RE: Advanced Review Wanted

#4
I'm not a big fan of the stars review system, but I'll leave you some critique here.

First off, your summary.

Please switch it around. You have the actual summary at the bottom, underneath your pledges and flavor text. That's a bit of a turn-off for me; when I open a story, I'm first interested in what it's actually about, and my interest in reading wanes the longer it takes the summary to tell me that. Not gonna lie, if I'd opened this on the front page, I'd have taken one look at the pledges thing and then closed the tab. I'd suggest you put the 'Lucius is...' bit at the top, then the 'if other LitRPG's...' bit, and then your pledges after that.

On to the first chapter!

Aaaaaand... no hook. You've got a weather opening, and it's not doing much for me. There's a reason 'it was a dark and stormy night' is ridiculed; weather openings are pretty hard to do in a way that grabs attention, because they're scenery description, not narration or action. I'd personally like to see some plot, or at least a little action, right off the bat; it really does help to pull me in. This is part of why in-media-res is loved by people doing NaNoWriMo; it's an easy way to grab people's attention early, even if it means chopping up the flow of events a bit. Well, it's not like slow starts can't work, especially if you're trying to write a more introspective piece, but yeah. I'm a fairly lazy reader, and if nothing grabs my interest, I'm likely to give up on it pretty easily. Maybe I'm just outside your audience.

On the prose:

General grammar isn't bad, but there's some pretty clunky phrasing here. Just one example, from the second paragraph:

'Yet this place remains to be the capital'

Try:

"Yet this is the capital'

'place remains to be' is just... needlessly indirect. Like saying 'proceed to begin' or something. The words you're using aren't carrying their weight there, they're just adding needless cruft to the sentence. I'd highly recommend you spend some time looking at your prose and thinking 'Can I say this with less words?' It's an exercise I've used a lot while writing, and I've always found it helpful.

A few more:

'living space remains to be scarce'

Try:

'living space is scarce'

'this endlessly vast earth'

Either 'endless' or 'vast' would probably be enough. If you don't need a modifier, cut it. The same meaning in less words is usually better than in more words. It hits harder and keeps the readers attention better. Well, maybe 'endlessly vast' is important to you here; it feels weak to me, but your style may just be different.

I'll stop here; I'm not really interested in line-by-lining this, and it might not be much help to you anyways. You write you, not me.

I'll keep reading this, and get back to you a bit later with impressions on the plot and characters.
Overgrowth - A dungeon-ish LitRPG starting with a shipwreck on a tropical island. Not isekai.

RE: Advanced Review Wanted

#5
'Not_A_Hat' pid='830542' dateline='1511899126' Wrote: I'm not a big fan of the stars review system, but I'll leave you some critique here.

First off, your summary.

Please switch it around. You have the actual summary at the bottom, underneath your pledges and flavor text. That's a bit of a turn-off for me; when I open a story, I'm first interested in what it's actually about, and my interest in reading wanes the longer it takes the summary to tell me that. Not gonna lie, if I'd opened this on the front page, I'd have taken one look at the pledges thing and then closed the tab. I'd suggest you put the 'Lucius is...' bit at the top, then the 'if other LitRPG's...' bit, and then your pledges after that.

On to the first chapter!

Aaaaaand... no hook. You've got a weather opening, and it's not doing much for me. There's a reason 'it was a dark and stormy night' is ridiculed; weather openings are pretty hard to do in a way that grabs attention, because they're scenery description, not narration or action. I'd personally like to see some plot, or at least a little action, right off the bat; it really does help to pull me in. This is part of why in-media-res is loved by people doing NaNoWriMo; it's an easy way to grab people's attention early, even if it means chopping up the flow of events a bit. Well, it's not like slow starts can't work, especially if you're trying to write a more introspective piece, but yeah. I'm a fairly lazy reader, and if nothing grabs my interest, I'm likely to give up on it pretty easily. Maybe I'm just outside your audience.

On the prose:

General grammar isn't bad, but there's some pretty clunky phrasing here. Just one example, from the second paragraph:

'Yet this place remains to be the capital'

Try:

"Yet this is the capital'

'place remains to be' is just... needlessly indirect. Like saying 'proceed to begin' or something. The words you're using aren't carrying their weight there, they're just adding needless cruft to the sentence. I'd highly recommend you spend some time looking at your prose and thinking 'Can I say this with less words?' It's an exercise I've used a lot while writing, and I've always found it helpful.

A few more:

'living space remains to be scarce'

Try:

'living space is scarce'

'this endlessly vast earth'

Either 'endless' or 'vast' would probably be enough. If you don't need a modifier, cut it. The same meaning in less words is usually better than in more words. It hits harder and keeps the readers attention better. Well, maybe 'endlessly vast' is important to you here; it feels weak to me, but your style may just be different.

I'll stop here; I'm not really interested in line-by-lining this, and it might not be much help to you anyways. You write you, not me.

