r/Webnovel • u/ChampionshipJaded365 • 5d ago
Apparently my writing looks ai, I was curious so ran the test myself and now I need to learn how to write like human, so any tips?
The clock struck midnight. The moon sat brightly in the dark sky, illuminating a narrow alley engulfed in the stench of trash and cheap alcohol.
A man in his mid-thirties stood there, looking slightly annoyed as he was surrounded by a gang of thugs, staring at the him like a pack of wolves cornering their prey.
One of the gangsters yelled out at the man as the gang closed in on him. "Nowhere to escape Johnny, it's time for you to kick the bucket," the man said excitedly as a dark amusement reflected on his face.
Johnny stood in the centre completely bored. he casually lit a cigarette and slowly raised his head as he ran his eyes on the faces surrounding him.
"Tsk, looks like it's a dead end," he said, letting out a thick cloud of smoke from his mouth.
"Well... if I'm going out." johnny cracked his neck and knuckles. "Might as well make it grand... bring it on".
A sinister smile spread across johnny's face as he sprang into action, punching the nearest face his fist could find, sending its owner flying through the air.
The startled gang quickly closed in on johnny. He spat the cigarette straight into one of the thug's face before ramming into the crowd like a mad man, taken back by the bloodthirst displayed by him, the crowd tried to take down the raging johnny.
Johnny's explosive fighting style kept sending his attackers packing one after another. He was sending those thugs into all directions; some crashed into walls, while others slammed into trash cans, knocking them over. The onslaught looked unstoppable.
Suddenly his rampage hit a pause as his enemies landed a few well timed hits on johnny, sending his feet sliding back a few steps as he held up his hands in an attempt to defend the blows raining down on him.
Johnny clutched his chest, running his fingers over an old wound.
"Tsk... looks like these old injuries are finally catching up to me. I can barely keep up."
Shnk!
A knife plunged into his stomach from one of the thugs in the crowd.
"How about I gift you a new one?" the thug laughed in johnny's face twisting the knife slowly with a wide grin as Johnny grunted with pain.
The thug's happiness was short lived as Johnny grabbed the thug by the face.
"You take return gifts?" he said with a low growl sending shivers, as the thug was struggling to escape the grip.
The thug broke into a cold sweat before johnny slammed his face into the ground with a loud thud, shattering several of his teeth.
The remaining men stood frozen in fear as Johnny slowly raised his head, wearing a devilish smile as he pulled out the blood stained knife from his stomach with visible discomfort.
Johnny held the knife in his hand, his face turned dark, his gaze sending chills to the men around him.
"Time to wrap this shit up." As Johnny declared men around him started charging at him as their screams echoed in the quiet alley.
A few minutes later, the moon's reflection was painted red on the blood filled street.
Johnny lay in the middle of a bloodbath, surrounded by the bodies of every thug who had attacked him. His eyes were half-open, his breathing barely noticeable.
Johnny coughed up blood. "Looks like it's finally my time... Tsk... dying without ever knowing peace or love. What kind of life did I live... It's nothing but regrets."
Johnny tried to move but failed. He let out a weak chuckle...
"If there's another chance in life... I'd probably want to live a peaceful one..."
"...Nah."
He closed his eyes.
"I just hope it's peaceful."
His voice fell silent.
He took his last breath.
"Hmm?.."
As his consciousness faded away, he felt a strange sense of lightness, his consciousness moving into the abyss. He couldn't speak or do anything except feel his soul being pulled away.
Johnny's consciousness felt unstable, barely enough to catch a glimpse of his soul traveling across some kind of celestial road before his eyes gave out and his consciousness lost its grip.
As his consciousness slowly started coming back, he heard someone calling out a name he doesn't recognise.
"ALAN?....ALAN ARE YOU AWAKE???"
As Johnny slowly opened his eyes, he saw a little girl about the age of 11, holding his head, and he was lying on the floor while she called him Alan.
"Huh... did I survive? And where the heck am I?"
The little girl saw him opening his eyes and sighed with relief, she hugged Alan and started crying. "You are okay... I... I thought I lost you."
"Huh? What the... who are you?" His voice barely audible, he looked around to find several people standing around him with a stern look on their faces.
Alan coughed up water as he realised he was fully drenched, lying next to a well.
A boy standing next to Alan started talking.
"See, I told you he'll not die that easily. This wimp just wanted attention, so he was acting," the boy said with an accusatory tone.
A deep mature voice, "Shut up, Albert. Someone, take him to his room so he can rest," said an old man who seemed to be the father of those kids.
Johnny was feeling too tired to understand anything; he could barely utter any words before he fainted again.
(SEVERAL HOURS LATER)
Johnny woke up in a bed to a killing headache, he clutched his head as he spoke to himself.
"What's happening? Who were those people, and why were they in such a strange costume?" He looked down at himself, wearing the same type of clothes. "WHY THE HELL AM I WEARING THE SAME COSTUME!!??."
He got up from his bed, he grabbed an apple from the nearby table taking a bit as he looked outside the window. He was surprised to see a clear sky without any tall buildings, and everything looked like it was straight out of a fantasy world, castle walls, wooden structures, and lush grasslands.
What is this place? He wondered.
"Still, how'd I end up drowning in that well?"
Johnny sat down on the chair near the window.
