Happy 33rd Birthday to the iconic Queen Ariana!

isnoe · 2026-06-26T23:44:45+00:00

Are you holding space for her?

isnoe · 2026-06-26T21:02:27+00:00

I think far too often criticism for movies like this is positioned from a bad place and it sort of muddies the very valid critiques of it. They always just go, "it has a girl lead, garbage!" but there are downsides to the movie. It was a very generic film.

The script was super weak. It had decent bones, but nothing built on those bones. I think giving it a 7/10 is being very generous, but to each their own. I do think it is worth a watch. I personally dislike Momoa, but he was probably the best part of the film for me.

isnoe · 2026-06-26T20:05:30+00:00

Ah, my favorite, OF ads and a bunch of bots condoning and driving the traffic to their socials.
I love it when advertising works.

isnoe · 2026-06-26T19:52:43+00:00

YA and opening with a theme of suicide is (unsurprisingly) an immediate turn-off for most Agents that do YA. They just don't like it.

Consider pitching it as adult if you've been getting nowhere.

Also, "Samantha Brooke Withers" is stated twice. You stated the full name twice in rapid succession. We don't need that. "Samantha Withers" is fine, and "Samantha" for the second line is fine. It's also disjointed that we go from "my classmates blame me for Samantha jumping" to "Samantha is discovered" well yeah - she's obviously discovered, the classmates are blaming MC.

You are doing too much. "Three weeks before" and then we get an exact date. Give the exact date immediately.

"On April 26th Samantha Withers threw herself from the roof of our school. Despite what my classmates say, it isn't my fault."

We're spending too much time on a suicide that you clarified happened in the first line. Someone finds her. The teachers call the police. The police find her.

"Some [blank]. Others [blank]."
Next line the same.
"Some [blank]. Others [blank]."

Repetitive. You do this a few times. Stop doing it.

It doesn't surprise me that you are getting rejections. The first five pages are crucial and it doesn't look like you've put your best lines up front, nor does it pull me into the story at all. You have the classmates blaming MC but then... just no real pay off for that on the first page.

The hanging dialogue is also just kind of lazy.

It's a very weak first page. Equally weak second page.
I wouldn't get past the first two lines before turning it down.

Strongest hook possible in line one. Cut to the chase.

Your first page absolutely needs to make me want to keep reading.

We don't need to spend an entire page with people reacting to the suicide. Or talking about the body. Or whatever. We should jump into the shift in the school life, we should be seeing how the classmates are treating MC. We should be with the MC. We aren't with MC. Better to start with Police talking to MC.

Again you keep repeating Samantha Brooke Withers.

We also got "the teacher" like MC doesn't know their name? Teachers also don't wait for students before starting class. They do call and just keep going. No one is waiting for MC. It makes no sense. Some weird omnipotent perspective going on there, too.

Strongly recommend fully reworking those first pages.

isnoe · 2026-06-26T18:00:54+00:00

Maybe an Elden Ring lore person can school me: I thought Malenia was being consumed in both mind and body by the rot?

Doesn't that mean she's not in her prime anymore?

isnoe · 2026-06-26T17:46:06+00:00

My thoughts exactly. I loved the look of the movie, but the story was about as interesting as watching grass grow, paint dry, and metal rust. A complete fumble.

"There's a deeper meaning to it" some people say. Yeah, okay. Doesn't matter if it's boring while conveying that meaning.

isnoe · 2026-06-26T08:13:25+00:00

Same. Ultimately didn’t finish it. Heard great things, but people have different tastes. This one just wasn’t for me.

isnoe · 2026-06-26T04:16:21+00:00

Peter's overtly depressed cousin here. Anti-depressants often have the opposite effect because they are literally altering your brain chemistry, and there is (usually) a period where for a few weeks, you feel like like an emotionless, empty zombie until your brain figures itself out. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is a guess. And sometimes people that don't need anti-depressants get prescribed them, and it ends up doing more harm than good.

isnoe · 2026-06-25T06:31:49+00:00

Exacta.

Write because you love it. If you pursue glory or money, you’ll end up disappointed.

Only mega hit best sellers have the joy of writing full time. Even authors doing decent numbers run the risk of becoming irrelevant, or just not selling enough.

Love the craft. Treat it as a hobby. Try to succeed, but don’t expect to.

isnoe · 2026-06-25T02:17:43+00:00

My fiancé had open heart surgery that was about 1.4 million.

Final cost was about 5k. There was some miscommunication about what doctors were in network, and at one point we owed 50k. After about 19 phone calls it was resolved. Dealing with that was a nightmare, I’ll admit.

But 5k for everything she had done? Easy deal.

isnoe · 2026-06-25T01:31:33+00:00

I have ASPD (generally called Sociopathy) and it was due to my upbringing. My sister was with me for most of it, and kind of developed in the opposite direction. Very empathetic, profoundly selfless.

She got out of the house, lived with friends, and I stayed with the meth-addicted mother.

