You said this was your first novel so I hope you'll read through this criticism and try to improve your future writing for the better. Please reply if you want to discuss anything. You need to finish up some of the arcs of the story and kill off some of the side characters since nobody cares about them. For instance the Venomshade assassination arc should've ended long ago with all the mysteries behind it being uncovered. Adding mysteries on top of mysteries out of nowhere along with relentless and constant action is not a good way to pace your story. You need to divide it into segments, arcs if you will which each have a clear ending and beginning where the mysteries and drama and action of each are solved. This prevents the excessive and annoying pileup of random characters and random events which get while humorous at the beginning merely get annoying after a while. Furthermore, the pacing of the novel is a tad ridiculous as event after event happens for seemingly no apparent reason merely bringing more confusion and chaos into the story. You make the world you're building seem so small at times by making all the important characters surround and revolve around the mc which leaves no further development later into the story and honestly make what could be a large and interesting world seem tiny and bland. This brings me to the next flaw which are the blatant plot holes within the novel. These are a major issue within the novel which jad me scratching my head quite a couple times. For instance why is it you can just bring the soul of the planet away from its home with absolutely no consequences. Why is it that divine bloodlines and divine god bloodlines seem to pop up from nowhere even though they're abdurdly overpowered and supposedly rare. How does Fang Lin remember getting bullied when he was younger even though he was the spoiled young master bullying everybody. Why is it that planet souls aren't more secretly guarded by the sect who obtains them so they can be exploited, or alternatively fought over far more bitterly. After all those who control the soul basically rule the planet and after all no cultivator is truly good every single one of them is ruthless in futthering their cultivation, just look at CNs. If devourers are just defected planet souls why don't powerful practitioners perform experiments trying to create devourers and enslave them for their purposes? Why is Fang Lin to trusting of everybody and seems to think that people aren't decieving or exploiting him(more of a character flaw)? If people can take soul binding oaths or swear things on their soul why isn't this used more often in the world, this seems to be a major flaw as it should be extremely difficult to swindle people with the addition of these omniscient oaths after all just have people take oaths not to lie. You need to implement a meth9d around these. Fang Lin claims to be extremely scared about revealing his bloodline and claims it'd be a disaster if people knew yet it seems.to get leaked almost every 5 chapters. So many people know it's a wonder that it isn't public knowledge. He needs to take far more care in keeping it a secret after all people who know about it have the potential to exploit him with their knowledge. Why does he just tell Tang Ya about his bloodline? He should be far more concerned about the secret spreading. Why doesn't Fang Yu considering killing Andromeda and taking the inheritance. Perhaps it can't be taken, but at least have her consider it give and explanation for the benefit of the readers. How is it that out of the numerous powerhouses-all with their own various trump-cards that died all lost to Wang Hao easily in the Underworld competition. For that matter how was he able to rob them by threatening their life when they could just unseal their cultivationa dn get DQed easily saving both their life and possessions. Why is it thay anybody is able to become the Yama's successor leaving the seat open to exploitation by anybody including the Yama's enemies. These are just a few of the kore blatant flaws I can remember off the top of my head right now In addition to all this the characters at times also seem completely one dimensional if not contradictory. For instance Wang Hao is purely the perverted master, he purely wants his own harem and seems to pursue nothing but teaching occasionally and building his harem. He needs more character built into him, for instance a more sinister plot such as exploitation of Fang Lin's bloodline by actually stealing some of his cultivation or vitality, etc.... After all it wouldn't make sense for him to not use the goldmine in front of him since all cultivators in CNs are completely ruthless. Xiao Ya's personality is almost pure lust, Tang Li's is merely the annoying child, Fang Xiushang is the arrogant master, Xuer is the loyal wife, etc... These characters need more backstory or sinister intent to them befitting a cultivation novel. For instance Xiao Ya could be merely manipulating Fang Lin to use as an attack dog for her sect while instilling loyalty to her and his fellow disciples within him. Fang Xiushang could be merely putting on a facade since he's merely a puppet of the Fang clan and isn't truly meant to be the successor. In addition the characters in this story seem to always obtain things easily such as Fang Lin's breakthrough being described as simply exceptional or such. We should see the charscters struggle for resources over tens of chapters and plot and scheme against others to survive and thrive. On this note Fang Lin's character is quite annoying at times. For instance sometimes he is against killing and at others he is seemingly ruthless such as against Ling Tian. We need to see a gradual character change from innocence to cruel and heartlessly evil as he experiences life in the cultivation world after all only the ruthless succeed in cultivation. This can be done through timeskips or major events. We *should* see Fang Lin becoming crueller and more ruthless for example later in the story he might try and exploit innocent people such as Tang Li to further his own cultivation. This would be an interesting character development that should be added to orevent the mc from becoming 1 dimensional and static. Finally you need to add detail into the story. Even small details help such as the weather during certain major events or a little backstory. But you especially need to add detail to the cultivation process, especially major differences between high ranking gods and immortals, since we as the reader don't always understand what is required to advance or how the mc should struggle to obtain certain things for advancements. People also want to see different cultivation methods as this adds interesting elements to the story. For example body cultivation or blood arts or buddhisr sutra, etc.. used to advanced cultivation. Hopefully this critique helps you improve your writing. Hope you looked through it and agreed with me on at least some stuff and will try to improve on it. Sorry if this came off rude or offensice, it wasn't meant to be, it merely was meant to help you out with your first novel. Good luck and have fun writing.