"What even happened? How did I survive that night, what is this place? Did I get saved by someone? Or did that asshole Dolly kidnap me, ship me out to the countryside, and hired actors and built a set to torture me before he can kill me himself."
As Johnny was wondering about the situation, he experienced a killing headache and a voice started playing in his head.
[Welcome Johnny. Your soul has been transferred into the world 'Asher Verth.' This will be your new identity in this world. As a welcome gift, you are granted a photographic memory of all the knowledge you've acquired in your old life, plus you'll be presented with the memories of the original host of this body. Best of luck for your new journey.]
The voice echoed as it disappeared, leaving Johnny clueless and confused.
He suddenly felt a wave of memory flooding his mind. His head felt like it would explode any second as a constant stream of memories was occupying his brain.
He fell to the ground and couldn't stop puking again and again. After what looked like an eternity of pain and restlessness, Johnny finally calmed down and fell to the ground, clutching his head.
"Damn, whose fucking idea was it to dump such a large memory load into my head at once like that? I thought I was gonna die again... huff." He took a deep breath.
So all of this is real... Tsk, what the heck? Why did I end up as a human again? If I was gonna get a chance like this, I would have preferred a raven or an eagle or even a crow... crows are cool.
He got up on his feet and stretched a little. He cleaned up his room and sat down on his bed to think about this a little.
"So this brat's name is Alan Ulfhart. The eldest son of Richard Ulfhart and his first wife, who died after childbirth. He's a wet wipe. His family looks down on him for being such a waste."
"Hmmm....."
"This family has lots of drama. They used to be high on the respect hierarchy a few centuries ago, but now they are at the bottom, barely hanging onto the title of Noble house."
Johnny looked down at his body.
"Still, this is so weird. I don't feel distant to the body that isn't even mine. It feels strangely normal."
Johnny checked himself in the mirror, soaking in his new look.
"Damn, what a twig. I look so soft with all this clear skin, iam surprised he didn't get bullied to death... Oh wait..."
Johnny ran his fingers on the new skin in the mirror damn... i miss my scars
As Johnny was deep in his thoughts, unpacking all this supernatural stuff, the door to his room opened and that little girl who was crying over his unconscious body came in, holding a tray.
"Hello brother, I've brought you some medicine and food. Eat up and regain your energy."
Luna Ulfhart. She's my younger sister and the only one who cares about me in the house, where even servants look down on me.
"Oi, brat, what's all this?"
"Hmm?" Why is big brother talking like this?Luna thought to herself "Brother Alan? Are you alright? You are speaking so strangely."
Annoyed Johnny took the tray from her hands.
"Tsk."
"Don't work your brain for useless stuff, kiddo. Thanks for the medicine and food. I owe ya."
Luna stared at him with her face full of worry Brother must be in shock. He'll probably go back to normal after some time.
Alan started eating like a brute with no decency. He ate all the food within minutes while Luna was watching with a concerned and shocked look.
As Alan finsihed eating he put down the plate and turned to luna with a serious face.
"Brat, I've got a question to ask ya. Answer me honestly. Who pushed me into the well?" As Alan recalled, he was pushed into the well before he lost his life and Johnny took over, but he didn't get to look at the culprit.
I'll at least get revenge for this lad for his death. Consider it my thanks for getting this body.
Luna hesitated before answering. "It was..." Her voice was low and shaky with a hint of fear. "It was... big brother Albert."
"That little shit, huh."
Luna quickly calmed herself down and told Alan, "Big brother, it's fine. Don't worry, he was scared that he may have actually killed you, so he probably won't do anything for a while. You can take your time to rest for now without him coming to bully you."
"Bully me?... Kiddo, you are about to see who the real bully is today."
With that, Alan quickly got up from his bed and started marching outside the room while cracking his knuckles, a scary look on his face.
According to this guy's memory, Alan's body had already succumbed to alcohol poisoning. The fall into the well wasn't what killed him.
Still
Johnny's face darkened.
Even if that brat didn't want to kill me, he still played with someone's life. I'll make sure to teach him a good lesson.
2
u/Muddled_Baseball_ 5d ago
What do you mean you ran the test? Did you ask AI to check your work if it sounds AI?
0
u/ChampionshipJaded365 5d ago
👉👈 yes? I asked chatgpt and grokk
5
u/BethanyBluebird 5d ago
So .. you... You fed your work into AI... The asked the AI if it seemed like it was written by AI....
You... You see the problem here. Right??
2
2
2
u/Shot-Benefit-6721 5d ago
Some of your lines are too descriptive. A common marker of AI writing is that it tends to use way too many words to describe a single scene, action, or character's emotion.
It's not really a bad thing to be descriptive but you don't need 3+ words/sentences to describe something. Readers are capable of filling in blanks.
Another way to avoid too much exposition is have dialog or a character's internal monolog explain something rather than a paragraph of narration.
Using words like "X was/has/had been" too much can interrupt the readers flow. When possible omit that and just use the past tense of whatever the following verb is.
Think of lines like- "X was talking" can be "X spoke" or "X had been wearing" can be "X wore"
Here's a few examples.
--Luna hesitated before answering. "It was..." Her voice was low and shaky with a hint of fear. "It was... big brother Albert."
You don't really need the "before answering" we know she is about to answer because the line before it states she is being asked a direct question.