I'll keep reading this, and get back to you a bit later with impressions on the plot and characters.

Thank you. I removed the reference to the weather, and I think I'll get right to the character's actions instead of describing the stuff surrounding him or something.  Those are pretty good points, especially me wasting needless (see what I did here?) words. 

I like my style, but I think becoming more direct will help it more. I'll try it with the newer chapter.  I look forward to hearing from you again.

Critique is always welcome.

These Games Of Ours

RE: Advanced Review Wanted

#6
Alright, I've read ten chapters, and I think I'm done. Here's a few more critiques.

You put in numerals for a lot of numbers that I'd normally expect to see as words. 5 foot 6, for example, instead of five foot six. Usually, the smaller the number, the less acceptable it is to use a numeral. I don't have the exact style guides on hand, but yeah.

For paragraphs, especially in the first few chapters, you seem to write pretty long blocks of text with several digressions in them that make the flow of thoughts hard to follow, like talking about how stingy the army is in a paragraph that's describing how someone feels about the cold. This makes things kinda hard to read for me; it's like the narrative is jumping all over the place, and I have a hard time concentrating on what's actually happening. I'd suggest working to break up your paragraphs a bit more, and maybe cutting out some of the asides that don't really tell us much about what's going on. If it's important that the army is stingy, there may be a better place to put that then when describing someone's physique.

Whatever backstory thing you've got going on with Lucius, it would have been nice to see some of that in the opening chapter. At first he's just an orphan, than a handful of pages later he's... I don't even know what. Some sort of secret assassin? It's intriguing, but I feel like that sort of person wouldn't end up starving on the streets, especially since he seems to have no compunction about killing. He's obviously skilled, and even said he'd kill for a meal. This doesn't seem to match his 'starving orphan' persona at all for me.

The fight feels kinda bloated. By chapter ten, we've had, like, three chapters of fighting ghouls. It feels a bit excessive, to be honest. Maybe I just tend more towards drama than action (although I do like some action) but by the time he killed his third or so ghoul, I was skimming pretty hard, especially since the battle didn't really seem to be going anywhere except more ghouls.

Throwing the blue boxes in there and surprising all the restaurant goers was interesting.

I can't really speak to the plot, since there really hasn't been a whole lot of interaction between the characters yet. Something's going on between the Captain and Kara and the fat rich guy, but it isn't exactly developed well enough to comment on.

Well, keep writing? This story is alright, in my opinion. I don't think it's what I'd choose to read myself, but there's surely an audience out there for it, and I feel it's got potential. I'd suggest you work on polishing your prose most of all; try and say things more clearly and cleanly, and keep the flow of the narration smooth; focus your paragraphs and tinker with your wording. A good proofread might help with some of that. Other than that, maybe focus on pacing the plot, because it's not really going much of anywhere yet, and that feels a bit slow to me. ...Although I'll admit, I'm probably just as guilty of that in my own stories.

I hope this was helpful, and I hope I didn't come off as unfair or too harsh. If you want more clarification on something, let me know.
Overgrowth - A dungeon-ish LitRPG starting with a shipwreck on a tropical island. Not isekai.

RE: Advanced Review Wanted

#7
'Not_A_Hat' pid='830550' dateline='1511906818' Wrote: Alright, I've read ten chapters, and I think I'm done. Here's a few more critiques.

You put in numerals for a lot of numbers that I'd normally expect to see as words. 5 foot 6, for example, instead of five foot six. Usually, the smaller the number, the less acceptable it is to use a numeral. I don't have the exact style guides on hand, but yeah.

For paragraphs, especially in the first few chapters, you seem to write pretty long blocks of text with several digressions in them that make the flow of thoughts hard to follow, like talking about how stingy the army is in a paragraph that's describing how someone feels about the cold. This makes things kinda hard to read for me; it's like the narrative is jumping all over the place, and I have a hard time concentrating on what's actually happening. I'd suggest working to break up your paragraphs a bit more, and maybe cutting out some of the asides that don't really tell us much about what's going on. If it's important that the army is stingy, there may be a better place to put that then when describing someone's physique.

Whatever backstory thing you've got going on with Lucius, it would have been nice to see some of that in the opening chapter. At first he's just an orphan, than a handful of pages later he's... I don't even know what. Some sort of secret assassin? It's intriguing, but I feel like that sort of person wouldn't end up starving on the streets, especially since he seems to have no compunction about killing. He's obviously skilled, and even said he'd kill for a meal. This doesn't seem to match his 'starving orphan' persona at all for me.

The fight feels kinda bloated. By chapter ten, we've had, like, three chapters of fighting ghouls. It feels a bit excessive, to be honest. Maybe I just tend more towards drama than action (although I do like some action) but by the time he killed his third or so ghoul, I was skimming pretty hard, especially since the battle didn't really seem to be going anywhere except more ghouls.

