Hi, I've written some stuff in the past, nothing I care to share here, besides most are rather creative short stories for niche audiences. 

But I started writing on a web novel today that I have totally hyped myself for!

It is a novel in the category of japanese reincarnation novels. However, unlike in those novels where powers are omnipotent, characters are ridiculously overpowered and protagonists end up in one deus ex machina moment after the other. I wanted to create a reincarnation story into a fantasy world that was more down to earth. Where weak and strong people exist, but power is not be all end all.
With a protagonist that has an advantage, but is in no way without flaws, I want to keep the story at a heart warming level for all to enjoy.


I've only written six chapters so far today, but I do have one concern though. The first two chapters are pretty heavy introductory chapters. I kind of fear people will stop reading because of that before the real story begins in chapter 3.

I hope to get some feedback specifically on the matter of the first two chapters being heavy, possibly annoying to read and maybe ideas on how to streamline that better for more enjoyment.

https://royalroadl.com/fiction/13554/life-in-tharal

I'll be in your care.

First thing, before I even get into reading the story.

It's okay to have introductions at the beginning -- especially with Speculative Fiction -- but, there needs to be a hook.  Something that draws out our curiosity and makes us question what's going on, that pulls us through all that introductory stuff and into the story.  We aren't invested yet, so you can't expect us to do anything remotely like a slog, no matter how little, so the beginning needs to be as streamlined and compelling as possible.

...Aaaand now that I've gotten that out of my system, I'll read your story.  Mostly because I was curious about Reincarnation stories anyways, and it sounds like you're deliberately trying to avoid things that sound like they'd annoy the heck out of me.  I'll get back to you about how it went when I'm done.

Thanks in advance! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

It's hard to look at the first two chapters objectively after all. As the author I already know many of the interesting things that aren't known yet. So I am already hooked. Trying to read the story as an author from a reader point of view is hard.

Welcome! Fairly new to RRL myself, so greetings from a fellow newbie.

I checked out your story and it does seem like an interesting premise. On the objective front, spelling and grammar are pretty tight, though there's a couple of errors. But you did say you just started writing it today, so I'm going to assume no major edit passes here yet! The structure is quite unorthodox (at least in my experience), but not too hard to follow.

Subjectively, I feel the beginning is very exposition-heavy; both the first and second chapter are almost entirely explaining things that already happened and already are. It lacks a dynamic sense of "now" that I think helps to stimulate interest in the story. As INT said, a hook of sorts (although it doesn't have to be a gimmick, just something is happening). My own RRL story, Metrodome: Tyran, is probably the heaviest on upfront plot that I think I've written. But even then, it's only really about a page at the start of the second chapter to summarise the overall situation (and its one of the oldest parts of the book).

I'm not saying I think you should ditch them, of course! I think there's some nice dialog and characterisation going on here, but I would consider how much of the specifics are relevant and, more so, when. I recently read a scifi story in which one of the characters was male, but due to the fact the point-of-view character didn't differentiate gender, the character was referred to as a "she". I visualised a female character for several chapters before coming across a point where it was actually specified he was male. The detail might seem fundamental, but it was only introduced when it became relevant. Sometimes, as writers, I think we're tempted to make sure the reader has been told everything we want them to know, even if it leads us to write in such a way that ensures the reader will miss or forget most of these details.

As a more proactive example, consider saving some of the explanation of the opening scene (the MC's sacrificial gambit) for reveal at a later point, when we've had time to grasp the gravitas. I'd consider spreading the little details of Kiasha/Kiasha's Mind's struggle and discoveries out, so that they form interesting asides to an active narrative rather than a listing.

Finally, I appreciate that it's hard to know how little your audience needs to know when you, as the writer, know it all; but you might be surprised at actually how little it is.

Anyway, that's just some (hopefully helpful) tips from some guy. But if popularity were writing credentials, call me a schmuck.

'Novodantis' pid='827119' dateline='1502762119' Wrote: Welcome! Fairly new to RRL myself, so greetings from a fellow newbie.

~

Anyway, that's just some (hopefully helpful) tips from some guy. But if popularity were writing credentials, call me a schmuck.

Thanks!

I think the structure I use is similar to japanese webnovels, but I focus a bit more on making it easy to understand who says what, because in some japanese novels it becomes hard to know who is speaking the dialog lines. Personally I don't like the he said/she said spam too much, so I avoid that with this structure.

Ideally I want the time it takes to read a dialog to be similar to how long the dialog would've lasted in realtime. Of course that's not always possible, and time constraining thoughts too much would be bad as well. I'll try to find a good middle ground that I am happy with and believe will make for a comfortable read.

I've edited the second chapter a bit to remove some of the information that wasn't really needed yet. I'll keep brainstorming on it, to see how I might improve it further.

Okay -- I read through the first two chapters yesterday, I think before you edited anything, so this probably is slightly out-of-context, but I'll stand behind what I wrote.


The biggest thing is that I think you can make your story much tighter than it is right now, from an editing standpoint. There's a lot of fluff in there, and there's a lot of text that seems to be doing only one thing when it needs to be doing two or three.

I'm really warring with myself on how to state this advice. Cutting things is great advice in general, but in unskilled hands... well, at that point, it becomes a problem of knowing what the heck to cut, and if you don't know what you need to cut, you're going to mess up your story. Like giving a nurse the surgery scalpel and asking them to do the work, really.

