Open Door Critiques [CLOSED]

📜 Old Critiques | 01/29/2021

I don't care about the MC's grief.

If anything, being hit with his internal thoughts of anguish and sorrow and on-the-nose metaphors made me feel something akin to embarrassment. The main reason for this is simple. We don't know the father. We don't know anything about the father. 

Sure, we know from the blurb that he's a mafia boss, and we also know that he's supposed to die, but we don't know what kind of man he was. Was he affectionate? Was he charismatic? Imagine if we knew that he wasn't a morning person, that he was a great cook, that he had a weakness for cats and donated to charities whenever he could. If we then learn that this person has died? 

It would hit different.  

We would actually care, then.

FIRST CHAPTER

Let's see if your first chapter manages to answer The Three W's:
• The setting, or where everything is taking place.
• Who the key players are, namely the protagonist.
• What is wrong with the setting, the situation, or the MC; or simply, the opposition.

I believe we're in NYC, but that was a single line of info with no other supporting set pieces. So as I'm reading, it really doesn't feel like I'm in New York, or anywhere, for that matter.

As for the key players, I've already touched on this in the previous paragraph. We know their names, and their general roles in the mafia. Aside from that, we don't know anything about them that would actually make them read as, well, living breathing people. As fully-fleshed characters. 

What do they even look like? Why is Raul like an older brother? Where is that immense trust coming from? How do others view Aaden taking his father's place? Is there tension? Doubt? Or confidence? As it is right now,  I can't quite read personality from them, either (aside from Aaden's understandable vengefulness). 

And finally, the wrong that has been presented to the readers -- that the father's death was in fact a murder -- is rendered unfortunately weak due to the previously mentioned fact, that we readers don't really care for the father at this point in time. 

POSSIBLE SUGGESTIONS

Get your readers to care for the father. That, and that alone, will strengthen your chapter and premise immensely. There are multiple ways you can achieve this. Flashbacks would be a quick and easy fix. Pushing the starting point of the novel back to a time when he's alive is another. Even giving us a eulogy at the funeral would be quite efficient, as we would then get characters that reminisce on the good old days and shed positive light on the father.

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