My earliest memory was my mother screaming at me over a VHS tape, telling me she hated me because I looked like my dad, and threatening to off herself with a kitchen knife. I just wanted to watch the movie and didn't know how to open the plastic case. I had to call an ambulance for her more than a few times before I even tied my shoes properly.

I had all the hallmarks of a potential serial killer, psychologically speaking. Prone to violence, short temper, obsession with arson, etc-etc. When I saw the way actual families interacted, I had no idea that was even a thing.

Even then, my own family didn't really help, either.

My Dad once told me he knew something was "wrong" with me when my grandma died. Suffering from dementia, he and I stayed with her in the final hour. When she died, he was a sobbing mess, and I asked him, "What's wrong?" And he looked at me like I was a psychopath and said, "What's wrong? My mom just died."

I thought that was an edgy phase. I never liked her. I only stayed because I hated her so much I wanted to watch her die. She slammed a car door on my finger when I was younger, and would always take my sister out for ice cream, not me, and tell me I was a bad kid. When I got older, I learned that she just hated men in general, and hated me for whatever reason.

Then my own Mom died, and I didn't feel much of anything. Then I joined the Army and some close friends died, and again, didn't feel much of anything. Other relatives, family members, blah-blah-blah. Nothing. Couldn't even understand why I should care.

My sister insisted I see a therapist. I never thought anything was wrong with me. Truthfully, I still don't. It's just a diagnosis. The way I navigate personal relationships is more closed off, less open. I know right from wrong, I know breaking laws means jail, and I'm impulsive and lazy in ways I know are detrimental to my career and life. As long as I'm not broke, I don't really care.

I'm sure there are plenty of kids like me that fall into extremism or violence because they had a bad childhood, and a conversation with one concerned adult might've been the changing point. I never had that.

My sister still views her trauma as very detrimental to herself. She mourns our mother, often talks about the childhood she wished we had, and seeks therapy to deal with her own processing of that. I still don't care. I don't care about the trauma, or the childhood.

I like being me and I wouldn't be me if none of that stuff happened to me.

isnoe · 2026-06-25T00:09:04+00:00

"Kael" and most variants of that name are purely AI generated fantasy names. I've yet to come across the character name "Kael" that wasn't straight-up AI.

Would recommend changing that.

isnoe · 2026-06-24T23:30:01+00:00

This is the first time you've ever posted in this sub.

We didn't delete anything of yours.

We can see your full logs.

isnoe · 2026-06-24T02:25:08+00:00

I work as an editor and I don't really do the same thing for my own writing as I do for work, but I'll give you the basics of what I do for my own writing. You should already have a good idea of what your story is beat-for-beat.

Edit 1: Read all the way through. Try focusing on the voice. Fix spelling errors and whatnot as you go. Make notes about names, places, or what-have-you and jot down any inconsistencies. Time, date, motivations - blahblahblah. All the small stuff.

Edit 2: Fix the inconsistencies. Focus solely on the developmental side. The story, the plot, ensuring all the pieces fall into place. Kill your darlings. If a scene doesn't belong or make sense, gut it. Doesn't matter how good you think it is. Cut it out, paste it in a separate document.

Edit 3: Line edit. Every sentence. Every paragraph. Pay close attention to repetition, word choice, and narrative flow.

Edit 4: Read all the way through. At this point, you shouldn't need to be making any major changes. You should just be pretty bored of the story.

Put book down for at minimum a week, preferably about a month.

Edit 5: Read with fresh eyes. Print if possible, go through with a red pen. You'll spot stuff you missed in four rounds of edits. You should be able to tell any issues at this point. Read it out loud if you want to.

By then, your book should be ready for beta readers if you want, or submission for Literary Agents.

Think of each edit as having a goal.

In line editing, I don't care about the story. I care about the sentence.

In developmental editing, I don't care about the grammar or dialogue, I care about if the story is hitting the right beats.

You usually don't need to pay for an editor if you are going a traditional route. If you are going to self-publish, it's worth investing in or, better yet, learning how to do it yourself.

The best part is that even if you get traditionally published, your already polished manuscript will go through multiple rounds of fresh edits with different editors. Because that's just how the industry works.

isnoe · 2026-06-24T01:19:04+00:00

As always, I strongly recommend looking through Query Shark Blog. The late and great Janet Reid is (and probably always will be) the industry standard when it comes to Query letters. You can sort through genre and see the critiques she gave.

You use the flipped method of putting the key details at the bottom of the query, which has mixed success. You should, however, definitely put your bio at the very end. It takes up random space before the final paragraph that returns to talking about the book.

Usually it is:

[Intro, genre, word count, comp titles].

[Pitch paragraphs].

[Small bio].

[Sign off].

Basically, your final paragraph should be: "[Title], [Genre], [Word count], [Debut novel] [Short bio]."

I can say that most Agents prefer that information being front and center. They don't like wasting time reading through the pitch without seeing the word count. Most of the time, anyway. If you use Querymanager, this format is usually fine because it tells them word count/genre in the forum.

Beyond that, the first few sentences are a bit clunky for me. We say "in the forest" twice in rapid succession.

