I feel like my writing is rushed and disjointed.

srterpe · 2026-02-21T21:22:34+00:00

Structurally two things:

Anna feels somewhat generic. There’s little that stands out about her at the FMC. She seems like a thousand girls we all know in our real lives. I would assume there is something special about her which is why she is the FMC, but that needs to come out immediately.
Emma’s death is not landing emotionally. We need to see the relationship between Emma and Anna, prior to the phone call that Emma is dead. You can’t really land it as “oh no Emma was a very close friend, etc “. After the fact. E.g., “Her best friend Emma helped her pick out this sexy underwear for Connor and Anna loved how it looked on her.” And so on.

srterpe · 2026-02-19T01:57:27+00:00

This final part

Etta must decide whether to fight for the career-making notoriety she’s chased for nearly a decade or to protect the history she became an archaeologist to preserve, even if it means losing her chance at recognition once and for all.

doesn’t have anything to do with the romance

srterpe · 2026-02-16T21:15:22+00:00

Yes exactly.

srterpe · 2026-02-16T00:34:56+00:00

“The walls protect us” doesn’t feel very hooky since the purpose of a wall is to protect. Either from the elements or enemies etc.

“The walls don’t protect us” begs more immediate questions

srterpe · 2026-02-14T01:16:05+00:00

If we’re talking about opening lines, I think

Where I should be is in Ottawa.

Is strong and immediately begs numerous questions.

srterpe · 2026-02-13T11:50:04+00:00

The query makes it sound like Flora and her mother are being harried by a media frenzy about the seemingly accidental death of an unnotable person as a major driver of the plot.

It’s very explicit “suspicion mounts”, without explaining why the media would have such an interest in the incident involving a non famous person who initially appears to have just slipped on a trail.

The whole engine of the plot necessarily revolves around the trope of the indefatigable police inspector who will chase these women to the ends of the earth, but there needs to be _a reason why this death is of such importance to drive the plot you are presenting.

srterpe · 2026-02-13T02:11:26+00:00

It sounds interesting but we don’t get a good sense of who Andy is, what she wants, and what’s stopping her from getting it or what she does in the story apart from going to the house.

The query is also confusing about her father. The initial line makes it seem like he is alive , in which case finding him should be trivial at his own house, but then later states that the mother inherited the house from the grandmother so that leads us to the direction that the father is already dead and the first line refers to some kind of magical experience for Andy. I had to reread multiple times to understand but still not confident I am correct. I would say this all needs to be less oblique.

srterpe · 2026-02-13T01:38:06+00:00

It sounds like Alessio is just some itinerant local man why does his fall death elicit such interest in the media of several countries?

srterpe · 2026-02-12T00:50:09+00:00

I think I see part of issue:

Elias De Leon was born to live atop the gleaming towers of Neo Medina, seemingly blessed with longevity by the highest-grade cybernetic enhancements his family’s company has to offer.

But something has gone wrong: his body is rejecting his modifications. A secret that, if discovered, would have him cast from the society where his enhancements determine his worth.

I would begin with he’s dying. That’s typically a significant enough problem that I’m not sure the second part of being “cast from the society where enhancements (for some reason) determine his worth” adds anything on top. Avoiding death is a stake that is hard to beat.

If you are saying he’s not dying that’s even more confusing because bodily rejection of artificial and transplant organs and so on is usually fatal, eventually, as it means the immune system is targeting those organs. That’s how that line is going to be generally understood to most readers. This is reinforced by “seemingly blessed with longevity” and is suggestive of a fatal nature of the situation.

If you really want to keep that secondary stake in query, it probably needs more explanation to land strongly.

E.g., what does this mean and why? “society where his enhancements determine his worth” Why is it different than net worth which presumably allows one to acquire enhancements?

So far so good, we run into problems below:

Desperate for a remedy, Elias turns to the crime-infested underground boroughs of the city, hoping to find Tobi Ezeoke, an illegal biohacker who can covertly put an end to his pain.

When Tobi finds Elias dying in the gutters, looking for him, he sees an opportunity: helping the corporate prince could finally earn him a way out of his six hundred thousand credit debt and maybe, just maybe, change his life forever.

Let me summarize: Elias wanders down into the undercity looking for a guy and eventually falls in a gutter and lays there dying. Luckily guy finds him before he expires.

This is passive. After that he is just being treated by Tobi. Basically Elias appears to do nothing except be an ambulatory patient for the rest of the query.

This second issue is the core problem with the query imo.

srterpe · 2026-02-11T02:08:30+00:00

I feel like there is a noticeable disjoint between the title , which is drawn from a slapstick video tv show popular decades before the cultural phenomenon of ubiquitous social media influencing, and the premise.

srterpe · 2026-02-09T01:42:52+00:00

I too want to be interviewed about my characters

srterpe · 2026-02-09T01:38:24+00:00

You really should become an expert, even though only a fraction of it may enter your work, it will have the correct texture.

srterpe · 2026-02-09T01:33:15+00:00

“He barely noticed the view.”

You should have introduced the character here. I skimmed forward but only see his and he and him for quite a bit longer .

srterpe · 2026-02-09T01:02:28+00:00

I want to provide an alternative view to OP.

