[HALF OPEN DOOR] by PhoenixDavenport
Before you proceed, please read through 🚪 First Impressions under the Open Door Resources.
The critique will be formatted with that chapter in mind.
FIRST SENTENCE
Let's see if you've hooked your readers by giving them a first sentence that intrigues, one that accomplishes any of the following:
• states something odd or out of place
• implies something bad is going to happen
• getting your readers to ask a question (why, how, is that true?)
• simply writing something beautiful
So here you have:
"Seventy-two hours. It's been seventy-two hours since my father's funeral but, the pain did not ease."
There's definitely something odd and out of place in this sentence. The tense! Try 'has not' instead of 'did,' as well as 'eased.' Aside from that, I don't believe the sentence implies anything intriguing. I don't feel compelled to ask any questions, either.
FIRST PARAGRAPHS
The rug has been rolled out on the MC's grief and on his father's funeral. It makes sense progression-wise, until I realized:
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.
***
[HALF OPEN DOOR] by Kvng-June
Before you proceed, please read through 🚪 First Impressions under the Open Door Resources.
The critique will be formatted with that chapter in mind.
FIRST SENTENCE
Let's see if you've hooked your readers by giving them a first sentence that intrigues, one that accomplishes any of the following:
• states something odd or out of place
• implies something bad is going to happen
• getting your readers to ask a question (why, how, is that true?)
• simply writing something beautiful
So here's what you have:
"Trust was an issue. And so, I didn't have many friends; the curse of trusting very few people."
If I squint, I might be compelled to ask why the MC has trust issues, but...well. It's not a mystery. We the readers already know why she has trust issues. The blurb's already told us plainly. So take some time to reexamine your first sentences again. See what you can do to craft one that satisfies at least one of the bullet points!
FIRST PARAGRAPHS
A good job of establishing the MC's voice! Her personality comes through cleanly.
That aside, I do have a couple of questions. Why did someone who was so excited about their pen pal (enough that they rushed to the door to gush about them) decide to then leave said pen pal with a cousin they had a falling out with?
Would you deliberately dump a friend with a complete stranger and then leave them alone? In your own home?
I found Artemis' behaviour fairly unrealistic. Unless, of course, you properly build within the text that she's an insensitive character, a shallow social butterfly that bounces from person to person. If it's established that she's that kind of person, then this behaviour would be perfectly understandable and believable, and wouldn't pull any readers out of the story.
CHARACTER INTERACTIONS
Speaking of believable, Ember's initial interaction with Theo didn't read quite like anything anyone would say or do in real life. For example, the sudden aggression of 'what's it to you' when she's the one that approached him, especially considering the fact that she was thinking about how to make conversation with him the whole way.
And I know you said in your comment: "You'll find out if you keep reading..." But, sadly, that's not how the reading experience works.
Every choice or action needs to be properly supported by evidence or reason.
This can be as simple as someone in the story acknowledging that a character is acting strangely. That acknowledgement alone -- calling something for what it is -- is evidence enough for readers to ease back and say, "Okay. The author knows what they're doing. They realize how strange that was, too."
But if someone acts unrealistically or unreasonably, and the author gives absolutely no reasons for it (some backstory insight, some clear examples of their personality, or another character acknowledging the kind of person they are), then most readers will simply see that interaction for what it was: bizarre and out of place.
At this point in time, you don't say to your readers, "You'll find out later :)"
You go into the text that's failing to support your readers and give them the insights they need in order to continue to believe in your story.
Now, going back to Ember and Theo.
If you wanted that aggression to read as a knee-jerk mistake, or as a reactive defense mechanism, then you need to say so in the text. Maybe she curses herself out, or mentally face palms at her behaviour and bemoans her big mouth.
Similarly, her almost immediate 180° turn from closed off and aggressive to sighing and saying, "Oh, fine. Let's play a game!" was, well, dizzying to say the least.
More proper support is needed for a far more natural and believable read!
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.
The where is definitely pretty fuzzy. I mean, I know we're at Artemis' house, but aside from that, I have no real idea what kind of house or town or city or even country they're in. We're just told that she's British. Are they in the suburbs? Is it a rich one? Or an old one? Who knows. My mind definitely doesn't.
Foggy details equals a foggy world. A foggy world creates readers that believe your story less and less. People that don't believe in your story, won't care about it.
The who is established well enough, though I do believe the real estate of the first chapter could be put to better use by introducing more key characters, instead of solely focusing on the relationship between Ember and Theo. We have an entire book for that, after all.
The first chapter is, structurally speaking, where the exposition is. So this is the place and space to introduce to your readers the characters that are going to matter for chapters to come.
Finally, I can't quite parse out the wrong. Yes, the blurb talks about the opposition to come, but the first chapter...has no meaningful hints to it. And remember, hints and foreshadows does not equal to 'tell my readers everything right now right away!!'
Maybe on the train ride over to Artemis' house, Ember witnesses something bizarre, or something scary, something related to the hunters. Maybe she sees a news report about it. Or maybe she's been experiencing consistent slip-ups with her power, and knows that she shouldn't go to the gathering, but for one reason or another, she has to be there. So now, as she's at the party, she's on edge the entire time. And for good reason.
Create intrigue in your hints. Create obstacles for your character to slog through. Without such things, the reading experience becomes a stale plateau that feels like it's going nowhere at all.