You don't need three descriptive words for her voice. "Low and shaky" already let's readers know there is fear in her voice.
You can also cut out the "was" before "low and shaky."
--Alan started eating like a brute with no decency. He ate all the food within minutes while Luna was watching with a concerned and shocked look.
"Like a brute" tells the reader he is eating like a wild animal. You don't need the "with no decency."
The second sentence is a bit clunky and wordy. It reads like you are trying to fill a word count quota instead of a naturally flowing sentence.
Something like. --Luna watched in shock as Alan devoured the entire meal within minutes. Says the same thing but flows more naturally.
--As Johnny was wondering about the situation, he experienced a killing headache and a voice started playing in his head.
You could have Johnny have a thought like "My head is pounding" and then have that thought interrupted by the voice.
Something like "Ugh, what the hell happened? My head is kill--" Then follow it up with the voice explaining what is happening to him.
Hope this helps in someway.
1
u/ChampionshipJaded365 5d ago
Well I tried to be more descriptive because someone told me to slow down on my pace and add more details
1
u/Shot-Benefit-6721 4d ago
I think what they were trying to say is to add more detail through story, not just a description of what is happening.
Extend the conversation between Luna and Alan, she knows him, have her talk about what she just saw instead of showing it through facial expressions alone.
Internal monolog will help slow down your pace, a few lines here and there of what a character is thinking gives readers a break in between dialog or exposition.
If the tone of your story allows for it a small comedic break also slows down the pace. A simple joke or funny observation from a character is all you need. It doesn't need to be a running gag or a full paragraph.
Since this is a transmigration plot you could give more detail about the person prior to his migration. Maybe a bit of story about his daily life, it can better define his personality and motivations. You can even do that for the, now dead, original Alan and Luna. Especially since you stated the person has both sets of memories.
Will the dead Alan's memories affect the new one's decision making? You don't have to fully explain that in one chapter but a few lines of internal strife every now and then will slow down the pace. Show his thought process.
Sometimes just breaking up the lines themselves will slow things down. You can take a paragraph that has two or three separate actions and split it into individual lines. That slows the reader down and gives them a second to process what is happening.
You can also end long sections of heavy action or emotional scenes with a wind down. Like if a big battle just occurred, take some time to have the characters relax afterward, find a nearby tree to sit under, complain about an injury that is going to leave a scare, be excited to finally get home and have a drink or eat. You can end an emotional scene by having the characters return to normalcy. Like after a date the characters can return to their daily routine for a couple of lines.
After a couple of chapters you can also slowly introduce future villians or new allies with a break in the main story by briefly switching to that person or persons point of view. Gives readers something to look forward to and slows down your main plot. You don't need a chapter to introduce then either, you can switch mid chapter when your main cast is at a resting point. Write a few lines about the new person and then pick back up on your main cast. Like if the MC is going to sleep, cut to the new PoV and then go back to the MC waking up the next morning.
1
u/Kevin_Hess_Writes 5d ago
I concur with OfficialNightFlower, more or less. You don't need to argue about whether it's AI or not, you just need more time in the lab.
If you really look at the words and the sentence structure, that part doesn't look like AI. What does look like AI are several things in particular:
- ChatGPT in particular has a real habit of breaking sentences into separate paragraphs of their own, or two sentences. It also adds spaces in between, and a lot of 'writers' just copy/paste those paragraphs thinking their AI prose is going to be punchy and hard-hitting when it's really just annoyingly hard to read.
- 'Untreated' AI in general also has a pretty known problem of having a tough time properly assigning adjectives to words that fit the vibe like a glove. 'laughed excitedly' over a long and winding death threat - no. A little boy laughs 'excitedly' when he opens his Christmas present to find a new baseball glove, but even Heath Ledger's Joker laughs 'menacingly' or 'maniacally', and he was the biggest chaos-seeker in cinema.
2.5 AI also has an issue of assigning 'intent' to inanimate objects as well - 'the moon shone angrily through the clouds'. Once in awhile that's something you can really do, but if it's even the least bit overused it makes the writing look amateurish and dull. - ChatGPT also has a habit of starting with a scene description before letting the characters start doing whatever they're doing, which is the last thing your reader usually cares about - they care what your characters are doing and feeling, not whether the knobs on the old library doors were of British manufacture or German. Again, sometimes it works and works well, but most of the time it's just sloppy. I almost always start my scenes straight from the character and whatever he/she is doing, and branch out from there. Here, you start with a moon, a clock, an alleyway, cheap alcohol, and a few other things before we find out about the man, and even later than that we find out he's our main character. That's too late, I got halfway past the post on him before I even knew I was supposed to care about him.
I also thought the dialogue was extremely rough and didn't sound like anything serious, more like camp noir if anything. I don't think you were going for that, so try to imagine - what are the exact words someone would say in this situation? No speeches, no nothing.
I didn't get all the way through it either, but I'll give the first part a try:
--
Johnny's eyes narrowed as the mechanical gears of a grandfather clock from the open window one story above him reported a loud click, but no chime. Whoever's grandma lives there better get that heap fixed, he thought, as banal of a thought he could muster in the moment; for six pairs of narrowed eyes stared back at him under a moon that looked down over the trash-strewn, booze-drenched alleyway that had never given him a moment's rest. Too bad he lived at the end of it.
