Review Detail of Dr_SaltedFish in Universal Mercenary System
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Original score would be 1.6, but I'm leaving it as 3 as encouragement. There are many details that are not well thought out, and it hurts the story. I'll try to keep things to main points, so it doesn't drag too much. Writing: below average at best, grammar and vocabulary needs more improvement. If possible, you might want to get a proper editor to help you. You often add irrelevant or redundant details to your sentences, eg. Repeating 'excited' 2 or 3 times in one paragraph. Your writing is uninteresting, it doesn't draw in the reader, you tell them what happens instead of showing it. Eg. 'The gun clicks, which says it's empty.' The transition from this to the remaining fight scene is choppy. One way to improve on the fight scenes is to play with the MC's 'body' a bit, toy with the perspectives and add more physical detail to make it more dynamic. Eg. 'He frowned at that click. Empty huh... Daggers then, as he pulled them out from the inventory. MC leapt towards the enemies in one move, and decapitate the nearest assassin with his momentum. It took them a second to orient themselves from his sudden action, and MC exploited that. Another decapitation to his right and he pushed himself off to the one on his left. That one's next.' Don't tell us about the fight, be in the fight with MC, show us how it went, make us feel as if we are him/with him experiencing the action. Don't write a static scene for us, it feels like MC just took pot shots at stationary targets instead, target 1 here, he stabs, target 2 there, he shoots. 'His heart was thumping loudly, adrenaline was one hell of a drug. He couldn't stop the mad grin crawling up his face as he went after the last one. Pistol out, MC stared at no.10 right in the eye as he pulled the trigger. That shot rang out loudly in the now silent night, "Ding" went his system, as the completion screen popped up in his view. All done before dinner too, perfect.' Your characters: let's start with MC first, he is a robot. If he does not emote often, then add in more details/adjectives to the times that he does. A shy smile, a devious grin, a sly smirk, burning anger, frustrated roar, gritting his teeth in frustration, murderous rage. That would let readers know more about him, how strong were his emotions on the scale at that point. Charcaters who don't express much emotions tends to exaggerate their emotions more when they do, was that how your MC is like? How worried was he on the scale? Pacing around in circles, biting his lips, staring into the distance deep in his thoughts? It helps in character building so we are not stuck with a blank template of MC. At this point, all I know of him is he has white hair, purple eyes (?), is 17, seems to have almost no emotions. Your side charcaters are also very unrealistic. The girl just went through a traumatic event, had the MC decapitate a man in front of her, was probably covered in that man's blood together with MC and she just decides that this person could be trusted? Sharing a hotel room, then a bed with him? No night terror? No despair over her sh*tty life? The instant MC appeared, she was cured of all her problems in life. No need for psychologist or anything? The lackey is also the same. They trust far too easily after just experiencing a traumatic event. Plot: I guess it's going to be a typical xianxia plot then, just need the dumb bimbo harem to appear before everything's in place. I'm not going to expand on my disdain for this trope. Plot convinience, plot armour and mary sue characters are the main flaw for this type of plot. Please do not make this girl one of his future love interest, otherwise this would be grooming, and that's messed up.
Universal Mercenary System
Yue_Hajime
Được 5 người thích
giốngTrả lời4
Thanks for the review! In all honesty, I am aware that my story is too undeveloped. As you say, my fight scenes and character designs are not that great, and I will try and use your tips within further chapters. Hopefully I would be able to improve quickly, or I would just need to take the time to improve slowly. Also, she won't become a love interest, and will just stay as a little sister. Once again, thanks for the review. Hopefully it will help me further improve my stories.