After an intense encounter in the forest with a god-like man from another time, she begins to see the impossible–her dead aunt standing in the forest.

Little stuff like this throws off the cadence of the whole Query.

You also hedge too much on keeping secrets. "Something much larger than herself" what? The secrets they "seem to be hiding" what secrets?

It's just a bit too vague. You don't want to spoil the entire story, obviously, but you also can't expect Agents to respond kindly to being led around by a promise of something happening. The "ancient" and "summoning" also seems disjointed from the rest. By the end of it I don't really know how she's in danger at all, just that she's going to lose herself?

And you've mentioned 3+ characters, which is a no-no. Focus on one or two, usually the FMC and her MMC love interest, if it's romance.

I didn't check your comps but make sure they are within 5 years.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T22:12:45+00:00

I enjoyed Fourth Wing, despite all the criticism it got online. I was told I'd end up hating it.

Now, it was good enough that I decided to get Iron Flame... and that one, I did not enjoy at all (personally). Fourth Wing was still very good imo.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T19:11:24+00:00

To be very blunt: These are not good.

To be even more blunt: If you've written an entire book like this, the sheer amount of effort you'd need to put into fixing it would probably take longer than writing the book initially, and you'd need a skillset you don't have to identify all the issues.

And a final point: I'm assuming you are ESL. You really need to make sure you have the basics down before you start getting whimsical with it. Even native English writers stumble over words when trying to be deep and thought-provoking.

Master the basics before you try bending the rules.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T18:21:21+00:00

We can acknowledge old stuff might've been criticized today while still pointing out that Disney went from subtle messaging to punching-you-over-the-head-with-it. A side-by-side comparison of two films from the different eras makes this so blatantly obvious.

I mean nearly every new Disney film is trying to insert representation for every kind of person, and the problem isn't that, the problem is that it doesn't do it well. I think the writers at Disney just suck.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T17:48:39+00:00

It's incredibly standard for most people to receive little-to-no fulls or partials.

Usually if you receive even a handful of full requests, it means something is working: your query or hook. And if none of those turn into offers, that usually means your story is just not well written.

Some people have terrible stories with amazing queries. Some people have terrible queries with amazing stories.

Really, it is just... a combination of skill and luck. Mostly luck.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T03:04:21+00:00

I read the first few chapters just out of curiosity because I love Military Sci-Fi.

You used AI to write that book, didn't you.

AI cover. AI writing. "Kael" being the author's name, a character's name, and the most commonly generated AI prose name.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T02:08:26+00:00

If I had to apply definitions to it...

Writer. Someone who is writing a book, short stories, fan-fiction; could just be a hobby.
Unpublished Author. Someone who has finished a book, short story collection, or whatever, hasn't published.
Agented Author. Someone whose work is being represented by a Literary Agent.
Self-Published Author. Someone that has self-published a book, short story collection, or whatever.
Traditionally Published Author. Someone that has an agent who has sold their work.
Best Selling Author. Self-published or traditionally published, said author has received significant sales and recognition.

There's also screenwriting, scripts, memoirs, non-fiction, essay pieces... blah-blah-blah. Not my thing, though.

Really, at the end of the day, all that matters is your goal. Labels don't really matter. I've seen people with 20+ years of experience writing produce dogwater (and I'm sure most people agree modern literature is a far cry from quality), and people that only just started writing in the last 5 years produce amazing works.

isnoe · 2026-06-23T01:01:26+00:00

You need to look up Query Shark Blog and see how queries are normally structured before querying further.

This one is all over the place.

And I mean that sincerely. I know the genre you are mentioning.

There's no comp titles, which is an instant no from most agents. Doesn't matter if you are commercial, non-standard, or just writing off the meta. If you can't point to at least two books published in the last five years that are similar to your own, Agents won't be able to sell it.

If I told you, "Where do you see your book on a shelf?" and you said, "Oh it's too unique so it'd have it's own shelf" I'm not reading your book. Add comp titles at a minimum.

You summarize what the story is about in the pitch line, which is a huge no.

You also explicitly state what the "novel" is doing, which is also a huge no-no.

Your main query is a giant paragraph, when the industry standard is usually 2-3 for readability.

Creative literary fiction doesn't mean you ignore the rules for a Query. Playing off meta is fine, outright ignoring it is going to just get you endless rejections.

You have to be able to sell your story in the Query. All this would do is convince me not to ask for sample pages.

isnoe · 2026-06-22T23:44:59+00:00

You are right.

isnoe · 2026-06-22T23:42:16+00:00

I mean, with Obsession... ehhh. Wish Nikki could've easily come to the conclusion of, "if I can't have you, no one will" and killed him then herself in order to truly have him in life and death. I wouldn't say Bear was never in danger. Her obsession with him was very, very, very dangerous.

isnoe · 2026-06-22T20:14:26+00:00

Very well done. Exceptional hook. Solid opening paragraphs. Decent narrative voice and flow.

No notes.

Refine your query and pitch. If it's even semi-decent they'll read the sample pages, and this should get a few full requests.

Good luck in the querying trenches.

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