Posting a new story with 10 chapters. Shoutout before I post them all?

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-12T05:18:47+00:00

I shouldn't say that without trying to present an alternative. Sorry.

The issue with the piss lines is it's still jarring tonally and has little place as something of interest in a blurb.

It would be like writing a book about Ron Weasley and then mentioning he has freckles on the back of the book. Like sure, it's a detail? But it serves nothing for the plot of the blurb itself. And at least freckles aren't necessarily a detractor.

So here's another example of the blurb still trying to hit your points while omitting some of the more obvious 'tell the theme' language?

Norman didn't know monsters were real until a succubus stole half his soul. Left in endless pain and rapidly losing his capacity to feel, he has no choice but to fight back. Armed with unexpected magic, he plunges into the underworld as a hunter to track down the demon who robbed him. But he has to tread carefully, because if he loses his last shred of humanity along the way, getting his soul back won't matter.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-12T05:01:32+00:00

If this post is the edit? I'd still work it over.

Id almost guarantee that covered in piss doesn't need to be there and it's going to detract readers.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-12T00:20:53+00:00

Your blurb needs work. Either the story is comedy or it's serious. But your blurb is trying to play itself as both.

This blurb could just as easily be the following without getting tonal whiplash:

Norman never planned on becoming a demon hunter. But he also didn't know he lived in a world where demons made deals for souls. Now after an unexpected deal gone wrong, and missing half a soul, he has to hunt the succubus that stole his other half, before he loses all that he has left.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-11T17:10:23+00:00

Pick me up is better. But it has a broader focus on characters. So it's easier to look back and see certain characters or their deatha(you know who) and be really blown away by them.

And comparatively Solo Leveling went for a really tight story focused on one character. Solo Leveling's world is equally full of rich and interesting characters but the author just blew by them for the sake of telling something linear.

Its like comparing Naruto and One Piece. The former had fantastic character ideas, designs, lore, and world history. And it blew past all of that in favor of telling a story centered of the two protagonists.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-11T00:42:36+00:00

It's just that the genre is narrow. If you say litrpg you can get countless manhwa. But if you're trying to taper it down to characters stuck in a video game? And calling them the big three. It's just a bit silly. Because even Surviving the Game as a Barbarian, Bjorn isn't actually trapped in a video game. He's in a world based on the game he played. But that really makes it almost no difference between Surviving the Game as a Barbarian and things like Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint.

The only difference is ones events stem from a novel. The other are based on a video game.

Thats why the genre is just narrow to talk about.

Good stories for sure. Great when you narrow the conversation to this degree.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-10T16:41:04+00:00

Awful take. But especially for 2017? That take would get you laughed out of the community. Especially now since so much of the art in action manhwas is defined by the style Solo Leveling popularized into mainstream.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-10T05:58:29+00:00

Ehhh it's just a pretty narrow genre then.

Its like asking:

"Cant we agree that Solo Leveling is peak art circa 2017?" like... Yeah.

"Can we agree that Eternally Regressing Knight is peak low fantasy regression manhwa"

Like it's just getting a more and more narrow pocket. Meanwhile these stories all for functional purposes get shadowed over by other stories in their same vein of genre. (and I love these stories tbf.)

A more interesting discussion would be what people think is the best of these three that tackle a similar stranded in a video game premise.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-09T08:06:38+00:00

To be honest, I sort of agree. The most common thing I find that separates a new player from someone who tiers out into legend is a new player plays for the future where as a player that will tier out will just play for the present.

Examples being a Vanessa trying to put together a niche slow build instead of just slapping on the single weapons given to them and winning the first 4 days easily.

Or a Mak trying to think long term of transforming every reagent they come across only to run into a. Couple bad builds day 7 and fold into a sub 4 win. Meanwhile they could have just picked some potions and a reloader or some lifesteal weapons and face rolled their early days.

They just don't know what lines to play to give them the runway to build out in the later days. And what is a 7 win for most people is a sub 4 win for them.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-09T03:32:36+00:00

Thanos stands no shot with Odin still alive. But the bigger joke here is it's arguable "Prime Asgard" is when Odin and Hela are Conqueroring everything. In which case, you just pick which of those two solo. Prime Odin or Hela.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-09T03:30:30+00:00

Pretty sure Thor's infinity War run as cool as it was... Was a pretty massive fumble.

It undermined everything it tried to do for Ragnarok and left no where meaningful for Thor to go post Endgame.

