler. There’s no sense of natural progression, as it starts with too many disconnected elements, none of which are strong enough to carry the others. Instead of branching out from a single, central narrative thread—say, Joshua dealing with his powers and his sick mom—we’re flung into lore backwash, tonal whiplash, and ambient fog.

The only solution I can think of, is to burn it down. Start again. Center the story on Joshua, in a modern world with ancient traditions, where Syche magic is something half-forgotten, half-feared. Sure, it's a cliché, but it's far better than the thing you wanted to do with that opening. Set clear tone boundaries, build your mystery with known and unknown elements balanced like actual stakes, and for the love of structure, ditch the prologue. Place it in chapter 20 where it truly belongs, after MC finds it in a book somewhere, explaining something instead of just being a doorstop nuisance.

Because what I see here isn’t bad, it’s worse. It’s wasted potential. It’s a story with characters that could shine (if they were properly advertised), a world that could intrigue (if it was streamlined), and a premise that could work (if the synopsis showed the proper twist)—but only if the author stops trying to write four stories at once and just tells one well.

And now it’s 2:19 a.m. I am covered in the ghost sweat of confused narration, haunted by fog metaphors and unused plotlines. May whatever reader still trudges through this mess after me find the strength to forgive—and move on.

Your dedication to writing these is second to none. Like, that's longer than some chapters I've seen. Very impressive.

 

[_kagamineakira]

I don't know, is my second novel and I want someone could say their opinion of that. And well, enjoy it! Is only prologue and the first chapter so I instinctively searched for this thread to find out what someone critical thinks about it.

The Catharsis of Atheism

Aomori Prefecture, Hiranai, 2010. The village of Hiranai is dying, and with it, Tatsuda Manabu. Trapped in a limbo of pain, his sanity depends on a handful of pills that silence the echoes of his mother's murder and the screams of an abusive father. For Manabu, reality is a vague ghost...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[sage61]

Please roast mine. I'm intrigue with the words you used for roasting. Very vocab!

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1985930/-rebirth-of-a-fallen-ceo-/

 

[Tempokai]

These roasts will be short because I have no brainpower to read deeper or make clever sentences.

So... I just got roasted 2 days ago (not too much/not enough?), and I'm prepared for more. My novel is currently going through its 11th editing phase, and I would like to get more input since it's always stuck in the shadows and is incapable of attracting readers, also because I'm new here and I can't create threads to request feedback :P. So please be brutally honest and don't hesitate to rip me to shreds. Tell me if I live up to my name.

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1704447/rhythm-of-rampage/

I read three chapters, and it's meh. Synopsis is bland, and I'm 95% sure that it was AI generated. Title is 100% Butler made, because I've seen such titles being generated by the LLM. If not, the author sucks at synopsis AND title making. MC is loosely defined and there's no usual + twist synopsis thingy going on, which makes it bland. Chapter 1 doesn't start well, pacing is weak, it oscillates infodumpy atmosphere into "plot" far too much, making me notice the pacing instead of the story. This author said that he's combining the prose with poetry, but I don't see the "craftsmanship" of that at all. When you claim to combine prose and poetry, I expect Rime Of The Ancient Mariner and not "generic bounty hunter who rhymes" type of crap. The rhythm of the novel (pun intended) is so, it doesn't flow well when I read it aloud to test that "poetry". Overall, I'd say it's some 19 yo's work he'd made when he was ultra bored. Meh.

Please brutalize my gimmick book (the plot seems to be going nowhere)

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1672171/how-to-ruin-a-dark-fantasy-gacha--litrpg/

I read four chapters, and the opening is so slow that it doesn't work well at all. There are few quirks that break the pacing, and basically those four chapters (plus prologue) could fit into one chapter. Hesitant + confused MC at the start uses too many words (lol) in creating the first gacha roll. And, given that the chapters are short (~750 words at max), this makes unnecessary pauses during the read, giving the reader to think of flaws of that specific scene. The longer chapters are, the bigger the scene is, the better overall mental "score" will be. Of course there are limits for maximum amount of words per chapter due to readers needing a break here and there, but it's not 750 words. This opening is cliché enough for me to have no thought about it at all after those four chapters. It's meh.

Go ahead, and I don't think it is perfect, will think like that, I think it is lacking a lot.
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/1705565/a-being-of-shadow/

One word: L. There's nothing to read besides of announcement where that author basically roast himself into digital death. Truly, this author lived to his name, "nothingness". The synopsis overuses rhetorical and dramatical techniques, and therefore fails at being persuasive and unique. That author clearly had Summer Amateur Recreational Writing Syndrome, given being registered at July, and quitting it late August, so I don't have anything towards this dude. That's life. If you want to read the true roast of that webnovel, open that webnovel link and read the announcement. Meh.

 

[LuciferVermillion]

Third attempt. I'm ordering a deep fry.

https://www.scribblehub.com/series/211234/the-impossible-fate-that-leads-to-a-god-of-a-new-world/