Would've you read webnovel opener like that?

[Tempokai]

Spoiler

This world... is strange.

It looks normal outside, with rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad.

Yet,

peel the outside crust,

poke it a little,

and the unexplainable emerges.

Supernatural.

Things that are somewhat explainable, full of tropes and stories that can boil someone twice over.

I read those stories when I was a kid and still do.

One thing that bothers me, that they are real. Not "it's just tales that old folk made to scare children" real, but "they exist, deal with it" kinda real.

Sure, some are exaggerated, like vampires, or downplayed, like youkai I've seen roaming around the Osaka prefecture, or completely different of what I'd expect.

Once you see them, there's no coming back.

I've been living in this world for 38 years. And oh, boy, I can't tell you what I saw, but can summarize it with one word. No, three.

Madness,

Chaos,

Ordinary.

I've been a detective for those supernatural cases for 15 years already. Lately, these cases have become weird.

***

Supernatural.

A part of a life of 2 to 3 percent of this world. Up to 300 million people are in the "known", including me. I hate what it's done to my life.

You know, when I was a kid, I thought that superpowers were awesome. I was a happy kid back then, watching YuVe Hankusho, Debiruman, Vampire Slayer X, thinking how it would be cool to be a detective, demon slayer, and vampire slayer, wielding the invisible power inside my veins to do just cool stuff.

And then, at age of 15 I awakened my "spiritual senses" as my pops called it. Exceptional, at that.

Using it to see the world in new, terrifying light. Using it to gather the floating unseen energy to make reality bending stuff. Seeing past of the earth when concentrating. Having untold potential, like the typical protagonists I adored watching in that slightly fat silver screen.

Of course, I was happy, I could become one of them. Only if my past me knew it was a bad idea. Silly past me. He didn't know that great power equals great suffering.

So I trained, did those strange techniques my father and my uncle drilled into me, grown up seeing strange people with funny ears, hair, and powers in my not so ordinary high school. Leveraging the connections of my seemingly ordinary mother, I enrolled in the legendary Division 13 of the National Police Agency at the age of 23. It technically exists, but due to being under the "veil" of supernatural it shifts to whatever division available to shift the blame if things go wrong. Yes, things go wrong and things get blamed. Silly stuff.

I was under mentorship of a great person. Undoubtedly the greatest. Or so I thought.

I've seen things, I've fought things, I've come on top of things. I got things, I've haggled with "things" and I've lost things. Such is life.

And now, 15 years into Division 13, I'm certain those childhood fantasies were not just wrong—they were dangerously naive.

I'm just curious, got inspired to write in POV of supporting character and wrote it today. Think of the first part as synopsis and second part as prologue.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I won't read story after reading this opener.

 

[greyblob]

not really. lacks depth

 

[RepresentingDesire]

Seems to me like it's some book with a stereotypical premise, in the boring way. I like supernatural especially the scp kind. Hearing this I think seinen manga but it’s scp, in a bad way. Thinking about it the writing is the problem.

 

[melchi]

The sentence fragments make me go REEEE

 

[georgelee5786]

I would not

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Sounds like the back of a book rather than an opener.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Seems a bit redundant and more yeah, like a sales pitch/jacket blurb than an opener. Pare it down a bit and probably but it repeats and rambles right now.

 

[LoneQuack]

Everyone else sums it up pretty well. If I turn my brain off sure I can see myself reading this, but the moment I try to focus, yeah, it does indeed get weird.

 

[Tempokai]

I guess my mind was really distracted so I need to do it properly. Got it.

 

[Corty]

I guess my mind was really distracted so I need to do it properly. Got it.

One thing I have learned is that feedback on the forums is as unreliable as the weatherman.

 

[Kenjona]

One thing I have learned is that feedback on the forums is as unreliable as the weatherman.

Weatherpersons are nearly always accurate, but only in a general this has a X% chance of its going to happen somewhere in this 200 mile radius area. maybe.
Hmmm you know, I think your comment still applies even then.

<Needed to add white space to separate my earlier comment to my later comment as they address two different peoples comments. The merging of comments can be irksome>

It reads more like "This is a very, very rough idea but has not yet made it to becoming an outline" you have for a story. Not a "this is what the story is about" synopsis.
Personally after reading the opener, I would skip to find something else to read. It was to disjointed and your wording structure made me lose any interest in the story.

