Review Detail of Chryiss in Urasaria Academy

Thank you for your review - I legitimately appreciate it. I'm responding, if only to hopefully justify my decisions while I take some time rewriting. I agree that Chapter 1 is one of the worst in the series. I don't intend for this to be an argument, merely my reply - a 1-side/1-side for viewers. None of this is intended as aggressive. "You can keep this jump-right in beginning, but more details need to be threaded through sections to explain: 1) what a Revenant is and the whole conflict about them (I read the synopsis and understood a little better, but a story synopsis never should be in place of actual clarification/information in a book); 2) Urasaria and what exactly everyone's doing there by catching other revenants, like what purpose/founded by for what reason, what makes one person with a Revenants allowed to attend versus those indicted as criminals; 3) and the world background of this world, the laws, the people, culture, society, make it envisionable, how this and Revenants came to be about, etc." You mentioned you were able to understand better further in the chapter, but to answer these details & where they are implicitly answered - Urasaria Academy is a law-enforcement institute ("it seemed that many who thought negatively of students viewed them similarly to civilian police."). Revenants are superpowers that take the form of bacterial colonies on one's heart (how they're referred to as "hosts"). Some born with Revenants use their powers to commit crime and students kill them to keep the peace ("Mia could call to mind enough violent criminals to feel no sympathy when Urasaria students killed them.") Urasaria was founded by the government for this purpose & hosts are forced to attend (second scene). The background/culture/laws is modern-day America ("Go tell a radiation victim in California students are too violent", Makoto's reference to Iran), which also explains the sparseness in world-building. There are others, but that's the first instance of each. Details such as "Volgari proteins" become more relevant later - it's initially meant to add mystery that Mia shouldn't be able to host a Revenant, if characters are to be trusted. The intended technique is for the reader to gradually world-build via the rendering of details only as-needed. "Way too many characters introduced when Mia arrived at Urasaria. It was very difficult keeping track of who's who, what they do, their potential significance in the story, what they said. Only Aimee I sort of followed due to her speaking and interacting with Mia the most." It's a bit much; I might cut Atori & Dmitri until later, maybe more time with Makoto/Hirogane and no mention of Luna. As you mention, I attempt to alleviate this by keeping with Mia or Aimee the whole time. "I found Aimee's character to be inconsistent. She's the top of the school, yet she has many verbal pauses, aka "um", while she speaks to Mia. I'm guessing because many female Revenants are lesbians, Aimee is attracted to Mia. But if so, then her nervousness cannot just be conveyed by her dialogue." I don't believe she's inconsistent. Her Revenant (later shown in full) is the type of ability where almost anyone could achieve rank #1 off it, which is solely how many criminals killed, and she's also lonely enough she's considered swearing off dating entirely. The intent is layering her character by her being an accomplished fighter yet a klutz with women, just as a Don Juan might be a coward. "This goes for all characters too. More gestures and "context" in between dialogue is necessary. It's partly due to so much back and forth dialogue between multiple characters that also made it so hard to follow. However, you are skilled in creating the dialogue itself, even if feels like too much at times because of this." Thank you for the compliment. Urasaria is definitely dialogue-heavy.