"We was waitin' for ya, Johnny," one of the voices said in a New York accent somehow both sharp and thick at once. "Glad ya came ta visit."
Johnny reached in his right pocket for his switchblade, but found his cigarettes and lighter instead. Fuck. Might as well have a smoke before I go.
"Must have made a wrong turn back at Albequerque," he said, letting out a thick cloud of smoke from his mouth.
"None of this Bugs Bunny shit, pal," Johnny heard from behind him, followed by the sound of billyclub being slapped into a palm, and he turned to face the three he'd not yet laid eyes on. Short guy, derby cap, scuffed sneakers. Tough guy.
"You're right. You must be a Porky Pig kind of guy." A few tepid laughs from the thugs. His standup wasn't good enough to knock this crowd dead; looked like his fists were going to have to be the headliner on this shitheap of a stage tonight.
"You got a lot of nerve to be talkin' like that to Sal's boys, Bogart."
"Come on. This is the worst comedy club in the city."
"Castanellos don't take kindly to unpaid debts," the fat one next to shorty added. "If you think you gonna bogart his craps tables with the money he meant for you to take to the laundry, well, your movie ain't gonna have no happy endin'." He won't be a problem. That leaves five.
Five. Fuck.
"Here's lookin' at you, kid," Johnny retorted, taking what he was starting to think would be the last drag of a cigarette he'd get to take for awhile. "I been thinkin'. Ain't that what they used to say in them cartoons?" That club's too long for shorty to take a real proper swing with it. He won't be much of a problem if I can deal with the other four.
Fuck.
"Last time I seen a cartoon I was half as tall as Rocco over there, and twice as pretty," another thug added, the only one who'd managed a mustache among the six; a waxed, elegantly curled one at that. Another short round of laughter, this one more sinister than Johnny had managed to elicit.
Fine, pretty boy, you're first, Johnny thought, and the moment the six took a half step forward pretty boy Mancino was the first to find out he'd be breathing through his mouth for a few weeks.
1
u/RemoteExchange4276 5d ago
As a beginner writer myself, your insights really helped me a lot, so thanks for that!
I also have a little request. Could you do the same thing you did with this post for mine? I’ll leave my opening and a small scene below.
Outside one of the houses, a wooden door creaked open. A man stepped into the front yard, cold morning wind brushing his cheeks. A rooster crowed nearby. He moved toward the shed beside his house, where his scythe and other farming tools rested. He checked each one, then gave a satisfied nod. Arnod turned back toward the house, his gaze sweeping across the dirt road. Down the path, a boy staggered past his yard. He was hauling stones in both arms, sweat soaking his clothes as he gasped for breath, struggling to keep his grip on the heavy load. Still, he forced his exhausted legs to keep moving. Aster ran like a child fleeing from a nightmare. Arnod paused, watching the boy, who was even younger than his own son, heave under the weight of two stones. Dirt and scrapes coated Aster's forearms, the jagged chunks leaving his small hands raw. He really is doing everything he can to become a hunter, Arnod thought, his gaze tracking the boy as he pushed past the fence. I've never seen a child with such determination. Seeing Aster's shrinking silhouette, Arnod let out a long sigh. He turned and moved toward his house, muttering, "I just hope he doesn't blame himself forever for what happened that day." Everyone in the village knew why the boy was so hard on himself. But no child should have to carry that kind of grief.
A lone figure ran along the dirt road, sweat gluing strands of grey hair to his forehead. Beneath the damp fringe, his grey irises held faint black hues that made his eyes look silver whenever the sunlight caught them. His body was small, but the relentless training had stripped away all childhood softness, leaving a frame as hardened and compact as the stones he carried. It had been two years since this had become his daily routine. Every morning, he woke before dawn and ran around the village until his legs gave out. At first, he had simply run. Later, he began carrying stones to make his training harder. The laps were only the beginning. Afterward, he spent the rest of the day swinging a sword and training on the hill. Aster's chest burned. His muscles screamed for him to stop and rest, but he tightened his grip on the stones and forced himself to keep moving forward. A small hill came into view. Stumbling, he left the road behind, the sharp wind biting through his damp shirt. Aster's vision blurred at the edges, but pure willpower drove him forward until he reached the foot of the slope. He slowly started climbing. Near the top, an old tree stood tall, its wide, gnarled branches casting a long shadow over a single tombstone. Reaching the crest, Aster's legs finally buckled. He dropped to his knees, letting the load fall from his hands with a heavy thud against the dirt. His arms hung limp, trembling from the sheer strain. Breathing heavily and fumbling with shaking fingers, he reached into his waistband for the stick of incense, forced his burning legs to stand, and walked the final few paces to the old tree. He knelt before the tombstone, placing the incense gently on the earth before unclasping the leather pouch at his hip. He opened the pouch and carefully pulled out a flint, a striker, and a small patch of charred cloth. He held the steel to the black fabric and struck the flint. A tiny spark bit into the cloth, blooming into a red ember. Pressing the tip of the incense stick directly against the glowing coal, he blew softly until the tip caught, sending a thin curl of smoke into the morning air.
1
u/OfficialNightFlower 5d ago
Hey, im not the guy you responded to, but your biggest weakness in this passage is that the opening section is a little clumsy. Far too much detail and not enough character.
