3 replies to this topic

[darklord55555]

well I have been trying to write an animesque book for a while now and I have got a basic story laid down, I wrote the first chapter which is pretty long but I would like your critique on the first chapter, I would like you guys to mainly rate 2 things

Is it hooking/interesting

is  it well written/ needs improvement somewhere:

 

Thank you in advance for your time

 

 

I tried to follow a formula of making it 1000 words/chapter

 

Edit: i couldnt copy/paste but now i can so here is the version on batoto:

 

Chapter 1: The demon
I have always loved history. Wars, politics, and carnage: every possible mistake to be made was recorded in history, however I always hated one thing in history: lies, false information and missing knowledge. For that reason I wrote this book, this book which records every important detail of my life, the life of the HUMAN who changed this world for the better or worse. I am Mina Vi Demonica, the founder of the demonican empire and this is my story. A story filled with the truth and nothing but the truth of my life.
I lived in a village located at the outskirts of Barya, a small independent duchy who wasn’t absorbed into a nearby kingdom yet. The village of Ben Nevis was on top of a beautiful mountain. Water ran through the mountain and the grass grew on its slopes. The fields were filled with grains and vegetables. The warehouses were stocked and the village was prospering. At the age of 8 I was filled with happiness, now that I think of it, those were the only times of true happiness in my life. At the age of 10, everything changed, the kingdom of Ishtar declared war on Barya since the king’s nephew had a claim to the duchy.
When the war was declared, the villagers didn’t feel that much of fear because Ishtar was on the east of Barya, while Ben Nevis was on the other side of a mountain. It would take so much time just to reach that area. Strategically speaking, it would have been an absolute waste of time. We were a little more uneasy but we were still happy since we lived in ignorance of the future. We were never attacked by the king’s army but something way more horrifying happened. Bandits who follows no moral code or any martial laws. They took opportunity of the duchy’s weakness and raided the villages on its outskirts. Of course Ben Nevis was no exception. I still remember that day clearly, for that this was the day that changed my whole life and started a chain reaction that reformed the whole world into something new and different. I was working in the fields, helping my older brother. I went to get the seeds from my house and then went to plant them. My mother was preparing the food, it was a meat stew that was made from the cow my dad have beheaded yesterday. It wasn’t the most pleasant thing to see but it was and everyday occurrence. While planting the seeds, I heard the siren. It was the siren of invaders, I didn’t recognize it since the last time it was used was 12 years ago. My brother had made a quick comment about that then he went to hide me in the barnyard. That was when I saw one of the bandits, he asked my brother were is the storage yet my brother refused to talk. The next scene was a simple one, the bandit took his sword and beheaded my brother as if it was nothing. It was the exact scene as the cow that was beheaded earlier. There was no value in their lives.
I ran away through a little hole in the back, I was afraid, sad, scared and angry. With each step I took away of the village, my mind was being consumed by anger… no it wasn’t anger, it was madness. Madness fueled my body with strength and I went into the cursed cave. It was a cave in the mountain that the simple villagers believed it would turn you into a demon. I guess they weren’t that far off. In there I didn’t become a demon, but I met one. He was sealed in that cave. He spoke in an enticing voice:” Kid, I see great Hatred within your eyes, you crave for destruction, destruction of humans who wronged you. Free me and I shall deliver the punishment upon those vile creatures.” I refused his offer:” Hahahaha, demon you offer to kill my enemies, I don’t want you to kill them, I want my enemies erased without any proof of their existence. I want to do the job myself, I want to eliminate the fiends myself and watch them in agony and despair” The demon smiled, his smile was so wicked that even I had chills back then from it, but I didn’t back down. He responded:” I shall renew my offer, boy, I shall give you knowledge of the ultimate magic which destroyed civilisations before, magic that was used to change how the world was supposed to function for freeing me. Boy, with that magic you will lose part of your humanity, you shall walk on earth as a monster in a human clothing.” I had disregarded the demon’s warning thinking he didn’t want me to possess the ultimate power. I quickly accepted his deal and knowledge started to flow within my head. My head felt like exploding with all that information in the same time. There were so many words such as atoms, molecules and elements. There were also words about chemical and physical reactions. I don’t know how advanced will the understanding of atoms be in the time this book will be found but to sum it up: everything that exists on earth is made of small things that can be called particles. Those particles are what everything together in place.
When I returned to my village, the pillagers were still there, though everyone else in the village was pretty much dead. I came slowly and smiled at them, one of those scums said that someone forgot to kill a little kid. He took his sword and attacked me. I used my hand to block his sword, and using the new magical knowledge of mine I disintegrated his sword into thin air. However, the disintegration didn’t stop at the sword since the bandit’s hand started disappearing as well into thin air. His screams were a melody to my ear. Other bandits came and attacked, but I released my magic to its full extent. There was no village, no bandits, no corpses. Only nothingness remained