-
[NEARLY CLOSED DOOR] by shiteutea
Before you proceed, please read through 🚪 First Impressions under the Open Door Resources.
Much of the critique will progress with that chapter in mind.
FIRST SENTENCE
Let's see if you've hooked your readers by giving them a first sentence that intrigues, one that accomplishes any of the following:
• states something odd or out of place
• implies something bad is going to happen
• getting your readers to ask a question (why, how, is that true?)
• simply writing something beautiful
So here's you have:
He stared at his black phone on top of his wooden desk, his fingers were brushing against one another as if having a meeting.
Reflect on this some. For my part, if I squint, I suppose the sentence might get readers to ask why he's staring at his phone. But...it's a rather weak image. There's nothing arresting about it. Aside from that, I don't believe this first sentence gives us any of the bullet points. (Though, the metaphor of 'brushing fingers as if having a meeting' certainly was odd. Perhaps you meant to say that he steepled his fingers?)
FIRST PARAGRAPHS
The first paragraphs are when you roll out the rug and give your readers their first foray and welcome into your story, world, and characters.
So it's such a waste that you open on a character that dies right away! It doesn't even seem to be the death of someone that will be integral to the story later on. So it was, at the end of the day, just the death of a side character!
Challenge yourself to rethink this introductory real estate. Instead of dedicating these vital first paragraphs to a character that will not matter, dedicate it to a scene that involves Jisoo in an integral way. With this approach, not only will readers feel less 'cheated' that we've spent all this time with a one-off character, we will also get the added bonus of seeing Jisoo in action, thus learning more about her.
That's two birds with one stone!
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.
For the most part, the where and the who are cleanly established. We're in a setting that involves heaven and hell, angels and grim reapers, and of course, an Almighty who speaks using Ye Olde English. (The choice for this reads a touch cheesy and tacky to me, but it's your prerogative whether or not you wish to use it.)
The main thing that isn't quite established is what's wrong.
We have a trajectory of sorts. Jisoo has been given a new assignment. There's some semblance of mystery surrounding this scroll, as well as Ye Olde's insistence that she not ask any questions. Now sometimes, a mere mystery can be enough to keep readers hooked.
Gaiman's Coraline, for example, doesn't explicitly start out with anything wrong. There is only the mystery of the door that she finds.
So I would simply challenge you to up the ante, pile on the build-up and line up the hints. Don't leave your readers with only a 'strangely thick scroll' and a 'don't ask any questions' from the Almighty (especially when the MC doesn't question her orders at this point in the story). Give us something alluding to some danger surrounding Seokjin. Or perhaps it's known that all thicker scrolls are bound in tragedy.
Craft your writing in a way that really gets your readers asking, "Why? What's going to happen? I want to keep reading in order to find out."
UM, YIKES!
Strange, isn't it? Readers are more than happy to read about werewolves and vampires and angels and demons, but when something mundane and illogical happens, we're taken right out of the story.
I do wonder why. I'll have to do some ruminating of my own sometime.
The point in the story I'm talking about is this:
"I think I know where to take you. It's a much safer, much better place than that hotel shit. [...] No need to worry! He's just as saintly as you are. I'm sure he doesn't mind, he's in desperate need for a woman, anyway."
Oh dear.
So this Yongguk insists that it's a much safer place, that the resident of said place is just as saintly as Jisoo. But oh, he's in desperate need of a woman.
And here's the kicker.
Jisoo goes anyways.
Sure, her hand was grabbed and she was dragged, but isn't that all the more reason to, well, not go wherever this man wants to take her?
Though I get the feeling that you're writing Jisoo as the Ingenue -- a young and pure woman. But pure does not mean clueless. Or perhaps your reasoning is that Jisoo knows she can't be hurt, and so she sees no point in resisting (though if I only had one day to be human, I wouldn't waste it on doing something or going somewhere someone else wanted for me).
Either way, her thought process could use more clarity for the reader's suspension of disbelief.
LET'S PLAY A GAME OF PRETEND
You're standing at the bus stop when, across the street, you see a woman fumble with her groceries. Produce of every colour spill this way and that. You, being the good and kindhearted citizen that you are, go to her and help her. And she thanks you. She even says, "Hey, I think I've seen you around the neighbourhood before."
She makes friendly small talk with you, and as the two of you walk along the road, you think to yourself, yes. This is the perfect time.
You tell this practical stranger the reason you moved into this neighbourhood. It's because you were a loner in highschool. No friends at all. You loved your parents very much, but they could never understand you. In fact, you decided that no one at all could understand you, and so you turned to all sorts of dastardly things, like miming and interpretive dancing. Your father couldn't handle it. He passed away from the overload of art.
So.
What would the woman's reaction be?
And more importantly, is this a normal way for anyone to act?
It really isn't, is it? Yet that's how your Yongguk acted.
He dove, and I mean dove, into his entire backstory. To a woman he just met. He confessed that he was a bully in high school. He talked about how ~angry he was~ all the time, and all the violence he caused. He shared how much he loves his mother, and her ensuing illness, and then her eventual death.
What a baffling interaction!
***
The seams of your story are showing.
What I mean by this is: it's quite obvious that you have an end goal, which is to put Jisoo and Seokjin together, to get them to meet and interact, etc. However, the way in which you've gone about it is...not wholly thought through. And if you believe you -have- thought it through, it still makes no difference.
It makes no difference if that thought process isn't carried out to your readers.
Write on, and stay safe out there!
GRENDEL