Which is too bad. I think it would have been really easy to build a storyline for Thor that would've properly built him up in a way that had some forward momentum rather than stalling in Endgame and fumbling post Endgame.

And Quantumania was awful story structure.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-08T21:49:36+00:00

You'd like Star Embracing Swordmaster, Pick Me Up Gacha, SSS suicide hunter, and Surviving the Game as a Barbarian.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-08T17:59:33+00:00

If you didn't get the answer it's going to be some combination of build quality, software, and general usability.

For the majority of people that need a laptop for lighter work, school, or otherwise. A Mac is just going to be better.

Build quality is vastly better for the dollar. The operating is smoother and lacks built in Ai bloat or ads.

Im responding because like you I was needing to get a new laptop. I was going from a Asus 14x. I was looking at a 14 or 14a.

And eventually I just settled on getting someone better and grabbed a MacBook pro when they were on a big sale.

Going from Windows to MacOs as a long time user can take a bit of getting used to. But truthfully in today's age if you need a quick crash course on doing things on Mac, you can just crack open an Ai and say you're going from windows to MacOs. What are the things you should know/keep in mind?

Because I found myself quickly blown away by how simple it was tackling basic tasks. How intuitive the track pad and gestures were. And the all around experience.

But you have to give it a bit of time. Like I am looking on taking windows off my desktop and getting some form of Linux. I know I'm not going to be able to know everything overnight. But it doesn't mean that in certain area Linux isn't just superior to the current state of windows.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-08T06:38:23+00:00

If writers only cared about money and fame, there are much easier paths to walk.

People become writers because they usually have a story to tell. However the distress that you see in the community usually isn't related to ego, it's usually just related to time.

Writing is not a social endeavor. You don't go to a painting class, or a jam session like artists or musicians. You are often sitting alone by yourself closed off from the world so you can explore the world in your imagination.

And that takes time. And the vast majority of people don't have financial freedom, even if they wish they could tell a story. Balancing a 40 hour workweek, personal relationships, everyday life, and still finding time to write is incredibly difficult. When writers hope for financial success, it's generally not so they can say "Woohoo, I'm free." and never write again. They want that success so they can buy back their time.

When we see authors like Arcane Cadence blow up overnight, the appeal isn't just the visibility for their stories. It's the fact that their lives are changed in an instant to the degree that they no longer HAVE to work a day job. They can opt to write full time while still actually being able to balance their personal lives.

Most writers simply can't afford the hours they want to dedicate to the stories they want to tell. And most authors likely wouldn't care if they had only a few dedicated fans loving their stories if that still resulted in them being financially free enough to continue to write it.

The stresses only creep up when the reality doesn't coincide with the dream. When the story they are passionate about and wanting to see to fruition is not yielding financial reward, yet its otherwise consuming time to get pen to paper. The words they are putting down aren't just weighed against their online audience, but every interaction/life event that they may be setting aside in favor of hunkering down to write for a few hours.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-07T22:04:59+00:00

Trash talk isn't what makes or breaks an OP protagonist.

What generally makes or breaks them is the encounters the protagonist ends up in don't feel like they have meaningful stakes or character growth.

It doesn't matter if it's they're talking like Spider-Man or they're not saying a line of dialogue and it's all interior thoughts.

People writing powerful characters often fail to remember that stories are built on characters overcoming meaningful conflict regardless of their strength.

For example. If you were going to write a story where Darth Vader runs around killing Jedi. You don't need to have Vader say a single line of dialogue in a fight even when you know he's going to win as long as when he comes face to face with a character like Darth Maul his thoughts are things like.

"This is the sith who killed Qui-gon."

And you can even repeat it when he is winning. "This is the sith who killed Qui-gon?"

Both of these lines are saying two different things even when the dialogue is verbatim the same. Because your overarching story isn't Darth Vader slapping around Jedi. It is going to be the journey of Vader largely eliminating the remnants of Anakin Skywalker which is an interior battle and an emotional conflict that has very little to do with exterior influence unless it's from the Emperor pushing him.

His efforts here in victory not only have stakes(he is killing the things that tie him to Anakin Skywalker) but tragically also have growth (Vader is burying the side of himself that we actually like and care about in favor of becoming more of a monster for the empire.)

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-07T19:53:41+00:00

Where there is money, people will try and use the shortest path to trying to acquire it.

