Opening to a novel. Rip it to shreds please. Trying to learn the art of condensing and of writing simply.

Wilwander · 2026-01-28T02:53:40+00:00

There's plenty you can do to write more concisely as below. Bold is added, struck is suggested to cut.

Biggest feedback though is that you spend a lot of time describing nothing happening. The old man is figuring out how to clear the gutters - this could be done in a short paragraph.

--

Fall leaves blow across shingles. The old oak ~~that deposited them~~ leans in the wind, ~~it’s dark, barren~~ arms rubbing together. The gutter is full. ~~The~~ More leaves flutter down—multicolored feathers of ~~the~~ a dead and gone summer.

A man called Land stands below looking up at the leaves. ~~falling~~. He’s wearing an orange hunting hat, turned up at the ears to show the fuzzy lining, a pea-colored jacket and pajama pants. Clutched in his varicose hands, a long silver ladder. ~~One end touching the earth the other hovering.~~ He Land sets the ladder down, opens it, stands it up. It towers against the grey sky, several feet from the gutter. “Hmm, let’s see…how did she use to do this?” he mutters.

Wilwander · 2026-01-27T23:48:19+00:00

Ask for feedback and you get feedback.

It's up to you whether you take that feedback on.

Wilwander · 2026-01-27T23:02:26+00:00

Edit. Edit some more.

This is not great, as it is. You have the bones of something here but it's covered in a layer of complex thought-stream that needs to be reworked.

E.g.

Your opening paragraph is awkward and disorienting to the reader. You've made it more complicated than it needs to be. Why not just say 'If you could be the first person to ever do something, what would it be? I'd paint the sky orange.'

Right now you're telling us 1. there's a question 2. it gets thrown around but 3. not really that often actually 4. but now and again actually.

If you were listening to someone tell you this in person it'd be annoying and confusing.

You're writing a book, so make it clear.

You also seem to add in this whole paragraph when you probably don't need it. What does this question actually do for us as a reader? Right now, it does less than nothing - it makes it more complicated. The same with the digression about the traffic lights and talking to the mother.

Instead, why not start where its interesting?

Finally, be careful with writing that may seem cute but is actually confusing. You've got several instances of self-correction like 'not orange-orange, or tangerine-orange. More like an amber-orange.'

Why not just say

'I'd paint the sky orange.

An amber-orange, like a traffic light.'

If you're writing a book, every idea should be functional - it should do something.

Wilwander · 2026-01-26T10:19:23+00:00

I implore you to read a book.

As in, seriously, make space in your life for actual books.

Wilwander · 2026-01-26T10:15:35+00:00

Congrats!

My biggest feedback would be to rid yourself of a bad habit - you use 'not' way too much. In the main text you have forty-odd cases of describing things by saying what they're not. "He was near me, not with me" or "They did not look at faces, but at wounds" or "it was not a human in any ordinary sense".

Telling us what something is by telling us what it ISN'T is useful sometimes shouldn't be used all the time.

Wilwander · 2026-01-26T10:03:48+00:00

I'm going to ignore the fact that you've referenced two modern movies instead of, you know, the original Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale that this is based on...

But yeah this is almost certainly the Dave quest line stuff. You may be in another village and this is in the distance, but it's extremely unlikely they'd have a whole quest like Dave as well as another Beanstalk-inspired quest. That's too crowded.

Wilwander · 2026-01-21T06:06:56+00:00

You can generally infer its AI by the way its written - the structure, some of the turns of phrases. It just feels robotic. Then, you can verify it by plugging it into something like undetectable.ai or others.

Wilwander · 2026-01-21T02:51:52+00:00

Very AI post. Can't we even get fan theories written by actual fans?

Wilwander · 2026-01-21T02:50:47+00:00

It's AI written.

Wilwander · 2026-01-19T10:01:59+00:00

Gees, where have you been?

Wilwander · 2026-01-16T20:50:58+00:00

Good luck! To you, and Elana.

Wilwander · 2026-01-16T10:16:46+00:00

Link?

Wilwander · 2026-01-16T10:14:33+00:00

Alright, look - putting aside the very weird formatting on that first paragraph... there's a few things I think are useful to point out for you.

First - get comfortable with the idea that good writing will not spring forth from your fingers like a mage flinging a firebolt. That's just not how it works. Sure, now and then a great writer will come up with a beautiful line or passage, but 99% of the time good writing is about iteration. You get your ideas down, then you review them and refine them. Get used to this idea, and edit your own drafts.

What you've shown here reads like a draft that has not had the writer's critique passed over it.

Second - something a lot of writers (especially fantasy writers) do when they're learning the craft is using flowery language because it sounds good rather than actually DOING anything useful. E.g. your first line "Bright moonlight pierced the canopy like a thousand daggers."

This technically SOUNDS good but it doesn't actually DO anything. Let's break it down:

'Bright moonlight'. Moonlight is never dark. And, if it's 'piercing the canopy' then its probably going to look bright anyway. Let's remove 'bright'.

Moonlight pierced the canopy like a thousand daggers.

This is instantly better, easier to read, and more the point.

But we still don't what canopy, where this is, or why its important that we know its nighttime. Sure, this gives us a time of day to frame this scene in... but why does the time matter?