"For every kind of relationship, usually it's not "love at first sight" or "I want to (beep) you/get in your pants" unless said person is not using their upper brain as much as they should. You can have love at first sight, but it's very tricky to make it well done without making it feel unrealistic and cringey. In your case, this could be more successfully accomplished with more in-between words outside dialogue such as inner thoughts, noticing of gestures and features that are attractive, etc. Otherwise, it'll feel contrived or superficial." It may be a failure of my words, but Aimee's crush on Mia was not intended as "love at first sight", nor is she a sexual person. She finds Mia physically attractive and becomes quickly attracted due to her own loneliness & that she gets to help Mia - a trait I've found common in lesbians, and illustrated by the line where Aimee realizes she's "thrown her thoughts in to Mia's basket without knowing her sexuality." Later chapters show she's also the type to fantasize about perfect relationships. The note on observation reminds me of one of the better parts of Revolutionary Road, I'll consider it, thank you. "Thus, many details for settings, world background, and even the personalities, thoughts, and feelings of characters are greatly left out. This isn't at all ideal for a book, and considering so many characters are introduced at once, I can imagine it'll become overwhelming or frustrating for some readers, especially since the chapter is very long, so the struggle of understanding everything feels very drawn out." I would disagree with it being un-ideal for a book, but I am also currently reading a friend's novel even heavier on dialogue. For settings, I don't do description if it's something the reader can imagine themselves. For character's personalities, the characterizations (besides Mia's) are admittedly sparse in the first chapter - I was worried readers would be turned off if I indulged my inner literature writer. Beware that you've now given me an excuse to. "Back to the dialogue, you're generally good at crafting the dialogue, the part in quotes. But all the stuttering is a little much." Believe me, it used to be worse. I'm still trying to figure a better way to convey anxiety through dialogue. I considered having Mia's dialogue be legitimately awkward, but it's difficult to distinguish between actual awkward dialogue & unintentionally flawed dialogue. "I know Mia is very shy and awkward, but unless she has some medical condition that causes to stutter in basically every sentence, then I really don't see the logical reason for expressing that awkward quality through stuttering. Honestly, if it weren't for the stutters, she sounds and acts like another other normal person. If you want to really describe her as shy and awkward, then you must do so through other means besides mainly dialogue." I stutter about as much she does initially & don't have a medical condition besides being a loser. But it *is* that she stutters that makes her awkward (along with her naivete & immaturity). She's afraid of getting a job, has no friends besides her parents & has never dated, and is disliked in lesbian communities because, while she agrees with the popular anti-cop position, she does not cast Urasaria students within that bucket - partially due to her fangirlism. Within the text, I believe it's only mentioned "It wasn't as if she was an outcast - she spoke awkwardly and had trouble socializing. She hoped she was normal in most other aspects..." once. She's never described as shy outside the synopsis.

"The frequent cutting of sentences such as in the fighting/testing scene with Mia's new Revenant makes it a little disjointed to read. (...) The punctuation is often incorrect such as with "Sweet." said Name. instead of "Sweet," said Name. or "Sweet." Said Name." The former is the Urasaria fight style - all fights are written like this, because I found proper sentences inadequate to convey the speed of Revenant fights. The latter is an aesthetic choice but internally consistent, as I prefer the former over the latter. "In short, you have an interesting story idea going, but you lack the necessary information for readers to latch onto and understand those ideas. By including more settings, background, gestures/movements, and inner descriptions of characters' while also organizing their introductions in a more batch by batch way and not all at once, I think you'll have an intriguing and more successful story that draws more readers in and retains them. I thought about continuing to chapter 3 as you mentioned, but doing so wouldn't change everything that I stated above because this is based on suggesting proper writing and story technique in order to compel readers to read and continue. I didn't have a problem with the plot, just the execution of writing this story, and reading a nice scene between Mia and Hirogane in chapter 3 isn't going to change my opinion." If you're curious, the reason I mentioned C3 is because it's a turning point in Mia's development & a moment that completely sums Hirogane's character. The following chapters stick to Mia/Aimee/Marisa, but are still the same stylistically. Thank you for the review. I will likely not implement the world-building or description changes, but as you've given me a good excuse to include more characterization, beware. These changes will likely be implemented later tonight, and I appreciate where you do praise what I've done well.

Revolutionary Road is a good book to learn from, I do agree. And no need for me to beware on more characterization since imo having more than necessary is better than less. If she isn’t shy, then maybe take that out of the synopsis? I’m not going to go back and forth on this since it seems we differ on several things, but that’s the point of reviews, it’s coming from another perspective. I’m glad it was helpful to any degree for you. All the best with writing, keep at it~!