Attached Files

•  Medieval Book.docx   14.12KB   5 downloads

Edited by darklord55555, 26 January 2014 - 06:53 AM.
Moved to the Writer's Club Subforum

[Seikah]

Is it hooking/interesting
 
Absolutely, if this were an anime, I'd watch the hell out of it. Nothing like some good death and destruction to get the blood flowing.
 
Is it well written / needs improvement somewhere:
 
In my humble opinion, yes, it needs improvement. I'll try to address the points that bothered me below. Please know that I am no more a professional than you are, so just consider this feedback from a peer.
 
I'll talk a bit about your writing style first - the story I'll talk about later.

• Flow: the writing could use a little bit more variation - for example, when you describe the village, it feels like Mina is reading off a list. It's a simple construction of [subject] [verb] [something].

The village of Ben Nevis was on top of a beautiful mountain. Water ran through the mountain and the grass grew on its slopes. The fields were filled with grains and vegetables. The warehouses were stocked and the village was prospering.

 
Try mixing it up a little, perhaps with more sentiment depending on how Mina remembers the place. "Ben Nevis, my birth village, was a humble one, but it stood proudly on the most beautiful mountain you will ever see. Sparkling rivers ran wildly through its grassy slopes, irrigating the farming fields that filled our warehouses year after year. We prospered."
 
(I hope you don't mind me giving examples - I, too, love writing.)

• Impact: one of the great aspects of a first-person perspective is that the character can put power behind their statements - they have been there, they lived it.

We were a little more uneasy but we were still happy since we lived in ignorance of the future.

 
You could foreshadow a little here, for example, "How happy we were in our ignorance."
 

I still remember that day clearly, [...]

Remembering clearly only tells the reader Mina has a good memory. Never forgetting, however, implies something else entirely. "I will never forget that day," or more dramatically; "What happened that day marked my soul like a branding iron marks cattle - with a lot of pain, and for life."

The previous two points tie in directly with the following;

• Less is more: a lot of your sentences would read a lot more smoothly with less words. Try reading it over, sounding it out by speaking the sentences, and simply removing words that feel unnecessary. "A story filled with the truth and nothing but the truth," suffices, appending "of my life" to that only weakens it. The dialogue when Mina is talking to the demon feels entirely too grand for a (young) farmer's boy, too.

For completeness, I spotted these small mistakes: "duchy who" instead of "duchy that" , "bandits who follows"  instead of "bandits who follow", and "crave for destruction" instead of "crave destruction".
 
I'll talk a little bit about the story itself now. About 2/3rd into the story, I found out that Mina was not a girl. Oops.
 
Trivialities aside though, my main issue with it was that the story seemed unlikely - the village is attacked, Mina manages to get away, gets angry instead of the rational sad and terrified, and then stumbles upon a demon willing to grant him revenge. In writing, you can get away with one or two unlikely plot progressions, but when too many improbabilities happen, it starts feeling illogical (deus ex machina) and the reader stops believing. (See willing suspension of disbelief.)