For example:

This world... is strange.

It looks normal outside, with rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad.

Yet,

peel the outside crust,

poke it a little,

and the unexplainable emerges.

Supernatural.

Things that are somewhat explainable, full of tropes and stories that can boil someone twice over.

I read those stories when I was a kid and still do.

It reads more like bullet points and is too scattered.

This world... is strange.
It looks normal outside, with rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad.
Yet, peel the outside crust, poke it a little, and the unexplainable emerges. Supernatural.

Things that are somewhat explainable, full of tropes and stories that can boil someone twice over. I read those stories when I was a kid and still do.

I changed nothing but the sentence structure. Even without re-writing it and leaving what you wrote exactly as is, I feel makes it less disjointed.

This world... is strange.
It looks normal on the outside, with rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad people.
Yet, peel the outside crust of the world, poke it a little, and the unexplainable emerges into view. The Supernatural.

Things that are somewhat explainable, stories full of tropes, that can boil someone twice over. I read those stories when I was a kid and still do.

Now edited it just a little bit.
So as I wrote above I think you have a beginning idea for a story, but your writing makes it hard to immerse myself into the story that you want to tell. Hence turning me off to reading your story.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Weatherpersons are nearly always accurate, but only in a general this has a X% chance of its going to happen somewhere in this 200 mile radius area. maybe.
Hmmm you know, I think your comment still applies even then.

One of my roommates in Chicago was friends with a meteorologist. His friend claimed that "We are 99.9999998% accurate. For the next hour. The error rate goes up exponentially for every hour past that, so after about three or four days we really are just guessing."
From what I hear, the technology has advanced a little and it is now down to every 2 hours and 5-7 days before you hit pure guesswork...

 

[Kenjona]

One of my roommates in Chicago was friends with a meteorologist. His friend claimed that "We are 99.9999998% accurate. For the next hour. The error rate goes up exponentially for every hour past that, so after about three or four days we really are just guessing."
From what I hear, the technology has advanced a little and it is now down to every 2 hours and 5-7 days before you hit pure guesswork...

They may be even on the nose when they make a prediction, but not where you are. Weather affects my job very much, and I have to keep track of weather radar and forecasts. So its very noticeable that, whether the Meteorologist was accurate or not. Usually they are on the mark, just not always where you are standing.

 

[LuoirM]

In my humble opinion, words like "yet" "but" "unfortunately" "however" at the beginning is quite a weak way to put a twist on a normal concept, and it's a turn off when reading

 

[Alski]

I didn't even make it to the spoiler, the thread title was enough to say nope.

 

[Avery_Line]

got inspired to write in POV of supporting character

The first 250 lines of a story are the most critical. These words are devoted to a summary that doesn't give any detail about the world or character, then moves into an info-dumping prologue.

You have intriguing hints of what the plot is. There are supernatural crimes, and a young detective who is brash and precocious learns that he's completely overwhelmed and outmatched, and that his training was not sufficient. That could be really interesting. But it's hinted at too obliquely.

I suggest you put this realization front and center. Forgive the prescriptive suggestion, but something like:

Joe looked at the half-eaten body and felt sick. The moment the vampire demon vanished and reappeared behind him, Joe knew he'd made a terrible mistake. He'd never expected they could move so fast. Joining the detective force at 23 had seemed like a good idea at the time. But with the vamp's cold breath on his neck, Joe got a clarity that made his stomach plummet: His instructors weren't as good as Joe had thought. And now his eagerness and vanity had sealed his fate.

Obviously that is just a random example, and I'm sure you can do something that fits your story better. What I'm suggesting is lead with character, conflict, and stakes, and give us readers something to puzzle over and be invested in. Young detective is over his head with supernatural crimes. okay, I have a situation and a character to root for.

That brings me to the quote. You are technically sticking to a POV, but not diving into it. Knowing what Joe thought 8 years ago, or that he thinks the world is strange, is not nearly enough to hang my hat on in this moment. What is he seeing? How does he feel about that? What is his brain processing in this moment? What are the stakes?