To make it short, this story is not being liked by the audience, as much as I thought it would. It feels like, there are at most twenty people who are actually reading it. Especially the reply from the "Web Fiction Guide"-page gave me a heavy blow:
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| A polite way to say that it's crap ... |
I actually thought that my writing is quite good, compared to other titles I found on that page, but I guess, that was delusional.
For now, I'll take a break. Maybe I'll try out something else. Maybe I'll continue it one day for my own interest ... we'll see. But if I do, I'll not go through the trouble with the polls and stuff.
And at least, her's a farewell present for the few once who actually enjoyed it:
(My previous comment didn't get through, and I didn't save it :()
ReplyDeletePersonnaly I quite like the story, but it's true that the writing (as in English mistakes) is not perfect. That doesn't mean quality of the story, just some silly mistakes here and there. It's heaps better that some stories on RRL and even some novel translations.
There are several English mistakes: For example I saw "warrior" spelled as "worrier", a lower-case 'I', "threat" spelled as "treat"... And some tense mistakes as well, plus lot of other minor stuff which may not always be incorrect but would regardless be fixed by an editor.
For example at the beginning of chap 16:
- It's good the injured WERE brought inside already
- It's [-in-] the middle of the night already (no 'in')
- but it still adds up greatly to the unwelcoming atmosphere -> would be better rephrased
- wall-fragments -> fragments of wall, debris, ...
- if I DIDN'T know where they WERE (tense mistake)
- THESE guys are running like crazy!
And so on.
Even in the prologue. First, past tense would have really been more preferrable for narration: three breathless people RAN inside the WRECKED ruins of a small watchtower. After making sure they WERE not followed, they DROPPED to the floor COMPLETELY exhausted. (Totally is more for informal talk, not narrating, at least in this context).
Even if the present tense is used:
"The third one, who seemS to be the oldest and most experienced, joins the conversation."
The "S" is missing after 'seem'.
"Everything, that looks promising is laid out on the floor." <- Why is there a comma here, it destroys the sentence!
"As feraldis started to pronounce the strange cryptic words from the book, the ritual began. After short, the magical circles on the floor began to glow in a shimmering yellow color." <- well here you start using the past tense for narrating, but later in the prologue you switch back to the present!
There are dozens of small mistakes in every chapter, so you were not rejected from topwebfiction unfairly.
So the quality of your grammar/spelling may not be perfect, but I find that your writing (drawing the reader in with an interesting story) is great and personally if the story keeps getting posted on r/noveltranslations then I'll keep reading it. And nobody answers polls, really. They're bad anyway, I've seen several stories destroyed because the author asked the readers' opinion on what happens next.
I meant the writing/grammar is still heaps better than RRL fictions/some translations, didn't mean to compare the overall story - which is of course better than a lot of novels, at least to my taste.
DeleteHey, thanks a lot for going through the trouble to give me this detailed reply (twice, since your first one didn't reach me) I implemented most of your suggestions.
DeleteThis "minor mistakes" happen mostly due to the grammar correction software. It often corrects to the wrong word and my English is to bad to notice it.
The commas are always a wild guess, since I don't know the rules for their placement in the English language.
That aside, I'm a Russian, living in Germany, trying to write in English and my grammar is bad in all of this languages. It just isn't one of my strong points ... never was.
Are you by any chance interested in editing the rest of it? I could give you excess to my blog for that. There's no money in it though, since I'm not earning anything with it.
I thought it was a good concept with Lizard peoples. It is better than many of the novels on Royal Road. The story was young, so it was lacking in plot and the main character was slower to develop dungeon abilities compared to other dungeon MCs. I think the editor may have preferred quicker development because most people in prefer to read things that give them that instant gratification. Considering chinese light novels and the novels on Royal Road the MCs develop abilities fairly fast and get that petty vengeance most of these editors and virgin readers get off on.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked the concept. I had a lot of fun giving the Lizard-man some character.
DeleteYou are right, most of similar stories are developing way faster. Mostly because the MC never makes mistakes, or just gets some OP ability at the very beginning. All this stories just lack realism in my opinion. I think I explained somewhere in my first posts how this was the decisive reason for me to start telling my own story, because I wanted a "normal" MC. One that makes mistakes and bad decisions from time to time. One that needs to learn and adept to survive. One that has to "earn" his accomplishments. This is not the story of an overpowered MC, but about how he got there.
But is that the reason it got rejected? I don't know. If it is ... fine. But I think the editor had a bigger problem with my grammar, and me confusing some words with others. (Like "few" and "view". I don't know how often I confused these two.)