• Foreshadowing is probably the easiest fix for your story. Right now, the demon in the cave comes out of nowhere. It would be much better if you referred to it earlier in the story - for example, why not make Mina's village built specifically to guard the cursed cave, rather than a collection of ordinary farmers?
• Believability is another problem - demons can be sealed in caves, that's no problem, it's something that can happen in your world. However, humans will be humans, and Mina's switch between fear, anger, then madness was very abrupt and unlikely. I think your story would be served better if Mina went into shock for a night or two, and then have madness and rage drag him out of it. Of course, you'd have to adjust the rest of the story to that - maybe the bandits found the village's mead cellar and they stayed a while to empty it out.
• Historical accuracy: this is just me nitpicking, but cows were certainly not slaughtered as an everyday occurrence. They were worth a lot more for their milk, cheese and butter - a useful animal like a cow would only be slaughtered if it were hurt, or if some festive event was going on. To slaughter a cow each day would make Mina's family an obscenely rich one, not to mention wasteful: the meat off one cow can feed an average family for more than half a year, even accounting for the fact that cows and butchery were less efficient in medieval times.

Those are my main issues! I hope you won't take them the wrong way; if I thought your story was utterly uninteresting, I wouldn't have taken the time to write this post.

Edited by Seikah, 26 January 2014 - 04:36 PM.

[darklord55555]

fine cows will be replaced by pigs you happy? just joking. awesome tips though (I never expected to receive such great and detailed feedback), and the main character's name is the thing that is most subject to change since I couldn't come up with a name that rhymes with demonica... and the foreshadowing of the demon was something I was unsure about putting but I guess I will put it afterall and maybe add something about how the MC family had an aptitude for magic or something. I will redo the whole descriptive sequence while trying to make it way more interesting (using your suggested way of writing it)  and I will verify the whole grammar all over again (I finished writing this draft  at 12 am and I was pretty tired that day)  finally any suggestion for the name of the main male lead is welcome (though I prefer it to be easy to pronounce)

Edited by darklord55555, 27 January 2014 - 12:11 AM.

[watsu]

This suggestion comes a lot, but putting spaces in-between paragraphs on the original post would make it easier to read .

 

Going on to an actual critique, answering on the two specifications you stated:

 

Is it hooking/interesting?

This is dependent on the reader, but for me, it didn't hook.

 

Is it well-written/needs improvement somewhere?

Word choice and vocabulary fit with the kind of classic medieval mood you were aiming for. There aren't significant grammar issues, but they're frequent (I'd say spotty).

 

There are a lot of issues I have with this chapter, especially in relation to a planned book, and they come down to a single root cause. Being a little blunt here, I want you to consider this:

 

The events happening in your first chapter are the beginning of a war between Ishtar and Barya, the bandit invasion of the village, the granting of power from the demon in the cursed cave, and the destruction of Ben Nevis. In terms of impact, what has happened here is that Mina's peaceful and happy life was ruined and destroyed in a wave of carnage. The consequences of this event were so great that Mina turned to a demon and essentially accepted a "deal with the devil." That power makes Mina a monster easily capable of turning an entire village to nothing.

 

The scale is epic in the making, the main character's backstory tragic, and the future having potential for some powerful conflicts and perhaps even some political strife.

 

Do you think 1.5 pages is enough to convey all of that to the reader? Do you think 1000 words does it justice?

 

Grammar and pacing can be fixed with rewrites and editing. But you can't fix what's not there. For me, the chapter felt like a summary of what you wanted to tell. It was quick and concise. I said it felt epic, the main character's backstory felt tragic, and there was potential in the future, but I can't be sure. Those are all assumptions on my part, because there's not enough for me to go on. I am reading in-between the lines, but then this turns into me interpreting your story the way I would've wanted it, not what you actually wanted. If I was correct in my assumptions, it's coincidence that I was thinking along the same lines as you while reading. It doesn't mean that your story contains those pieces.

 

But this is not to say that word count is everything or that you need to describe every little bit that happened. But you need to be aware of the impact your story is making to the reader. Here, enormously significant events go by so quickly and nonchalantly that I don't think much of it; to make a comparison, it's like reading about Harry Potter on Wikipedia vs actually reading the book/watching the movie.

Edited by watsu, 05 February 2014 - 09:47 AM.