Throwing the blue boxes in there and surprising all the restaurant goers was interesting.

I can't really speak to the plot, since there really hasn't been a whole lot of interaction between the characters yet. Something's going on between the Captain and Kara and the fat rich guy, but it isn't exactly developed well enough to comment on.

Well, keep writing? This story is alright, in my opinion. I don't think it's what I'd choose to read myself, but there's surely an audience out there for it, and I feel it's got potential. I'd suggest you work on polishing your prose most of all; try and say things more clearly and cleanly, and keep the flow of the narration smooth; focus your paragraphs and tinker with your wording. A good proofread might help with some of that. Other than that, maybe focus on pacing the plot, because it's not really going much of anywhere yet, and that feels a bit slow to me. ...Although I'll admit, I'm probably just as guilty of that in my own stories.

I hope this was helpful, and I hope I didn't come off as unfair or too harsh. If you want more clarification on something, let me know.

Not at all, this was hell of a helpful. You've given me much to think about. 

The only thing is that in the status screen he had the path of "deserter." He's  not an assassin, just a trained soldier, whose from a different kingodom even. He's an outlaw, and he can hardly just go back, or re-renter the army.  And though he is more than willing to kill to survive, he's not just gonna kill everytime he needs to eat. All he knows is the army, and when you take that from him, he doesn't have much else, does he? No name or family? connections?

I mean, he wasn't starving, just very hungry. Does that seem plausible to you?

Critique is always welcome.

These Games Of Ours

RE: Advanced Review Wanted

#8
'13900IPForThis' pid='830559' dateline='1511930346' Wrote: Not at all, this was hell of a helpful. You've given me much to think about. 

The only thing is that in the status screen he had the path of "deserter." He's  not an assassin, just a trained soldier, whose from a different kingodom even. He's an outlaw, and he can hardly just go back, or re-renter the army.  And though he is more than willing to kill to survive, he's not just gonna kill everytime he needs to eat. All he knows is the army, and when you take that from him, he doesn't have much else, does he? No name or family? connections?

I mean, he wasn't starving, just very hungry. Does that seem plausible to you?


Errr... I'll be honest, I didn't actually read the blue screens very closely. '-.- I generally don't bother digging through them, because what's important is usually explained in the story, and there's often quite a lot of not-important stuff that I just can't be bothered with. That's on my weak attention span, though. Deserter makes a lot more sense than assassin.

As for the starving thing... well, I felt like it was there pretty strongly in the opening, but I probably misread it. It might be because 'starving orphan' is a bit of a trope, and that's what my mind jumped to first? Think Oliver Twist or something; this dystopian city, and a scrawny youth with his nose pressed up against a restaurant window, I guess I figured he was much less capable (and therefore probably hungrier) than he seemed later.

Adding a bit of foreshadowing for his backstory in the opening might be enough to break that; if he seemed less weak, I might not have thought he was so hungry, and it might make his fighting skills in the ghoul fight seem a bit less like a reveal.

I'm glad my thoughts were helpful. :)
Overgrowth - A dungeon-ish LitRPG starting with a shipwreck on a tropical island. Not isekai.

RE: Advanced Review Wanted

#9
'Not_A_Hat' pid='830560' dateline='1511938923' Wrote:
'13900IPForThis' pid='830559' dateline='1511930346' Wrote: Not at all, this was hell of a helpful. You've given me much to think about. 

The only thing is that in the status screen he had the path of "deserter." He's  not an assassin, just a trained soldier, whose from a different kingodom even. He's an outlaw, and he can hardly just go back, or re-renter the army.  And though he is more than willing to kill to survive, he's not just gonna kill everytime he needs to eat. All he knows is the army, and when you take that from him, he doesn't have much else, does he? No name or family? connections?

I mean, he wasn't starving, just very hungry. Does that seem plausible to you?


Errr... I'll be honest, I didn't actually read the blue screens very closely. '-.- I generally don't bother digging through them, because what's important is usually explained in the story, and there's often quite a lot of not-important stuff that I just can't be bothered with. That's on my weak attention span, though. Deserter makes a lot more sense than assassin.

As for the starving thing... well, I felt like it was there pretty strongly in the opening, but I probably misread it. It might be because 'starving orphan' is a bit of a trope, and that's what my mind jumped to first? Think Oliver Twist or something; this dystopian city, and a scrawny youth with his nose pressed up against a restaurant window, I guess I figured he was much less capable (and therefore probably hungrier) than he seemed later.

Adding a bit of foreshadowing for his backstory in the opening might be enough to break that; if he seemed less weak, I might not have thought he was so hungry, and it might make his fighting skills in the ghoul fight seem a bit less like a reveal.

I'm glad my thoughts were helpful. :)

I just wrote what would happen in the future as the prologue. Let me know if it fixes the hook issue.

Critique is always welcome.

These Games Of Ours