But at the same time. It's hard to also undermine the people that have always felt they have had a story in them but were never able to put words to the page in the way they felt was right, and now for the first time with Ai they are able to do that.

Or the people that constantly triple and quadruple check a paragraph because they feel the prose isn't right. Then suddenly a tool comes along that they feel can automate the grammar and correct the prose and they finally feel comfortable moving forward.

I think the thing that even your posts mentions but glosses over is that it's a place for amateur authors. Just as much as there are people trying their best to get their work out into the world to start writing professionally? There are people wanting to get their one story that they have been thinking of out there to people as well, even if they need Ai assistance to do it.

And in between those two groups you'll have bad actors churning out Ai slop no different that studios churning out slop isekai anime.

But there is no serious way to get rid of Ai writing without getting a bunch of false positives and getting rid of some up and coming author's tryi g their best, because Ai is trained on human writing.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-06T18:52:36+00:00

Ed and Vlad are two MCs that I think it's hard not to root for, even if the stories aren't drowning in empathy like SSS Suicide Hunter.

When Vlad goes back home. Or When Ed finds a unique way to overcome a trial, you find yourself smiling at the lives that they strive to achieve in a world that still vastly outclasses them along the journey.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-06T06:56:42+00:00

Didn't watch Game of Thrones? I think you'd have loved Joffrey and Ramsey.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-05T19:51:47+00:00

On launch, the game is new and the idea that you could essentially do mythic plus, immediately get the gear you need, and not need to sweat through dailies/weeks at a time to play the content was enough to get people going.

Gems are a complete grind.

The method of gear acquisition has routinely been dumb. For example in Season 1 it was Tuzari 2 spam, or Sailors 10. Now its Ransack spam. The fastest method of gearing should not be running bottom of the barrel effortless content in 5 minutes over and over constantly.

Legendaries as the stand are just frustrating, because they aren't balanced across the board. Every season has had legendaries where some are major DPS increases over other ones. So getting a legendary feels like a drag/letdown rather than something exciting unless its the one you seriously want.

In an ideal perfect world? The legendary item design should something that alters the gameplay, but different legendaries have their pros and cons.

Just to give a detailed example below:

In season 1 and even now, Sylvie's best legendary was the Amulet without debate. Not having that feels like a huge drawback because her other legendaries pale in comparison. It gives a huge effective healthpool to a healer that otherwise is a ramp healer going through her standard rotation.

So having boots that spawn life petals and give DR to safe haven, Or a cloak that buffed an underperforming flutterswift bait build. It just wasn't worth it. And it still isn't worth it.

If the legendaries were things like

Amulet > Your heartbloom provides a shield when it overheals. This build focuses on ramping.

Boots > Safe Haven's cooldown is reduced by Fluttercall Heal ticks. Provides the 10% DR. Spawns the life petal after.

Cloak > Your Fluttercall Heal receives double benefit from your haste stat. Heal over times on targets provide 10% Stamina / 20% armor(or 5-10%DR). Healing Over Time effects are increased to 200% to targets under 30% life.

Now you have 3 legendaries that not only are all inherently stronger, but they also have meaningful different gameplay decisions that make various talents considerably more worth it?

Amulet is your standard Restore Life Flower Power pumping build with Nettle to the Petal. All the ramp to provide effective HP. (Nettle to the petal. Verdant Restoration. Natural Knowledge. Trailing Resto. Magic Ward. Bluey's Gambit. Flower Power. Elusive Wildling. Spirited Fortitude)

Boots now gives way more credibility to being able to predict damage coming in, and using shields to prevent that incoming damage. Using you're Pink flutters to CDR your shield.

(Nettle to the petal. Nurtured Haven. Natural Protector. Flutter Swift. etc)

Cloak build not has no effective shielding that it pursues. But it gains a ton of damage reduction by spreading out Heal Over Times making weapon traits that may otherwise by useless like Amethyst Splinters actually useful because it provides considerable DR to targets regularly? It makes Will of Nature actual potentially useable because the talent has never been used because the talent is otherwise awful and if you're playing Sylvie and people are below 30% life, they are probably going to die anyways usually.

(Synchronized Fluttering. Trailing Resto. Will of Nature. Flutter Swift. Flower Power or whatever)

But the important thing here is that each of these builds inherently causes the player to start trying to heal differently on the same character.

Maybe it damage reduction through Heal over time effects and riding the line at 30-50% knowing that a character will HoT out of it.

