EternalNightLotus
A very strong opening chapter. As a reader, I was kept on my toes, wondering what sort of plight the protagonist had found themselves in. I speculated paralysis at first. The way in which you described her disconnected state was near flawless, in my opinion. I look forward to seeing what you have in store next. :)
Hello! I wanted to thank you for giving me a power stone every day, so I've decided to read your story as well. So far it seems good, I feel that I'm not far enough in to really say anything worthwhile, but I am left wondering exactly where you will take things from here. I will continue reading to see!
At first, I didnt know where it was going with the lengthy monologue but soon I realized that it was mix of foreshadowing her current situation and a simple look back at her previous life. Very well done, but you could split the chapter into two or maybe three. As most readers myself included prefer shorter chapters. Anywhere from 1200-1500 words per chapter is good. And 1800-2000 is lengthy but alright. Consider it.
Hmm, this is a relatively interesting start. Your “hook” is intriguing to make people want to read on for sure. Also, your grammar and basics are pretty good! This book seems popular, so you might not need any advise. That said, I’m going to list what I would improve and stop reading. Don’t read on if you dont want constructive criticism. - Tense switching While your grammar was pretty good, you went from first person past to first person present a lot. It seems like your story is meant to be past tense, So keep it that way. Things like “I am scared right now” are present tense. This is only acceptable if it is in speech like this: “I am so scared,” I said back when this happened. You can also do internal monologue or thoughts, but it still has to be in quotes: “I am so scared,” I thought back then. - Show don’t tell! This is my biggest critism of your first chapter. Saying things like, “I am scared” or “It is scary” do nothing for your reader! Make us feel scared or feel eriee without dIrecty saying it. Granted, this is hard when your character has no body. For the most part, I think you can just delete all of the “I am scared” stuff and add internal monolog or what the MC is trying to do. For example, I think that this would be better: I tried to scream for help, but I couldnt make a sound. Silence enveloped me and was deafening. This makes me feel sort of powerless and scared without saying “I couldn’t talk, so I was scared.” There are a ton of examples of this. It’s literally everywhere. Here is one more example: When your character “tries long and hard” to move but can’t. Don’t just say that! Make your reader experiance the “trying long and hard” but being unable to move! Here is what i would do after deleteing that paragraph completely: I trIed to wiggle my toes, but they didn’t respond. Next, I tred to just move one finger. Nothing. My limbs were gone, or it felt like it. Concentrating and struggling were useless, I couldn’t even blink if I wanted to. Something like that makes the reader go through the experiance with your character. There is no need to say they struggled for a long time or that it was unnerving because the reader FEELS it with your character. I would rewrite everything here with that in mind, even though I love the concept of this chapter. - Drop the odd self awareness that your character has Why does your character “realize” that they should be insane but something is preventing it? That is a stupid level of self awareness for a scared girl that thinks she is dead. It’s more likely that she is thinking, “I’m going to go insane” or that she is just scared. This is just too deep an analysis for someone to make in this state in my opinion. This also applies to a few other things. i get that she is trying to figure out what happened to her, which is good, bust some of it is cringey. Another example is after she consIders being in a vat somewhere and says, “That would be cool though…” Would it be cool? Really? Thats all I got for now. Hopefully this helps a bit! Your story seems like its good, these are just things that I think could improve the story based on this one chapter. I do love the intense focus on the characters mental state! It’s a nice change of pace.