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oof, that's a lot. well for the soul oath thingy, that can be circumvented if the one who made the oath worded his oath differently. For example, I want my enemy to promise to never harm me or my family as long as I was alive. My enemy, being a cunning one, decided to say "I swear with my soul that I will not harm you or your family as long as you are alive." But he said "I" . that means it was only him that could not harm me or my family. He can just make others do the dirty job and voila, the oath was now circumvented. Of course skirting around such oaths will bring a slight backlash to the one who skirted around it. As for the cultivation part, Fang Lin was still around the 2nd and 3rd stage, so I will only give details around that. As for your inquiries about the soul devourers, there will be an arc focusing on them entirely. And huhuhuhu, do you have at least some good things that you found in my novel? I just want to know if I still have some redeeming points.
Fair enough for the soul thing, Im just concerned about people being forced to sworn not to lie. As for redeeming points you have a lot, don't worry about that I was just focusing on flaws to suggest improvement. For instance your quality of writing is definitely far above average and your update rate is fantastic and steady. Your writing flows nicely most of the time and there are no flqws in your grammar. Your story actually has a coherent structure that readers can understand which may be a problem for many original novels. The flaws are mainly within the novel itself instead of within the writing. Your writing style itself is excellent you just need to slow dowm the overall pacing of the story and focus more on the small details and development. If this slows down update rate that's not even a problem considering how amazing and steady your current rate is.
wait, so does that mean the first 64 chapters are ok? because they were unedited, and I have no time yet to edit them
No, not necessarily. In fact I feel that the first 64 chapters may have put quite a few people off in fact. For instance the Ice Empress Sect was randomly inserted with no real significance to the story and Fang Lin manages to somehow easily catch the attention of all these major players who revolve around him and elevate his status. In addition the fact that you just shower the characters with blessings and skills without having them work hard to achieve any of them may have discouraged some readers from your novel. I feel that throughout the novel, but especially at the beginning, we should see the characters struggle and fight desperately for resources to advance and prosper instead of having everything delivered to them on a golden plate. It isn't necessarily bad though as we can see the improvement in your writing as time goes on, so you don't *have* to stop and edit it right now. Instead you should wait until you've reached a decent position within the novel to go back and revise them.
What I can admire about you is that you can actually take criticism and respond to your readers pointing out your flaws and hopefully try to improve on them. I've seen many authors sometimes blatantly refuse to even acknowledge criticism, so this is a great virtue of yours.
ah, I was worried that I was wrong in grammar or in story flow at those chapters.......
No your grammar is great and your passage structuring is fine. It's mainly how you approach the plot that is the problem. For instance having too many random things happen that play no major effect or making the characters all seem benign and *****ly good. Your writing itself, however, is excellent
Just glancing back through the story another example of something that could be improved on is when he decides to reveal his power as Ricardo. He's supposed to be traveling incognito, yet he seems to casually brush all that off as he reveals himself as a high profile Divine Blood user. You should at least have him weight the benefits of showing off and killing Ling Tian vs the drawbacks, or at least have him consider offing the witnesses. I can approve of his desire to off Ling Tian while obtaining his knowledge, however, the way he so casually goes against his original intents and places himself in a dangerous position is a bit awkward for the story.
In addition to this falling asleep right after just makes it all the more risky of an endeavor
I hope you won't mind if I just give thoughts about and highlight some flaws in the story for you here
Another thing to keep in mind is that it might be better to separate humor and plot. By this I mean don't use humor to further the plot, especially not through ridiculous scenarios. For example typing up Androdema and getting her captured. Your humor is great, but I don't feel it shouldbe used as a main factor in driving forward the plot.
Something else to just keep note of is the idea that it might be better to not just tell the readers what the restrictions of a particular ability are. For example instead of aaying it can't be used for the next day, say that he felt weak after using it and was sure that if he tried to activate it again without recovering he would die. Thanks for reading and bearing all my criticisms
Something else to take note of is when Tang Li expels the 6* from the planet it seems a tad unrealistic. After all how can the planet soul be so far away from the planet and yet not be affected in anyway at all. She shouldn't be able to exert her powers over such a great distance or at least they should be much weaker.
Another thing to note before I forget is that after Xuer and the other disciples died it seemed a bit strange to have the characters grieve for only about 3 chapters before turning back to normal. Especially since you mentioned how Fang Lin had changed and became more serious, yet a couple chapters later he's back to normal and seems to have forgotten their deaths.
um, Fang Yu brought Tang Li to the planet with him when they switched
Ah that makes more sense. Still on the other hand why cann planet souls leave the planet so easily?
because the soul has a new vessel, which is its new body, like the Planet soul in Thrae now resides in Tang Li's body.
But would moving the soul not be detrimental to the planet's growth? After all if the vessel leaves the planet the soul still has to maintain connection to that vessel over a fairly far distance.
not really. after all, they will be needed to be near each other once Tang Li reaches Immortal Stage
Not really sure what you mean by this
