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Review Detail of MasterHexer in Sileo (Restart)

Review detail

MasterHexer
MasterHexerLv33yrMasterHexer

I'm after reading chapter sixth but I have to rant a bit, so I'm gonna split the review into two parts. The judgement, and then ranting with a bit of pointer for the author. The judgement! (Behold!): The story starts great. The mood is delivered easily, and characters are so damn quickly fleshed out, that they feel real (that's a talent right there). Conversations with sister, then with the cat are solid 5/5. Interesting, entertaining, real. Really great job. The same with the story. The first two chapters give you a promise of something great, but then unfortunately the ball is dropped... Rant part: You (the Author) drop the ball! You lose the flow of the story, make tons of mistakes that you previously weren't doing. And it's not just the grammar mistakes (you can fix them easily), but rather tons of other things. I feel like you are pounding each sentence into the story. Your descriptions fall off. There is no sense of passing time, and you don't stick to your world-building. Everybody has a familiar, but suddenly there is only a cat and an owl. You have tons of other characters, but the animals stay in the number of two. Now a word about characters. Don't put so many (named ones!) of them when they are not important. You just flood your readers with names, and they can't remember them, which introduces chaos into the story. The reader needs to be able to keep understanding what is going on. Now about the behaviors. Why Elizabeth is eating poisoned food when she is informed by Otto, that it's poisoned? It's not like she knew the other people for years and is trusting them, right? Would you eat candy from a stranger? If she does that because she is hungry, you don't provide that information for readers. In that case, you have to pound that information into your readers, so they can feel for your character, and agree with the choice. For me it's irrational. They have been there for me, I have no idea how long. It feels like 30 minutes at most. Then there is Ater ( The cat?). He tries to hide his identity, pretends to be a cat, then he suddenly throws the whole masquerade and starts talking. Why? Stick to your world-building. Make notes if you have to. I currently have 27 pages of them for my story. It really helps. Now about the background. It was your weakest point in the first chapter, which for me was almost perfect. The only weak point was the scenery. You describe it, but only partially. You wrote this: "Otto Kattering blinked and looked at the falling sunset. Beautiful scenery, but a still-sad disposition could be the only thing that described it." Then few paragraphs later, you wrote this: "Beth and Otto stood near the edge of the water, legs hanging over the boarding area as their feet felt the cool waters" Why you don't establish the scenery in one place? You should combine this, and your readers would have a clear image of what's going on from the start. You cant paint the picture, then suddenly add another part. That's not how the imagination works. Somewhere I read that good description should start with the light, just as you did, because that's the first thing we see. Then the most standing out elements. Then the sound, then the smell. From general stuff, to specific. Of course, this is not a recipe for the cake, so use it as you think is the correct way for you. Now the most important thing that would benefit your writing ( I believe). Read what you write. After finishing a paragraph, read it, then fix it. All people do it, especially pro writers. I think you stopped doing it after the two first chapters, and the quality of your story started to decline. Btw. The first sentence of your story: "'Otto', Otto stared at the person calling him name". His name. It's a small thing, not really important. But this sentence: "'We can't leave her, she's in our party,' Otto argued back, not really an argument rather a point, 'Her skill might be interesting to see in action. It'd be a waste.' Ater grumbled." "not really an argument rather a point" - this shouldn't exist. It has no point, no purpose, only disrupts your story. I'm rambling this hard because I believe you have a talent, so don't take it personally. Your first chapters were the best I have read so far on this site. You really had me in those two first chapters, but then... Anyway. I hope those words will help you improve. Good luck with your writing endeavors!

altalt

Sileo (Restart)

Katzenliebe

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Katzenliebe
KatzenliebeAuthorKatzenliebe

Thank you very much for telling me (I was really scared that I'd end up doing something like that because I talk like that). I wrote the descriptions like that with some hesitance? Wasn't sure if people would think it was good or bad, but I guess it's not okay (tbh... when I read I just add the little details that authors add in along the way...) I do read what I write, I just assume that people will make the same assumptions that I made and so somethings aren't clear (And I know this happens because sometimes I talk about something someone said three months ago and they go "What are you talking about???", and I know that is sounds like I have zero clue what I'm writing about because I sound like I have zero clue what I'm talking about Q.Q). I'll go back and fix anything that I just assume people will correlate with. It was something that didn't bother me as much because there weren't a lot of people mentioning it so I thought people were making the sort of watery connections... (Thank you a lot for telling me though, like really OvO) I'll try to fix the sense of time as good as I can (idk I just can't write grammar properly), but I really have zero clue how to display [this is one hour, that is ten minutes] or something like that... About Elizabeth... She's illogical like that. I was planning on keeping her that way (She wasn't really supposed to be sympathized for being stupid) but I mean it is really stupid... I'll change her (I guess? I'm not sure how I'm supposed to display her comedic level of stupidity in another way). And also Ater... He was sort of the type of person (cat... I guess) to do things that were to his advantage but the second they became disadvantageous, he'd drop it and run off a different plan (But I should've added a bit where everyone goes Ater can talk?? I'm sorry about the confusion on that...) I tried to limit the named characters, but they will just pile up (I mean, like... there's already what... 13 people that should sort of be remembered which is a lot. The familiars, some of them, I should add the bits for that. I didn't add them, but I'll add them. (I was like; am I seriously going to write that there was a plethora of animals dancing around being weird or something and debated no... But I should've because it's weird I guess) I'll try to keep the wordiness to a minimum and I'll try to fix everything, but it might take a few weeks to get through all the chapters again because I'm slow at writing (like it takes me four hours to write... 2000 words on a mediocre day). Thank you again for telling me OvO