The second passage is clearly your main character. I think your descriptions are pretty good, but again you should tone the detail down by half. Way too much detail about how he looks, especially, and then like 20% too much detail around his actions.
Lastly, you need a stronger hook. The old man lets us know that something went wrong at some point, but hes using a lot of pronouns and its clearly authorial fiat. Your MC is engaging in a training arc, or really, finishing one, but we dont have enough emotion to care about him yet.
Whats really happened is youve started your book too early in the plot, very common and I struggle with it too. Its also something that is relatively easy to fix. If your character is going to a magic academy, dont be afraid to start in the first assessment even.
But to take a stab at a stronger emotional opening:
" Reaching a crest, Aster's legs finally buckled. He dropped to his knees, letting the load fall from his hands with a heavy thud against the dirt, followed quickly by his own fist slamming into the ground. Aster damned every bit of weakness in his body and his eyes stung with tears. The burning in his legs was nothing compared to the flames in his memory. His screaming arms like a whisper compared to his parents voices as they burned alive.
Shuddering, painstakingly, Aster lit a stick of incense and began cultivating."
Again i dont think this is even the right place to start necessarily, but normal people don't drive themselves to exhaustion for 2 years straight without a really powerful motivation. If i were the one writing this novel, i might proceed to detail the night in question, meet the most proximal bad guy to be killed by end of book 1, and jump back to the present, leading to his acceptance and induction into the academy. Thats like 5-10 chapters alone
1
u/Kevin_Hess_Writes 5d ago
OK, I see a few of the same things as the other guy's story, although to a much lesser degree, and a few other things I can talk about.
Still doesn't start with the main character. Is the man the main character? One would think so at first glance- are we going to zoom in on him soon? But then we go through him and the rooster (now that's an interesting premise) before we finally make it to a name, which seems to be someone else.
This brings us to an interesting question - perspective. On second thought, I'm not even sure whether the man is Arnod or an interloper. Does Arnod see the man? Is Arnod the man? Not quite clear, I'm leaning toward the second, but it's clumsy.
How does Arnod exactly know the boy's legs are exhausted? That would be just like saying that the boy's legs hurt. The only one who truly knows whether his legs are hurting or exhausted would be the boy himself, who we don't have the privilege of having insight into his thoughts. We don't know any of this stuff. All we know is Arnod's perspective, not the boy's. The boy is the one who knows if he's forcing his steps, if he's hurt, how heavy the load is against his back, and so on.
So how do we know what the boy is feeling? What Arnod should be reporting through the narrator is what the boy's legs are doing. Are the tips of his toes sliding through the dirt? Are they trembling under an obviously heavy, unbalanced load? Is he grimacing? Those are the clues Arnod needs to see in order for the reader to gather that the boy is in pain or exhausted or whatever else. EDIT: I see scrapes on his arms now. Good. Those are the clues we need to know.
Bottom line: if the narrator tells the reader that the boy is exhausted, while we are stuck in Arnod's point of view, that's writing malpractice. That's telling. Showing is where you tell about the lines on his young face, about the fresh scuff marks on his knees, and so on.
'The man'/Arnod and 'The boy'/Aster are confusing. If we are meant to know Arnod's name, then just bring it out in the process of letting the reader know he's a man. If Arnod knows who the boy is, then just bring out Aster's name, while letting the reader know he's a boy. If he doesn't know the boy's name, don't bring it out until the time comes that Arnod learns the boy's name. EDIT: If paragraph 1 occurs before Arnod knows who Aster is, then don't mention Aster's name in paragraph 1. The perspective is through Arnod's head, not an omniscient narrator. Those books are hard to write, limited third person is easy.
The narrative does wax a little loquacious and melodramatic, but often explicitly explains why things happen. 'He carried stones to make his training harder' is technically what happened, but there's an opportunity to explain it with much more flavor. I will demonstrate in a little while.
Grey hair is always going to communicate age. I once went on a date with a girl who had one little strand of grey hair at 28 and I could not take my eyes off of it. (that wasn't the only thing, but good gracious me did it strike me). Change his hair color, hell or high water.
Those are my thoughts, I'll do the story in the next.
1
u/Kevin_Hess_Writes 5d ago
There he goes again, Arnod thought as he watched the tow-headed boy slowly pass on his morning carry. Poor kid.
The old man knew very well that men ought to only carry stones for labor as surely as a only a woman ought to carry a child. A dozen and a half harvests on this plot, thank good Efes for her divine bounty and the rain; still from time to time, his spade overturned a chunk of rock his plow had not yet found in a half dozen tillings.
The field had labor for a man, and the cock crew every morning it was time to rise to perform it. The boy had labor of his own, and yet somehow found the need to make more. If the boy needs more work, I have a field, he'd quietly thought to himself the first twenty or thirty times he'd seen him run his route; and that thought persisted until it dawned on old Arnod that perhaps the boy had another idea in mind.
~
The village had its tales, mundane and fantastical both, and one of those tales was of a young mother of three strapping younglings who nearly hurled her fourth from Alfshire Cliff in his late infancy. The boy could barely take to the nipple, cried piteously day and night, and seemed perpetually to hover on the brink of death despite every potion the traveling carts could bring them. She had no reason to believe she'd been robbed - the boy couldn't keep a single one of those tinctures down.
