Hey all,

I hope I can post my request here.

I recently finished and self-published my first fantasy novel. It’s a mythical-action kind of story, set in a made-up world where Light and Night are locked in an ancient struggle.

I know the writing isn’t perfect, that’s why I’m here. I’d love some honest feedback on the first 20 pages: pacing, clarity, style, anything that stands out. If you’re up for reading, I can share it via DM or a secure link.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to take a look. Really appreciate the time and critique.

  • SineIraEtStudio@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    20 days ago

    No worries. I’ve made that mistake a few times myself :)

    Yeah, let me try and take another crack at elaborating on this. 3rd person POV would be someone watching and describing what they see (no special knowledge), which seems to be what most of the work is written as. Narrators can make statements of absolute truth which is what the beginning is (which is fine), but then it shows up again randomly in a few sections. I would say narrative writing is less perilous for the characters because the narrator knows the absolute truth of everything (past, present, and future) so they are less likely to be in danger. Kind of like if I told you a TV character was in the 3rd season of the show (absolute truth) you wouldn’t be too worried about them dying in the first 2 seasons. Hopefully, that’s a little more clear…

    I think its fine to write without giving physical characteristics, but you should have the characters fully flushed out in your head (even if you don’t tell the reader the details). This should make the characters more consistent and other characters’ interactions with them more consist.

    Since you didn’t provide descriptors or context clues on Kiran and Mira, I built up those descriptions myself based on the little I knew about them and extrapolations from there (trying to build out the world so I can “watch” what is happening through the 3rd person POV). Then they would taken an action the characters I made up wouldn’t do and it took me out of the story to figure out what went wrong (why characters weren’t behaving as I would expect them to).

    It seems the characters are plot driven rather than the plot being character driven. What I mean is that it seems that you have a plot thought out and you want your characters to follow it and even force them to follow it when it doesn’t quite make sense for them to do it that way. Takes the reader out of the story and feels “plot armor-ee”.

    I would suggeat a character driven plot where you have a fully flushed out characters (which you may already have) and then just drop them into a situation and see how they would respond. It makes for more consist characters throughout a story and if the characters wouldn’t respond the way you want them to, “why is that?” and “what do you need to tweak to get them to respond that way?” Ex. Maybe there’s bees one direction and Kiran has always been afraid of bees since he was little because he tried to hug a hive and got stung all over so they go the other way. You would need to foreshadow the plot point (bee fear) before it became relevant, but that’s a way you can tweak a character’s behaviour to match the plot you are trying to reach.

    For Mira, “let’s do this, but only if we have a plan” is a fine personality setup (and potential starting point for a character arc), but it doesn’t seem to be the case when she wants to rush into the council chamber. My suggestion would be what I said before, fully flush out the characters and drop them into the situation. If you are worried about long tangents in the writing (to make sure the characters are behaving consistantly, but it would drag down the pace) you can usually just handwave preperation time or prior actions with a sentence or two and keep the plot moving forward.

    Hopefully this all makes sense. Let me know if you want to discuss further :)