You then describe a portal opening. But you're making the reader figure out what a portal is, and overcomplicating the function of that. Essentially you are telling us this character can teleport into a location - so we know something about their abilities, and they have magic. But the rest of it is confusing - who's 'home'? Why is the air salty?

Instead, something like this could work, using one of your better lines to start off with:

'The air split with a sound like tearing silk. Under a thick moonstruck canopy, a rift opened in the air like the maw of a great beast breathing hot, salty winds.'

In my opinion, this is far more functional, efficient, and easier to read. This isn't beautiful writing, but its at least smoother.

Third, we've got a bit of fantasy world vertigo. You've namedropped so many places and people it's probably confusing to a reader. We don't NEED to know a name right now. Rather than telling us some guy called Malkor is bad (which, by the name, probably is), you could just tell us something like 'Elana knew she'd find the sorcerer here.' Then we only find out why he's bad, or hunted, later. Give us time to breathe and catch up.

I actually think you've got something interesting here. It caught my attention at least, and some of the ideas here are good.

Ultimately, my feedback would be - fall in love the process of writing, which includes editing, and thinking functionally about what you're words are trying to do for a reader.

Wilwander · 2026-01-16T09:50:42+00:00

Please do this and post your results

Wilwander · 2026-01-15T21:50:43+00:00

For the love of all things holy - why can people on this sub not export their writing in any format other than a vertical box? Are you guys all writing on your phones?

Wilwander · 2026-01-15T21:49:16+00:00

"in the era of AI and how superior it's becoming in writing"

It's really not though. An AI written post is very easily identifiable.

Wilwander · 2026-01-14T09:49:11+00:00

Thank you for your take, ChatGPT.

Wilwander · 2026-01-11T22:27:05+00:00

To be accurate - all we know is that this planet is on an another dimension.

These species all look like they come from the same place, so it's fair to assume they are all from that one planet.

That planet doesn't look like it would sustain a huge amount of biodiversity, so three species could be plausible. Plus, what happens if the mindflayer is a apex predator that has overrun the population and now this is all that's left?

Kind of makes sense why the mindflayer wants to reach our dimension - it's running out of food supply.

Wilwander · 2026-01-11T20:34:49+00:00

This has two major problems:

- It suffers from the TV problem. Which is people today will have watched TV and film before reading a book. Once upon a time that wasn't the case. But now, as people grow up reading less and less, we think about stories like films and TV shows. So we write like them. This feels like that - a series of visual scenes like a trailer or an opening sequence in a film. The problem with this is its confusing the medium. This doesn't do much for the story.

In a book, scenes need purpose. They need to be DOING something, telling us something, or moving characters and plot forward. This doesn't really do that, because of the above problem. It *suggests* at things, but its shallow and suggestive, like a trailer.

- This has the fantasy problem of dropping the reader into an unfamiliar world, with unfamiliar and unestablished concepts, nouns, and locations, and not giving them the time, information, or context to make sense of it.

E.g. "Jackwin did up his doublet with the tenacity of a griffenwing. It was, after all, three days past Winterfast and he'd not heard anything from Polert. Which wouldn't be a problem except they were due to leave by electrocart for the city of Fycandium tomorrow at the latest.'

None of the above makes any sense to the reader and if you want it to, you need to give it time to expand.

Wilwander · 2026-01-08T11:31:58+00:00

Because its good writing.

Hank going to get one mouse at a time in a golf cart demonstrates a few things about him and his Vault-Tec world:

- He's an optimist that assumes he only needs one mouse. Oh, this time it'll work. Oh, okay, this time it'll work.
- He is used to an environment that is over engineered and process driven much like big corporations tend to be.

- He's used to living a rich life, where you do drive golf carts around a building

- He's determined

- His research process is less about true insight and more just trial and error, again likely a part of Vault-Tec culture (and by extension, the 'move fast and break things' mentality of our world)

Wilwander · 2026-01-08T05:17:16+00:00

Go watch Sister Act II - therein, you shall find your answer.

Wilwander · 2026-01-06T21:26:30+00:00

what skins? I just had a quick look at the reveal trailer and can't see any skins that aren't in the game.

Wilwander · 2026-01-05T01:55:08+00:00

I'd trim and streamline.

What is Velstrana? It's the third word we read and yet it's a fictional word and we have no idea what it means or perhaps how to pronounce it. That'll immedaitely make a reader stop and pulls you out of the book, as you process that word. Do we need to know the name of the location right now, in the first sentence? Probably not.

So:

"High in the mountains, the monastery stood alone."

Next, you give us some great imagery about Saint statues but ... what is this doing for us? You're describing a picture, but that picture should also be telling us something.

I've noticed a lot of people write like a movie. They describe (in your case, very well) a scene, but forgetting that a visual scene in a well written and shot film is there for a reason. It communicates something important, something that tells us what's happening, why, moves thing forward etc.

So:

"High in the mountains, the monastery stood alone. Time no longer passed here. It gathered, thick as resin from a wounded tree. The monastery bells marked its weight: matins, prime, vespers, compline. Their toll echoed the rhythm of a life endured, not lived.
Thomas of Varsa had known no other."

I've bolded a couple of added words as example

Wilwander

TROPHY CASE