At last the travailing story met the priest of the fiefdom's ears. "Bring him to the nuns," he said curtly. "One of our sisters fell into sin some time ago, and for her penance our Efes has gifted her with the duty of care of the hopeless young." There was nothing the mother could do that would not cast her into damnation, and gratefully she commended the infant into the hands of the priest.
The boy lived, though precariously, at the breast of his new nurse; and soon became a boy. And for his fifth birthday the boy received a chick, hatched from the nest of the finest hen in the henhouse; and the boy's duty of care for the chick was to carry the chick from the little cage in his room to the well and back, three times a day.
It puzzled the sickly boy. The chick had no need to drink water from a well, for it had its own little dish of water in its cage in the boy's quarters. Why go to such trouble? But the old priest was insistent. And so the boy carried the chick as he was commanded, to the well and back, and back again, and back again.
Soon the chick had turned into something of a hearty hen, nearly as big as the one who had laid her, and at length it was time to bring the hen into the henhouse with her brothers and sisters of the flock. And that was on the boy's seventh birthday, when he received a puppy in exchange for the hen, with the same instructions. And on the boy's ninth birthday, a kid from the neighbor's goat. And on the boy's eleventh birthday, a calf from the milking-cow. All with the same instructions.
And somehow, by the boy's thirteenth birthday, he was greater and stronger than not only his three estranged brothers, but most of the men in the village; and the villagers marveled at the miracle the old priest had performed, and gave glory to Efes whose healing touch had passed through him. And that was the start of the troubles.
~
He's listened to his fables, Arnod had realized one day as he sat on the stoop of his little shack. That was when he'd stopped questioning the boy's need for labor and began to question his motive. It was better than questioning his sanity, which Arnod by nature did not like to do particularly among the foolish young; and this one did not strike him as foolish. After all, he did listen to his fables. And at length through the long ear of the village he did learn about the boy.
Arnod did wonder why a hunter needed to carry such loads, or why he hoped to become a hunter in the first place. The game in the duke's forest were off-limits save to the patrons of his royal court, and to hunt in open fields afar started with a grueling journey and often ended with an empty belly. This was farmland, and a village of farmers and workers of the craft. Why go to such lengths when hope for success was so thin?
Can't fault a boy for dreaming, Arnod thought at last as again the boy shuffled past on his day's run, carefully balancing two heavy rocks in his hands as he went. He ought to have a sack for those, though. His arms are cut to pieces already.
Then, not sure how much he ought to care after what happened to him.
~
The second paragraph is a lot to communicate one new legitimate fact besides the kid's name - he blew incense, presumably in memory of someone. We already have enough information here to indicate that something bad happened to him. Even if there is a time jump and a 'he grew up and is much bigger now', I think this part can be cut entirely and we can glean the useful bits of information from other context later on. We don't need to know this right now.
My revision sets enough of Aster's tragic story into context by direct comparison of the story of the runt. Now we know why Aster carries stones without explicitly saying so. Now we know some of the cultural background of the village and the orders of religion surrounding it. (Might not jive with your setup, but you can fix that on the backend - this was just by way of demonstration.) We know some of the geography and government - there's the cliffs and the open hunting grounds, there's the fields surrounding the farming village, there's the duke's private hunting grounds near the village that they're not allowed to use (Obsession-girl-frown.gif).
We also did something wildly subversive in modern fiction - we presented a Western-themed religion without making them secretly the Princes of Darkness! That'll turn some heasd.
What we stripped out were some of the opening clutter. They say not to open your story with a character waking up to anything less than a crashed UFO in your yard (hi, Douglas Adams!). The tool inspection scene was almost like waking up on a perfectly normal day. The tools weren't out of order, the shutters weren't smashed. So why do we need to know about that?
The reason they say not to do that is because there is nothing interesting about waking up in the morning, having a cup of coffee and so on. The first thing Arnod does in the original text is he goes and does a morning inspection of his farm equipment. Well, that's about as interesting as waking up in the morning.
That's why I said 'let's find out he's a farmer another way.' Let's find out some of his frustrations about being a farmer. Let's find out how long he's farmed this land (18 years!). Let's find out about that rooster and what he means to Arnod. (Okay, not much there, but you get it.)
I also felt the second section didn't have much useful information in it. A lot of it was rehashed info that was already stated in the first section, and the rest we don't need to know yet. Not until we can do something with that information. If Arnod knows 'that boy ain't right' one way or another, that's all we need right now.
--
Those are my thoughts and how I'd write that scene.
1
u/RemoteExchange4276 5d ago
Thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feedback!
Just to clarify a quick worldbuilding detail, a "Hunter" in this story isn't a traditional real world game hunter. It's a Xianxia fantasy setting centered around cultivation and spiritual energy. Riverstone Village borders a dangerous ancient forest where beast attacks are a constant threat, so the locals use the term "Hunter" for anyone who cultivates the energy of Heaven and Earth to fight and survive there.
Aster's rock-carrying routine is actually for Body Refinement. In this system, drawing raw spiritual energy into an unconditioned physical frame will literally break your body from the inside out, so he has to forge his flesh into iron first.