Appreciate that you're not offended by the seemingly harsh review. I wanted to condense my points as much as possible since the space is limited. You can start small by adding more environmental details. Like the factory, steel doors? Concrete walls? Decrepit state? Too well maintained for an abandoned place? What I usually do is to have a few stock photos of the kind of factory that I want, then craft the description based on that and edit in the necessary changes due to the circumstances in the story. So with the location built, next comes MC and their interaction. This hidden mechanism, how does it work? Let say it's the traditional loose brick hidden switch mechanic. If the trainers have been entering and leaving the place, that brick would have been moved many times, in this case this brick will be more worn than the others. Or if the trainers were crafty, prehaps they replaced it with a new brick purposefully weathered to blend in with the rest, which MC noticed. So from this blending brick trick, you already showed the readers how crafty the trainers were and how sharp the MC is. Your readers know MC is sharp, but how sharp is he really? Some sherlock styled investigation here could add more depth to his charcater perhaps. It's a shame you gave the system a map, that spoils quite a bit of the suspense and possible development scenes you could havd included. Battles scenes are one of the harder ones to get right. For me, I imagine myself trying to choreograph a dance, draw ****** diagrams on the position of MC and the enemies, how will they move or react to the actions of another? Typically, I give per enemy a trait, 1 is cautious, 2 is reckless, 3 has an explosive temper. Then choreograph the scene. Try out different styles and format, find what you're more comfortable writing. It helps if you also analyse/watch action movies/shows/drama with many fight scenes to get inspiration. If your fights are more exaggerated, then anime fights can be an inspiration too.
Yue_Hajime:Thanks for the review! In all honesty, I am aware that my story is too undeveloped. As you say, my fight scenes and character designs are not that great, and I will try and use your tips within further chapters. Hopefully I would be able to improve quickly, or I would just need to take the time to improve slowly. Also, she won't become a love interest, and will just stay as a little sister. Once again, thanks for the review. Hopefully it will help me further improve my stories.
I'm also not sure how well you know about what being a mercenary entails. It feels like he's on a regular job here rather than a high risk high reward job. In his situation, where assassinations are possible part of his job scope, he is taking too much risk in his daily life. His hair and eye is not inconspicuous, yet he doesn't tries anything to blend in (even when his family was searching for him). He walks around openly doing grocery shopping, eating in restaurants etc. He's making tracking him and where he lives very easy for his stalkers. Will the cops be involved? His victims obviously died from foul play, no one investigated? Does he have any exit plan or safe houses? As far as his clients are concerned, he is just a tool to be used. They pay him, he fixes things for them, that's it. It's very unlikely that powerful clients will meet with him personally, not when it might be traced back to themselves (no matter how unlikely). They are more likely to have someone else mediate the arrangements (like having a lawyer speak on your behalf, except higher risk). They don't know who he is, even if he's a nice guy, he still kills people for a living (how flexible is your morals really if you can make killing people part of your job?). It's not fair to MC, but these powerful clients don't care, they cannot afford to be implicated because they will lose everything. Have you seen any drama along the themes of corrupted high ranking officials doing every dirty thing in the book to dispose of the protagonist trying to uncover them? Those sort of clue you in to lengths people will go to further their own goals. If they are willing to hire a hitman to get rid of their rivals, you know they should have quite a bit of skeletons in their closet. Crime shows or documentaries can help to give perspective on the life on the illegal side.
Dr_SaltedFish:Appreciate that you're not offended by the seemingly harsh review. I wanted to condense my points as much as possible since the space is limited. You can start small by adding more environmental details. Like the factory, steel doors? Concrete walls? Decrepit state? Too well maintained for an abandoned place? What I usually do is to have a few stock photos of the kind of factory that I want, then craft the description based on that and edit in the necessary changes due to the circumstances in the story. So with the location built, next comes MC and their interaction. This hidden mechanism, how does it work? Let say it's the traditional loose brick hidden switch mechanic. If the trainers have been entering and leaving the place, that brick would have been moved many times, in this case this brick will be more worn than the others. Or if the trainers were crafty, prehaps they replaced it with a new brick purposefully weathered to blend in with the rest, which MC noticed. So from this blending brick trick, you already showed the readers how crafty the trainers were and how sharp the MC is. Your readers know MC is sharp, but how sharp is he really? Some sherlock styled investigation here could add more depth to his charcater perhaps. It's a shame you gave the system a map, that spoils quite a bit of the suspense and possible development scenes you could havd included. Battles scenes are one of the harder ones to get right. For me, I imagine myself trying to choreograph a dance, draw ****** diagrams on the position of MC and the enemies, how will they move or react to the actions of another? Typically, I give per enemy a trait, 1 is cautious, 2 is reckless, 3 has an explosive temper. Then choreograph the scene. Try out different styles and format, find what you're more comfortable writing. It helps if you also analyse/watch action movies/shows/drama with many fight scenes to get inspiration. If your fights are more exaggerated, then anime fights can be an inspiration too.
