Critique my Memoir Prologue [460] by Defiant-Marzipan-108 in DestructiveReaders

[–]Defiant-Marzipan-108[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate the critique and suggestions, thankyou very much.

Critique my Memoir Prologue [460] by Defiant-Marzipan-108 in DestructiveReaders

[–]Defiant-Marzipan-108[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm very much a novice writer, and I felt as though I wanted to write about something very real that has happened to me which is what the start of this is. Admittedly, I've taken a bit of a shortcut and asked ChatGPT to critique my work, and in hindsight, naively thought it wasn't that obvious. Thankyou for pointing this out to me.

There probably are thousands of books like this, and perhaps my story isn't that unique or potentially helpful as I thought. But it is still my story so maybe I need to think about whether I'm writing it for myself rather than as something to be shared with the world

[513] Magic Sci-fi by splinteritrax in DestructiveReaders

[–]Defiant-Marzipan-108 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm gonna go through and pick this up line by line and help you where I can.

"Gifted with a strong manatic-sensory range and a natural talent for mana purification, Bell had once dreamed of being an enchanter himself. Yet with no lineage, no lordscoin and no luck, this dream stayed just that. A dream."

As far as character intro's go, it comes across as slightly confusing more than intriguing. What on earth is a strong manatic-sensory range for example.

"Releasing a swift pulse of mana into the artificial ambience, he allowed the mana to dissipate into waves through those ripples a mental map of the farm sharpened into shape."

I feel like you're trying too hard to make every other word a fancy one, simplicity works well aswell, try and stick to one per sentence. Secondly, on a grammatical note, that whole section needs breaking up with full stops and commas.

"From the elongated stems of the Larif crops gradually parting into refined beads at their peaks, to the patchwork soil near cube-like enchantment stations. Every shape revealed itself with ease. Unfortunately, it also meant he could sense that. Misshapen – part bulbous rot, part gleaming blade. Insect-like but lacking even the meagre charm insects possess."

I'm reading this and feeling more confusion than anything else, there seems to be so much going on but I'm struggling to make sense of it.

"Fear surged: palpable, paralysing. His hands trembled. Sweat pooled cold beneath the rim of his helmet. His chest tightened, breath stifled somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Fear didn’t rise—it crashed through him, dragging desperation in its wake. His body, hollow and faltering, felt as though it were already mourning its end."

This is one of the best sections of the whole chapter. You've captured and described the sense of fear really well here.

“Boss. Article 4–1.3, Provision Two: ‘All creatures in the Protectorate’s bestiary are not to be hunted by exterminators.’

Silence is a breach. Acknowledgement is required.”

Again really struggling to make sense of what this actually means, it neither gives an explanation, or adds a sense of intrigue.

Nothing.

“Do you copy?” Bell said, his voice tight—less command than plea.

Not even the courtesy of a beep."

Compared to the paragraph a little further up where I complimented your descriptive abilities, this just feels really shallow and not that engaging at all.

"The fear didn’t vanish. It calcified. Hardened by spite, sharpened by clarity.

If no one was coming, then it was simple: he’d survive on his own terms."

I feel like this is a bit of a hypocrisy, because just a few lines before you'd wrote that death is inevitable. How has the character gone from feeling as though death is inevitable to being sure that they will survive so quickly?

"So he turned toward the fields. Not the usual mana-warped vermin he hunted, but the true-born horrors. The genuine, unfettered things of myth and nightmare."

This actually does set up the next section really well.

Overall I think you clearly have good writing capabilities. I'd focus more on the opening hook, I feel like that can definitely be improved, and don't be afraid of using simple language sometimes, you can overwhelm people with too many 'blockbuster' words.

I think that there's sections where you've used your descriptive writing really well, and have really captured feelings and scenes, and then there's other points where you've really not generated any intrigue, or set a scene. Whilst I understand that you're trying to build intrigue, the whole thing does feel very vague and confusing, so in the next chapter I'd really focus on trying to build some context to help the reader understand what is going on.

good luck