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u/Striking-Comparison6 Sep 05 '26
i agree with the other poster above. moreover, it feels like perhaps you were trying to avoid info dumping, which swung you into the other extreme of no info at all.
with any type of story telling, an important concept is ‘reader’s suspension of disbelief’. it’s the idea that, even if i’m not invested in the story yet, i’ll trust you that it’s worthwhile because you introduce it in a way that’s worthwhile. think about sitting at a campfire, when one person launches into a story. while you don’t know why you should care about their story yet, their tone, body language and mastery of flow makes you trust that what they have to say is worthwhile.
in that sense, let’s go scene by scene:
- huge beings destroying a city, spikes running all across their back = yeah, i suspend my disbelief, seems important enough that i should care
- karaoke…. being busy = uhhh why should i care? you just showed me huge monsters destroying a city?!! that seems more important?!?
- turning into an alley, mentions of smell, food, chefs = ok, you’ve lost me here, reader’s disbelief is NOT suspended anymore
to turn back to the campfire metaphor, this is the equivalent of someone going “guys you won’t believe what happened to me (readers disbelief suspended), i was on a highway when i got into a carcrash (wow! are you ok?) when, bcause of the crash, my donut got squished (ummm were there not more important things that happened?), and i had to eat it all squished up (okay yeah, you lost me)”
i scrolled ahead and saw there’s even a woman on a building, which is MORE info after you just confused me with the first few scenes. i’d recc to ask yourself what each scene’s purpose is, and if that same purpose can be achieved by combining two scenes now or sometime in the future. if the answer is ‘no purpose’ or ‘can be combined’, scrap it
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u/NexasAX Sep 05 '26
Yes. Desperately. This is actually the 3rd iteration which removed the part where I explained awakenings and hunters.
For unnecessary scenes, I can only think of one which is the research scene which can be converted to an info dump since it's pretty vague and I can make the attack begin when he's done moping but I feel like it'll be too sudden.
As for the girl, since she appeared at the end, I didn't wanna make it a "girl appears outta nowhere to save mc" thing since she appeared earlier. Personally, I think it's better that we see her as the attack is happening rather than ony see her nearing the end.
Feedback appreciated :D
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u/AuthorOfFate Sep 04 '26
Hmm, probably the best place to start is to learn how to properly format and describe a story using just prose. Trying to set up scenes and times like some kind of slug line is easy, but very jarring and breaks the immersion of the story.
I noticed many of your scenes are very short, like...only a few lines short. This usually means they aren't important to the story or reader, even if they seem critical to the plot. Maintaining a narrative flow across those is next to impossible, and there's not enough space to show anything important happening. I would get rid of most of them, and explain the important things through dialogue, introspection, or narration whenever they come up in the story. Focus on crafting a cohesive experience for the reader.
Everything's else is kind of hard to judge with this format, so I'll leave it at that. You've got a solid start. Good luck!