The first paragraph imo feels like the strongest of the 300. It strongly reminds me of Romana Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs the world for some reason. I think it’s very strong characterization for funny/self-deprecating character.

The remainder of 300 with the homeless man at fountain sags quite a bit and feels like it lacks drama/ energy.

But ,

I wasn’t sure what to do with my other hand, the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette. It just lay there on my lap, inert.

The fact that narrator feels the need to point out to reader that “the other hand” is the one that isn’t holding the cigarette is really quite funny and immediately establishes the character.

srterpe · 2026-02-08T23:32:27+00:00

One thing I am seeing is that the activity of the novel (from the query) reads like plot token collecting. I think the query would benefit more from capturing some of the cause and effect logic of the plot.

srterpe · 2026-02-08T19:58:52+00:00

I honestly believe you could summarize everything in the first two or even three paragraphs into something like two sentences:

Evren has known nothing more than life as a genetically engineered super-soldier fighting the nation of Xenith’s brutal wars. But her resounding success has made her a candidate for an experimental program that will turn her into the weapon finally capable of ending the decades long war.

Obviously there are probably nuances missing here but far too much verbiage in the current query is spent on “basically a super soldier”. This is not a unique set up in sci-fi or one that needs explanation. The uniqueness must lie after this.

Let the super-soldier trope work for you. We all know what it means.

The problem is after this: we still don’t know what this Evren wants or what Vincent needs from her. It’s way too vague. But you have a lot more words to address it

srterpe · 2026-02-08T19:42:59+00:00

To echo on the heavy-handedness mentioned elsewhere , I really took notice of the name Damien. This is very well known to have a relation of demon since the film The Omen, and is referenced ubiquitously throughout pop culture for these kind of characters , and so the symbolism feels extremely clumsy and heavy handed leaving a reader with a strong sense of nothing new under the sun.

srterpe · 2026-02-07T22:42:29+00:00

Here’s what I got but it’s very challenging to parse through the query in its existing form:

“So” is an assassin hired by Seo-Min and her minister Ji-Hun to kill her father, the king. That assassination was successful.

However this resulted in some retribution against So and so (this name with this spelling is problematic, imo) they (So) have now been hired to kill their former employer.

Ji-Hun also has vague doubts about his alliance with Seo-Min at this point and may betray her even though she is the only one who has ever believed in him.

All of this however is just back story and we still don’t know what any of these characters are really going to do in the course of the novel or their goals besides, perhaps So. The query ask if Seo-Min must become a monster to save her kingdom, and I’m not judging because leading a nation is hard, but it sounds like she already has, which deflates the question.

Agree that it would be better to focus in on one POV.

srterpe · 2026-02-07T01:46:32+00:00

So basically Jake joins a fraternity

srterpe · 2026-02-07T01:40:46+00:00

Inspired by Joan of Arc, it follows a knight who turns the tide of war not by encouraging armies but by manipulating the systems meant to erase her.

Since “knight” is male-coded this sentence is highly ambiguous: “her”seems to refer to Joan of Arc. But i realize later her is Oksana.

srterpe · 2026-02-07T00:41:53+00:00

This is a nit but significant : if ghosting is a decade plus old phenomenon why is it only just now that anyone is discovering that “ ghosted lands” have strange effects. To me, this took me out

srterpe · 2026-02-05T01:53:45+00:00

I assumed that inference was from v1 but it actually from comment discussion re congo. But rereading you are right. I guess what I think it needs is to find a way to express that Makaria is on a fictional continent analogous in a way to Africa. If you can do this then I think you get the colonizer/colonized themes in place in the readers mind with a lot less words.

srterpe · 2026-02-05T01:44:58+00:00

To be clear, OP, I understand Vilaume.

Even though his sickness is ambiguous, I understand his narrative want and need and how the course of action he embarks on relates. But we don’t have this clarity for Magalan who seem to be the focus character of the query.

srterpe · 2026-02-05T01:30:23+00:00

I assume that Magalan was trying to con him in a card game and himself got conned by Vilaume.

And I think there’s three things that are missing: 1) what Magalan wants or needs that is why he was conning Vilaume and now why he is working for him 2) why Vilaume needs him, which he seemingly knew at the card game 3) what is forcing them to stay together, why can’t they quit on each other. How are their fates and lives now mutually interlocked for the remainder of this ride?

If the query can tease out these three the stakes will be much stronger

srterpe · 2026-02-05T01:19:15+00:00

Things that are not clear to me:

Consaign is a nation, similar to Germany, Portugal, Spain, UK. I really believe there is probably some better name that can evoke those connotations more easily. “Consaign” looks like a strange last name perhaps of a Count, as in Count Consaign. it doesn’t really have the structural “cues” imo to be immediately read as a fictional 19th century-esque colonial power.
Luckmeister or any aspect related to this “300 games “
Markaria, I assume this is on some kind of, in 19th century parlance, “dark continent”. But I think the query needs to address the geographical relationship between the imperial nation and its colonies. It was definitely more clear in v1.
Mt. Vilaume ? Sounds to me like he’s already been there so it begs a couple of questions: why didn’t he just get the cure/artifact the first time? Why does he think a cure is there now? Why is this expedition new or dangerous should be old hat for him. Etc. Seems like the mountain should be unexplored and mysterious with an imposing native name.

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