shadowdrake27

Hmm, this is a relatively interesting start. Your “hook” is intriguing to make people want to read on for sure. Also, your grammar and basics are pretty good! This book seems popular, so you might not need any advise. That said, I’m going to list what I would improve and stop reading. Don’t read on if you dont want constructive criticism. - Tense switching While your grammar was pretty good, you went from first person past to first person present a lot. It seems like your story is meant to be past tense, So keep it that way. Things like “I am scared right now” are present tense. This is only acceptable if it is in speech like this: “I am so scared,” I said back when this happened. You can also do internal monologue or thoughts, but it still has to be in quotes: “I am so scared,” I thought back then. - Show don’t tell! This is my biggest critism of your first chapter. Saying things like, “I am scared” or “It is scary” do nothing for your reader! Make us feel scared or feel eriee without dIrecty saying it. Granted, this is hard when your character has no body. For the most part, I think you can just delete all of the “I am scared” stuff and add internal monolog or what the MC is trying to do. For example, I think that this would be better: I tried to scream for help, but I couldnt make a sound. Silence enveloped me and was deafening. This makes me feel sort of powerless and scared without saying “I couldn’t talk, so I was scared.” There are a ton of examples of this. It’s literally everywhere. Here is one more example: When your character “tries long and hard” to move but can’t. Don’t just say that! Make your reader experiance the “trying long and hard” but being unable to move! Here is what i would do after deleteing that paragraph completely: I trIed to wiggle my toes, but they didn’t respond. Next, I tred to just move one finger. Nothing. My limbs were gone, or it felt like it. Concentrating and struggling were useless, I couldn’t even blink if I wanted to. Something like that makes the reader go through the experiance with your character. There is no need to say they struggled for a long time or that it was unnerving because the reader FEELS it with your character. I would rewrite everything here with that in mind, even though I love the concept of this chapter. - Drop the odd self awareness that your character has Why does your character “realize” that they should be insane but something is preventing it? That is a stupid level of self awareness for a scared girl that thinks she is dead. It’s more likely that she is thinking, “I’m going to go insane” or that she is just scared. This is just too deep an analysis for someone to make in this state in my opinion. This also applies to a few other things. i get that she is trying to figure out what happened to her, which is good, bust some of it is cringey. Another example is after she consIders being in a vat somewhere and says, “That would be cool though…” Would it be cool? Really? Thats all I got for now. Hopefully this helps a bit! Your story seems like its good, these are just things that I think could improve the story based on this one chapter. I do love the intense focus on the characters mental state! It’s a nice change of pace.

Uh… I’m not gonna lie, there are a lot of issues in this story. You should not be dIscouraged and continue to write! Here is what I would work on: Tense! Is this past or present tense? You switched a lot, which is hard on the reader. Either the story happened in the past (past tense) or it is happening now (present tense). go back through and make your story consistent. Grammar! You need to brush up on this desprately. I appreciate your attempt and desire to not just use simple sentences, but your basics were even rough. Look up guides or lessons on when to use commas vs a period. Then, only use a colon (looks like this “:”) where you would normally use a peroid. There is a lot more to be said here, but I dont have time to go over all of it. Speech specifically! Why is your speech in brackets? Just use the quotation marks without brackets. There was quite a bit you did well, but here are some tips on speech: - Make sure it sounds natural like someone is really talking. - Use complete thoughts and not weird things. - “Asked” implies a question, so dont use it when someone isn’t asking one. Some general comments! - What does the first paragraph mean when it talks about numbers of bids? No one talks about the number of bids in gambling. A bid is a bet. There is the ammount of the bid (in currency like dollars) and the odds (pay ack ratio). Your whole first paragraph makes no sense. - With no hair = bald - Your descriptions are strange and not fluid. does height really matter that much? What does average phisic mean? Its better to say something that createa and immage like “huge muscular arms” than “above average phisic.” - whats with the sudden flash back about how daniel was born? Then the “now back to the story” was a huge break in immursion. I would rethink that. Maybe make a prologue thats seprate? Im confused about who this person is anyway because he is only in this weird flashback about when he was born. - Just a guess because I saw a tag that was something like “hidden identity,” but is Daniel Zorro? He is the only character with an in depth description and a backstory. if he is and you are trying to hide it, then you need a backstory for more characters. it would also help to not interrupt a scene yo randomly give Daniels backstory. Thats all i have for you. Sorry i read and wrote this in a bit of a rush. I hope this helps.

I’m glad you like the start! I haven’t got that feedback about the tense yet. It’s all in the present tense told in third person limited perspective. In other words, the story is happening now and you see it from only Tyler’s perspective as a silent third party observer. If you have thoughts on what tense would make the story better, please let me know! It’s too late to change it, but I can learn for the next story I write.

I’m glad you enjoyed it! The plan is to actually finish it. Hopefully, the updates can come more regularly.

I think I said most of what I needed to in the paragraph comments. Please read up on when you use commas vs periods. Make your paragraphs complete ideas on concepts and complete them before breaking to a new one. Slow your story down and let it develop before making a million things happen at once. Let us get to know your character before her breakdown!