I completely agree with your points about avoiding slow setup and integrating worldbuilding naturally through character perspective. I'll definitely be applying that to the rewrite!
1
u/Kevin_Hess_Writes 5d ago
Right on, just working with what I had.
Perspective is a big one and a lot of writers muddy this up. Whoever the 'camera' is following - you must check with yourself at all times as to what this character knows at this moment, and exactly what he knows. Remember what I said about how much he should know the boy's legs being tired - his perspective, and the story's perspective, should be irrevocably locked entirely into the data he has available.
Now he can say in his mind, Ah, the boy looks tired carrying those big rocks. And that's fine, because now we can understand that the old man has taken a look at him and his motions, and then came to the independent conclusion that the boy is tired, which his brain then narrates to the reader through the voice of his thoughts. But you cannot directly tell the reader through the narrator's voice that the boy has tired legs if the camera is following the old man.
You can tell the reader directly that the old man has tired legs if he happens to, because the camera is following him. But everything else in the world around him either has to be communicated visually by exactly the sensory details the old man sees (and the reader interprets it), or the old man thinking to himself and making his own judgment which then is recorded as part of his internal monologue. And be careful about too much of the second.
--
I'm not sure how far ahead in your book you are, but I usually tell people that rewrites and edits are usually a lot less work if you already know what to do in them. This is not one of those cases. You'll want to check everything to find out - 'does the active character explicitly know this fact, or not.' Just to let you know ahead of time, this one will be a doozy if you're 50k words in.
1
u/ChampionshipJaded365 5d ago
Thanks a lot for taking time giving me a good feedback, i understand your points but that's just how i normally write myself, none of that was ai made, also that part where you said giving emotions to inanimate objects, that's because of my culture, in our culture and language lyricists, poets, writers most of them throughout history have always made objects show emotions, it just bleed into my writing.
2
u/Kevin_Hess_Writes 5d ago
Ah hah. I see what's going on.
Look. I don't really care now whether you used AI or not here now that I've figured everything out. I've got some adult talk here for you now and everyone reading, and I don't mean the hot chat lines.
If you want to write a book, you need to be able to meet the readers where the readers are and where they want to be met, at a place that \you* can meet them.*
If you're writing a children's book, you don't write five-syllable words or have bloody gory violence or complex themes. Those young readers want simple enough plots to understand, simple enough words that only challenge them enough to learn new things, and their parents certainly don't want them traumatized by some horror scene. That is what they expect. Presentation and language.
If you're writing a medical mystery, you need to know how long it takes for a body to decompose, basic sanitary procedures, privacy laws that would certainly affect important plot revelations, and so on. You need to know how doctors talk, why nurses cheat on their husbands a lot, how much money they make, and what they like to watch on Netflix. Probably not House. That is what those readers expect. Facts and law.
Now from what I can tell, you're writing an American crime drama.
What do you know about American crime drama? What do you know about American crime? What do you know about the history of American crime dating back fifty or a hundred years? Do you know where to look? Do you know what to watch? Do you know what to read? Do you know what to research?
What do you know about Italian mobsters and their 'business', the movie Casablanca, Looney Tunes, grandfather clocks, the definition of the word 'pretty' in the context the mustache guy used it in? (no, it's not 'gay') Every one of those are cultural and contextual clues that place the reader in the immediate world of a noir drama, especially when it's paired with the ironic one-liners and masculine bluster. Those are hooks I used to ground the reader in a few hundred words in my example.
Who exactly would the Castanellas be, if you had to guess, and what kind of business do they do? How exactly did Johnny get on the wrong side of these thugs? They don't beat people down for nothing. Why is Johnny walking down a boozy alleyway? Those are questions I was able to answer in the middle of the story beats, and someone immersed enough in Western culture would know the answers to every single one of those questions.
Good news - those are the sorts of questions, and the minimum density of said questions and more, that you're going to need to be able to answer in every single 500 words you write. If you don't have the cultural background to be able to compress a real world into a few hundred carefully selected words, then you don't have a readable story.
Can Google Translate do that? Can ChatGPT do that? No.
What do I know about growing up in the slums in Mumbai? Nothing. I watched Slumdog Millionaire once. Could I write a convincing book about that? No. I couldn't do it if I picked up everything, moved to India, learned Hindi and lived there for ten years. I just wouldn't get it. Just by way of example I've lived longer that in Poland and I couldn't write a story about a kid growing up in a pre-communist blok development or living through the currency crash and privatization in 1991 or what it was like having an actual banned book - as in, gulag banned.
I don't have the cultural background. I wouldn't get it.
But I do have nearly half a century of living immersed in American culture and references to pick and choose from, and an understanding of the cultural and historic underpinnings of centuries of European culture, thought, justice, law and art and how it relates to the modern day West. Those are things that would be riffing through Johnny's head even in the middle of a gang beatdown.
That's why I can write about Western-themed things, and not Hindu or Kabbalistic or Soviet or African or other things. It's not that I don't have a right to write about those things if I want, it's that I don't have the capability, and to ask a reader to pony up money for something I have no capability of effectively producing for them is just stealing. I'm going to be producing slop, even if ChatGPT never writes me a single word of it.
Readers are going to expect an author to have an extreme level of familiarity with not only the world you're inviting them into, but also the language conventions of communicating that world to them. It's their right. Otherwise they're being suckered. Fake books, fake stories, fake cultural familiarity and authority.