Like, the joke-making in the second scene, where the MC and the God-like being are talking in the nothingness. It doesn't add anything, because it isn't funny. There is the possibility that the jokes are lost on me somehow, I guess, but still -- if the joke isn't funny, it isn't doing its job, and you need to cut it. If the joke was doing something else secondary that was worthwhile it might be worth keeping, but even then, there's probably a better way to convey that same information than a unfunny joke.

So, next thing -- doing more than one thing at a time with your text. You do this mainly through subtext. People don't always say things outright, but imply other things by what they're saying. If a bouncer says "I took out the trash -- heh, trust me, he isn't going to be getting up for a while." then we now know that he probably didn't just take someone out of the bar, but also beat the snot out of them.

Actions also imply things. To talk in extremes, people don't just stand around and say "I am Angry!" or "I am Excited!" -- they scrunch up their eyebrows, cross their arms, and glare, or laugh, jump up so fast they knock back their chair, and hug people. That's obvious stuff, but subtler things, like nervousness, agitation, or irritation, can go a long way.

Don't get too fancy here -- you want your reader to pick up on the unstated information, despite it not being stated outright, and you don't get that by circling around and tapping them on the shoulder while trying to be really fancy about it. You're more likely to confuse them that way, and that's not what you generally want.

Then there's things like the set up. You want to establish that this character has a knife? Show them fiddling with it. Now, they can stab things. Regular ol' gun on the mantle piece type stuff.

That's mostly stuff on the first chapter, so on to the second chapter. I'm of two minds when it comes to that chapter -- for one thing, the world building is interesting, but...

Well...

Let me put it this way -- I've seen people put the equivalent of an essay at the start of a story before and do quite well for themselves, and I've seen people incorporate that same information into scenes, or at least dialogue. The second one? Much, much harder to do well, but also generally qualitatively better, too.

So, to be cutthroat about it, you're taking the easy way out. You did a good essay, and it was interesting, but it's also a million times more interesting if you get to discover this stuff in-story. It's like subtext -- you give your readers the cues and the clues, and they get to piece it together and feel smart in the process. And that feels great.

Now, trade off moment -- usually, the easiest way to have the reader discover something is to have a newbie character (like your MC) discover it for themselves at the same time. That way, you can package the easy explanation with the conversation of "what the heck is that?" instead of having people infer everything, which is a hard thing to do properly no matter what level of writer you are.

You took the route of skipping over... pretty much all of the MC's childhood. And the part you did include isn't really worth it anyways -- outside of the info about being blind and having mana-sight, it doens't really do much.

But, anyways, cutting out the childhood is a good choice if you wanted to focus on the adventure, mixed bag if you wanted to focus on the character themselves. You can do a little of both by having flashbacks (preferably in lulls in the story -- no one wants a flashback in the middle of a fight scene), but it's a careful balancing act if you do it that way, especially if you're trying to reveal truths about the world at the same time.

And, uh, there's probably a million things I could lecture about here in an attempt to help you, but, honestly, remember this: have fun. Learn to love the challenge of doing a good job, if you can, but don't let good be the enemy of fun.

Essentially, people have this mistaken idea that if they hit someone over the head with everything that they're doing wrong, they're magically going to get better, when the thing is, they aren't. That takes time, and practice. Guidance is good, and learning is good, but if you aren't enjoying yourself enough to get through the first phase of it, then you aren't going to get good enough to be amazing one day.

If you focus on all the rules, and judging stares, and force yourself into being better and forget in the process that you're supposed to have fun, then you're going to lose yourself. You're going to lose the drive to actually do the thing. You're going to lose the magic. You're going to lose the thing that makes the act special. And you're going to, ultimately, fail.

So, if I just crushed your spirit, it's time to go to your special place in your head, rally yourself, and tell me to f*** off now. You know, to yourself. Just a little bit.

And then, you keep friggin' going. Maybe a little wiser, with a little bit more of an idea of what to do, but no matter what, you keep going, and you have fun.

'I'm not telling' pid='827148' dateline='1502827076' Wrote: Okay -- I read through the first two chapters yesterday, I think before you edited anything, so this probably is slightly out-of-context, but I'll stand behind what I wrote.

~

And then, you keep friggin' going. Maybe a little wiser, with a little bit more of an idea of what to do, but no matter what, you keep going, and you have fun.

I tend to do well with any form of critisism. Luckily, I'm not a fragile flower who'd allow himself to get discouraged over constructive critisism, so no worries there. :D

I did consider removing the programming joke. In fact, I should remove the fact he is a hacktivist from the synopsis as well. It's probably fine if the first scene is shrouded in more mystery. The only realy thing I wanted to convey with it, is that the character isn't just an average joe, but a pretty smart and intuitive fella. His programming skills are of no concern in the other world anyway.

After reading your post, I'll seriously consider changing some of that stuff in the near future.

And yes, I did want to skip over the childhood, because I find childhood stories before adentures to be hard to get through. They don't become interesting until after you're invested in the story. A good example would be Mushoku Tensei, I dropped that webnovel many times in earlier chapters, when I finally got through it though and got hooked, I loved the story.

Something like flashbacks might work for that. But flashback in a lull, huh.
I don't know. I chose 4 years old as a milestone for the chapter because that's the age the character would've settled in and would be a good time to introduce his mana perception ability and the fact she is training that and will be doing so throughout her childhood..
If I'd flash back to it, in chapter 3 when it becomes relevant, it'd happen just before the fight. Yeah, that would be bad timing.

At the same time, I also don't want to make the childhood too interesting. Because then I'd feel like lingering too much on it.

In any case, you've given me much food for thought. I will consider everything at length!

Thanks for your input.