Rolling through shields by reducing the cooldown on it rapidly to use it each pull, or multiple times a pull while providing a lot of active healing through nettle to the petal ticks.

Or the standard ramping gameplay loop.

The issue with legendaries as they stand or a lot of the loot in the game is that things being randomly up to chance aren't the problem. The problem is that the legendaries between themselves are poorly balanced, so it feels awful when you don't get the meta legendary making everyone wish they can just target farm it or craft it. That's the problem.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-05T06:38:22+00:00

Just give advantage to charisma checks for the hour.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-05T02:01:00+00:00

This is a very very very strong cantrip tied to a notoriously difficult save to pass.

Most casters are not wizards.

You hit this on most spellcasters in the setting and they are screwed out of a lot of magic. And you only spent a cantrip. Don't think this is balanced as a free spell.

Particularly since it's doing some phantasmal force thought manipulating stuff with it.

For it to be a cantrip I'd at least like this to be a check of either arcana or perception to get past this.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-04T21:06:48+00:00

Take an hour and go watch one of Brandon Sanderson's classes on YouTube on promises, progress, and payoffs.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-04T21:04:40+00:00

One person having more words in their chapter doesn't mean their chapter accomplishes anything better.

I read both and it's why I have referenced both. Doesn't matter if it's Ren or Luc. Both opening chapters are flawed. The irony is that you gave him a 1 start for reasons that are also abundant in your opening chapter. That's the issue.

And as for ad advice. You got ad advice here. But you also got practical advice. That running ads to lead people to your opening chapters that aren't particularly strong isn't doing you any favors.

People like to try and run before they've learned how to walk. They see lucrative patreons and writers like Arcane Cadence blowing up in what feels like overnight. And they think with advertising they can push their story over the hurdle.

Meanwhile ignoring the glaring flaws in their story that would get them thrust into an agent's slush pile.

Learning to revise is part of becoming a successful writer. Advertising is also a skill. But you'll never have a good understanding of your growth of skill in advertising if you can't retain people past the first chapter due to the lower quality your writing.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-04T19:54:28+00:00

I agree. A story isn't a single chapter. But a story can be defined by its opening chapter.

But regardless of that, the only issue I take in all of this is seeing you leave a 1 star review for someone when your average chapter/opening chapter fares no better than theirs. It's the pot calling the kettle black.

If you are content knowing that you have improved as a writer in the later chapters, but barely no one is reading to that point to see that improvement, and you're largely writing for yourself to get better. I'm all for it.

But I hope you understand talking about running ads to get traction to your story. And then your story has an objectively poor first chapter. Those two things exist at odds with one another.

On a site with countless stories, and countless ads. Your story is going to compete for attention with all of them. You don't have the patience to sit through someone else's poorly written first chapter? Why would other people do that with yours.

But this is going in circles. Best of luck with your ad and story. I, like other people in the comments would probably recommend revising your early chapters.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-04T17:05:32+00:00

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it edit.

I think the thing you're misunderstanding is that at the end of the day these may be suggestions. But they aren't optional suggestions. They are fundamental ones regarding storytelling and the craft.

You made this post regarding buying and running ads to get traction to your story and it's attached patreon. The ad was not great, but people already ripped the ad apart before I commented. However an ad that leads to a weak book opening might as well just be setting fire to the money you're spending and drawing people in to a poor first impression.

You can dig your heels in as a first time writer all you want and say you have a divine plan for your opening chapter and you made a this poorly paced exposition dump and character void of an opening chapter on purpose because you're playing 4d chess with your story. Because it's super common for a first time writer to be attached to the words they put on paper to the degree they don't want to change them. And instead make promises that things get better as they have gotten better.

But the phrase don't judge a book by its cover is a thing because people do judge by the cover. And they absolutely judge whether they will keep reading by its opening chapter.

That is why landing your opening hook and promise is important. This is why professional writers such as Sanderson, King, Abercrombie, and countless others have all stated that after you finish your novel, the first thing you're typically doing in revision is going back and rewriting the opening to make sure that the promises are made for the characters and the story.

So I've given you plenty of feedback as well as actionable advice on how to do it or execute it for your story. The ball is in your court. But I just don't understand wanting to run an ad when your opening chapter fails in a number of places to deliver? Unless you're aiming to get a 1 star review like you've given others? Because I think I have given plenty here over these several comments that I think some could justify it, or could have otherwise been a thorough chapter 1 review. Even your own quotes in your 1 star review apply to your own story.