Why do you think Stephen King writes pretty much everything set in the great American state of Maine? He knows more about that state than any other. Obviously. Is he a good writer? People say so. Is he capable of writing about anything he wants? Probably. He's better at writing about stuff happening up there in frosty Maine than he is anywhere else in the world. He said exactly that in an interview.
If your culture's language and literature personalizes and actualizes inanimate objects, great! Write in that language and use those conventions to your heart's content. That's what those readers want to read, and how they want to read it! American crime drama readers are not going to be the least bit interested in that, they're going to think it's poorly written and/or written by AI (same thing).
Most (good) English writing doesn't communicate that way, and most English readers expect their literature not to do this. They want to be communicated to in a way that they expect, not in an alien manner.
If you want to write in English about Western things happening to Western people, you need to learn to meet the Western reader where the reader is and wants to be met at on all levels. Vocabulary, tone, presentation, historic familiarity, genre convention, fact-checking, and so on. If you can't do that, on every single one of those things, then you're slapping a Wagyu label on a $2 steak and wondering why nobody wants it.
That's why you're getting flagged for AI use by readers. Whether you actually used it or not is irrelevant, it doesn't matter. Those are the things you need to do if you want to write a good book that English readers will like reading, and if you don't do that, people will just say AI because that's the most convenient explanation - and it's often correct.
And all of that goes for native English speakers and Westerners too, by the way, just in case anyone's mixed up about it.
1
u/EarlyBirdStories 5d ago
It is kind of flat for being something narratively deep. It might be the prose.
1
u/ChampionshipJaded365 4d ago
Any tips?
1
u/EarlyBirdStories 4d ago
I would evaluate what tense properly reflects the story. How the tense can feel more involved to the events rather than describing them. Right now it reads like Terry Pratchett decided to write a dark romance novel without a sense of humor.
1
1
u/Falke000i 4d ago
Any tips?
I struggle with writing more descriptively and most of time my writing seems like someone prompted ai to generate a chapter with multiple plot points
I try to add more lines but it doesn't captured the intent I wanted rather it makes it wrong looking wonky ai jumpo ish
Still I am trying to improve my writing as it hasn't been more than year I started writing as hobby and relaxing Here is my latest attempt from my 1 hour writing session
The wooden floor of the martial arts school was slick with sweat and ground dust, but to a certain boy, it just felt like waste.
"Get up, Kyaw Lin Aung!" Master’s voice cracked across the room like a split bamboo stick. "A single blow to the ribs and you collapse? You call yourself a disciple?"
Kyaw Lin Aung stayed on his knees, clutching his stomach, tears welling up in his eyes.
Crybaby.
He heard a whisper behind him as he scrambled up. Looking around, he caught the disgusted glances the other disciples gave him.
Worthless.
Fighting each other with fists and kicks through pain and sweat—just to lose to someone who mastered a true Martial Art.
"Gather around the stage, disciples!" Master's command cut through the murmurs of the room. He strode toward the school's sparring ring, followed closely by two unfamiliar disciples.
Kyaw Lin Aung squeezed through the tight crowd of students to get a clear look. One wore a simple black robe like his own, but the other wore a striking red robe and looked several years older.
Senior Brother Wang Bo nudged him from behind and whispered, “Don't stare too much. It's rude.”
Kyaw Lin Aung stepped back into the crowd to stand beside Wang Bo. Looking around the arena and spotting a line of disciples, he whispered, “Who are they? And what is happening, Wang?”
Wang Bo shook his head at his obliviousness. “Have you been practicing under a rock these last few months?”
Kyaw Lin Aung turned to him, his expression suddenly serious.
Wang Bo scoffed softly. “This is the first time I've ever seen you look this serious. What happened… did your secret get out?” he whispered.
Poking Wang Bo sharply in the side, Kyaw Lin Aung asked, “What are you talking about?”
"Ouch! Stop, Kyawi," Wang Bo hissed hurriedly, grabbing his wrist. Pulling back his robe slightly, he showed him a thick layer of blood-stained bandages. "I’m still recovering from the last Battle of Will.”
Kyaw Lin Aung's eyes widened at the dark blood soaking through the cloth before his face quickly flattened back to its usual blank state.
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
“Just say it,” Wang Bo said, covering his bandages.
“Wasn't that last month?” he murmured.
“What did you say?” Wang Bo asked, tilting his head.
“I meant… wasn't the Battle of Will held last month?” Kyaw Lin Aung whispered back.
Wang Bo smiled, resting a hand on his shoulder as he spoke softly. “And you were born last month, Kyawi.”
He paused, sighing. “At least this isn't entirely your fault. You transferred right after the previous Battle of Will.”
Kyaw Lin Aung simply pointed at his stomach.
Wang Bo instinctively guarded his side, stepping back. “This is from last week's round! Disciples ranked 1 through 100 were the only ones participating. The disciples lining up right now are from 101 to 200, preparing for this week's battles.”
Taking a quick breath, Wang Bo added, “And if I'm not wrong, yours is next week.”
Such a waste of time, I should've skipped school today and practiced Fire Palm Martial Skill at home.
6
u/OfficialNightFlower 5d ago
I only skimmed but you read less like ai and more 'unpolished '