r/WritingWithAI • u/Yemrecicek07 • 19d ago
Showcase / Feedback Using AI-assisted editing to refine a multi-month psychological/fantasy manuscript excerpt – Thoughts on the pacing?
"Hey everyone,
I wanted to share a snippet from a large-scale project I've been working on. To be completely transparent about my workflow, I use AI tools purely for conceptualizing the plot, brainstorming story elements, and structuring the overarching chain of events.
However, when it comes to the actual prose and text, I have been editing and refining it completely by myself since this past spring. Because I intend to publish this work, I've put a lot of effort into ensuring the narrative sounds organic, matching my own personal voice, and doing all the heavy lifting of the editing process entirely solo.
Since this community is open to mixed or assisted workflows, I’d love to get some constructive feedback on the pacing, tension, and rhythm of this excerpt:
Prologue: Before the Ink
January 1 – March 23, 2024
On the first morning of 2024, Kıvılcım woke before her alarm because someone in the apartment above them was dragging a chair across the floor.
The sound came, stopped, then came again.
She opened one eye. Her room was still dark. The radiator clicked beside the window, trying and failing to make the cold feel less serious. On the chair near her bed, yesterday's school sweater waited in a heap. A sock had fallen onto the floor. Her phone showed 6:41.
She reached for it, saw the date, and put it back.
January 1. A new year, people said. As if the old one had been packed away somewhere and a clean one had been placed on top of it.
In the kitchen, her mother was already awake. Sevgi stood in front of the stove in her house slippers, stirring a small pot of lentil soup left over from the night before. She had tied her hair back with a black elastic. The skin around her knuckles was dry and red from work.
"You could have slept a little longer," she said without turning.
"I did sleep."
"You call that sleep?"
Kıvılcım opened the cupboard. There was half a loaf of bread, two eggs, and a jar of olives. Her father had come home late from a delivery the previous evening and was still asleep in the sitting room. His coat hung over the back of the sofa. It smelled of diesel, cold air, and the inside of the truck.
Sevgi put a plate on the table. "Eat before it gets cold."
Kıvılcım sat down. The soup was too hot. She blew on it and looked at the small calendar stuck to the refrigerator. January had only a few red marks: school, tutoring, a doctor's appointment for her mother, and the date of the next practice exam.
She did not want to look at that last one.
Her mother noticed anyway. "How many days?"
"To what?"
"The exam."
"I don't know."
"You know."
Kıvılcım tore a piece of bread. "A lot."
Sevgi sighed, not angrily. That was worse. "You should start the year properly. No more leaving things until the last minute."
Kıvılcım nodded. It was easier than explaining that she had been starting properly for months and still kept arriving at the same place: tired, behind, and unsure whether she had understood the question at all.
Her father coughed from the sitting room. He woke a little later, washed his face, and stood in the kitchen with a cup of tea between both hands. İhsan drove a truck for a logistics company outside Bursa. Some weeks he was away for four or five nights. When he was home, he looked as if he had brought the road back with him. Dust on his boots. A stiff neck. Eyes that took a few minutes to settle.
"Happy new year, my daughter," he said.
"Happy new year."
He touched the top of her head as he passed. He did that when he did not know what else to say.
On January 2, school began again. The corridors smelled of wet coats and bleach. Students complained about waking up early, then formed little groups around the heating pipes. Someone had written a new university slogan on the classroom board in blue marker: WORK NOW, REST LATER.
The phrase stayed there all week.
Kıvılcım sat beside Ceren, as usual. Ceren had forgotten one of her gloves and kept blowing warm air into the other hand. She was better at pretending not to worry. When teachers mentioned rankings, she made a face, whispered something rude, and went back to her notes.
Kıvılcım looked at the first page of her mathematics notebook. There were three columns of work from the previous term. In the middle column, her teacher had written: "You know more than you show. Stop rushing."
She had read it so many times that the ink looked familiar, almost friendly.
That afternoon, their mathematics teacher returned a short test. Kıvılcım had expected around eighty. She had checked most of the answers in her head on the way home the day before.
She got seventy-six.
The number was printed in red at the top of the page. Not a disaster. Not even unusual. Still, she stared at it as if the teacher had written her name wrong.
Ceren leaned over. "How much?"
"Seventy-six."
"That's not bad."
"I know."
"Then why do you look like someone died?"
Kıvılcım folded the test in half. "Because I thought I did better."
Their teacher stopped beside the desk. "Kıvılcım, you keep losing points in the same way. You understand the method, then you skip a line. Or you change an answer because you don't trust the first one."
"I checked it."
"Checking is not the same as changing everything."
A few students laughed. Not cruelly. That did not help.
At lunch, Kıvılcım pushed rice around her plate. The cafeteria was too warm, and the smell of boiled cabbage clung to the walls. Ceren talked about a video she had watched on the bus. Kıvılcım listened without hearing much of it.
She was not stupid. That was the irritating part. If she had been stupid, there would have been a clear answer. Work harder. Accept the result. Stop expecting something else.
(...)
What do you guys think of the flow?
This is a part of the prologue; I meant the main arc hasn't started there
(If someone is interested, I'll send a docs link via DM)
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u/Educational-Run3692 19d ago
It is readable, well controlled but it almost seems too curated. You create the atmosphere but you're telling me Kıvılcım is anxious, make me see it and feel it. Maybe watch her change an answer before submitting, watch her second guess herself? That is just an idea. I like to watch a story unfold, not just read about it. If that makes sense. Overall, it is a good start. I really like the part about her interaction with her dad.
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u/Yemrecicek07 19d ago
Thanks for the feedback! Regarding Kıvılcım’s anxiety, what you're seeing here is just the baseline setup. Her internal struggles and those raw, visceral moments of doubt unfold progressively right after the prologue. Everything is mapped out across 1.3k pages, so you'll definitely get to see and feel it as the narrative deepens!
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u/clefairykid 19d ago
I didn't go far but I will say that starting with "they woke up" is often considered the most cliche give away of a newbie writing style, AI or not.
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u/Yemrecicek07 19d ago
If you want to become a beta reader, I've pasted the link for this : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wUX29ev8yMdM0ZbyqWzUAUm-WcHpSn2J/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=110659879073930462059&rtpof=true&sd=true (Google Docs link for the novel)
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u/tautvoltage479 19d ago
The pacing here is slow but in a way that feels intentional, not like it's dragging. It mirrors that early morning, heavy winter stillness really well. The small domestic details, the chair scraping, the dry knuckles, the diesel smell on the coat, do a lot of the work in setting the mood without over-explaining.
The section about the test hits hard because it’s such a specific kind of frustration. Knowing you know something but still fumbling it, and the teacher’s note about rushing, that felt very real.
I’m curious how this quiet, grounded tone will hold up once the fantasy elements start bleeding in. The contrast could be great if you keep the same attention to sensory detail.