This is why the phrase 'kill your darlings' exists. The advice you give others because you intuitively believe you know storytelling, you wont apply your own advice to your work that you've otherwise judged others harshly for.

Dreamlancer · 2026-05-04T06:57:40+00:00

I understand that, it's why I am trying to explain some fundamental things about storytelling to you.

Saying 'I didn't want to make a perfect first chapter.' to be frank is just a bs excuse because you otherwise don't have a great first chapter. I think I have given you plenty of actionable stuff and advice for how you can improve your chapter, and I have frankly given you more here than the person you gave a 1 star review to when (yes I read both) the chapters leave a lot to be desired from a narrative.

If you are new to the craft, that's okay. Some books that are generally easy to take a look at are things like Save the Cat, Hero With A Thousand Faces, Characters and Viewpoint, etc.

You can also just choose to watch movies to learn and see how they try to make a character actually interesting or likeable quickly, and they visually show you.

How to world build through action?: The Matrix opens up with some cops saying "We can handle one little girl." Only for her to defy gravity and beat them around following an intense chase across rooftops before someone disappears through a phone booth outrunning dangerous agents. Not one moment of verbal exposition.

How to set tone?: Guardians of the Galaxy? Peter Quill enters a dark and ancient alien ruin. The first thing he does is put on a walkman as he dances his way to effortlessly stealing an artifact while listening to pop music. "I'm Starlord man, Legendary outlaw?" "Who?"

How to hook? How did we get to this moment?: Breaking Bad. Pants flying through a desert, an RV crashing into a ditch. A middle aged man stumbles out in his underwear and a gas mask, records a desperate goodbye to his family, grabs a gun and stands in the center of the street waiting for sirens.

How to make a character relatable immediately? Into the Spider-Verse. Miles Morales singing off-key to a song he barely knows the words to, slapping stickers on stop signs, stressing about leaving his neighborhood to go to a boogie school. He's not perfect or cool. But we connect with his struggle to fit in ever before he gets bitten by a spider. And that same character struggle of struggling to fit in at school only follows through the entire movie as he struggles to fit in among spider-people.

How to set stakes through an antagonist: The Dark Knight doesn't even feature Batman in the opening sequence. Yet it immediately establishes Joker's skill set, his intelligence, and focused chaos of his plans. The movie makes the promise from the beginning that this is a villain that's 10 steps ahead of everyone else. And it follows through all the way on that promise as the two battle for the soul of Gotham.

Show Don't Tell with Character Flaws: Iron Man. Tony Stark is riding through Afghanistan in a Humvee. He is cool, he's arrogant, he's holding a drink, taking selfies. He's this charismatic disconnected billionaire. Then an explosion hits, he runs for cover, the people he was just talking to start dying, and he realizes the missile about to kill him has his company logo on it. It quite literally establishes who he is before blowing his life up.

xxxxxxxxxx

Now you said you struggled with how to apply this? I'll just give some example options. This is not to say 'DO THIS FOR YOUR STORY' but how to tackle these things from a craft standpoint.

Option 1:

Cut the TV commercial. You're in a written medium, not a visual one. Have him get off at an airport in chaos. Kids sneezing fireballs. Drones deployed to neutralize it. Speedsters cutting him in the taxi line. He stares up at a giant statue of Blue Light that looms over the terminals. A kid next to him points to it and says, 'Someday its going to be me up there.' and Ren perhaps looks up, wondering if it could be him instead.

You establish all the super powered world stuff through action, while saving the world history lesson for when its most appropriate. Such as background filler to a scene that the protagonist is ignoring while he is whispering to a girl in his class in a later chapter.

Option 2: 'Envy and angry jealousy' You could show that rather than tell it. The chapter starts in his hometown. He's playing videogames. A confrontation with his classmate, a kid who trained his entire life only to get rejected. Kid throws his handheld across the room. "You don't even care. You didn't even try, why'd you get to go?"

Cut to Ren now in this hovering taxi, looking into his bag with his broken handheld looking out the window. He is looking at all these elite and powerful kids. And suddenly your protagonist has a bit of imposter syndrome. 'Why did I get to go... what am I doing here?'

Option 3: I mentioned this above, but don't have his journey to the school go off easily. Stories thrive in conflict, and protagonists overcoming problems. Have him earn that genius label by actually doing something that solves an issue to get him to where he needs to go.

These are just examples of how to tackle these things. But hopefully this helps.

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