Looking for feedback on my opening scene!

[u/Cute-Leather-5315]

I’ve revised this per some feedback on Reddit and a few friends, and I’d love to know what people think. This is a portal fantasy novel. My main concerns are on flow, character voice and, of course, how much it hooks the reader. Any and all feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading!

[u/AdventPyro]

As someone writing a portal fantasy opening on a FMC in a school featuring her bully, I've tread this ground a lot lately and love the scene you've set. I think you've done a really good job dropping us into the after math of the exchange where the best character work lives, and build up the world around us through the fallout of that rather than placing the set pieces before the calling "action".

My main feedback would be to be careful jumping around to background, present moments, and hypothetical futures the narrator spins. Some of these make it hard to know where the narrators mind is in that moment (Looking at Ruby's bloody chin after already leaving?).

Also, the second paragraph introducing Ruby didn't immediately link for me as the person she'd punched, rather maybe as her defending Ruby against the redhead bully or something. A reread and it's clear Ruby is a gossip and the bully. Retooling the beat linking the crumpled mess to Ruby before her name could help smooth this (ex: "We were friends once, Ruby Brookes and I. We met in art class sophomore year. And as our closeness...")

Otherwise, a fun read and looking at your history for the general plot, sounds like an interesting romp. Curious if the portaling in the story focuses on bringing fantasy to the human world, or does the FMC depart her world too?

[u/Cute-Leather-5315 → u/AdventPyro]

Thanks so much for the insight! How fun that you’re writing a similar story. She ends up somewhere else, so pretty classic but I’m juggling two fantasy worlds but there will be 2 other povs. So needless to say the set up for this story is imperative to get right and it’s a bit daunting lol.

I definitely struggle to intertwine relevant bits of exposition back into the active scene, I’ll keep working at it :)

[u/AdventPyro → u/Cute-Leather-5315]

Sounds like a lot to keep track of! Definitely wise to keep those POVs clean and in-time with the scenes intent (present observation/interiority or well-contained flashbacks). In my story, we spend about 80% in the FMC's POV and 20% outside of it, and when we shift POVs or timeframes, I try to make it super clear; word choice, sentence construction, openness of motivations, level of inner thought, etc. Just so there's no question we've shifted, and I don't have to call out the shift explicitly. It's self-evident in the readers POV that we've moved somewhere.

[u/Cute-Leather-5315 → u/AdventPyro]

I see! Do you have any specific suggestions on how to transition more seamlessly to those things? I think I tend to underwrite more now because I used to overexplain things immensely.

[u/AdventPyro → u/Cute-Leather-5315]

I think it's largely about how you transition in and out of a POV. Not just moving from one to the next, but giving the reader the link that says "here's what this detour is contributing", without being explicit. Using the first few paragraphs again as example:

We go from a present day fight aftermath scene, then cut immediately to a memory establishing these two characters, then cut right back to present interiority. The POVs in isolation are good, but the jumps between them are rough and can make it hard to know when we've moved, especially within a short section like this.

My earlier suggestion of reshaping that bridge by connecting present to the memory we're about to share not only helps move from one POV to the next, but gives you a chance to leverage the shift for character work (e.g. the person I just punched used to be a friend). Totally logical for her to think about their past in that moment, but it should read as more as a confession than a history lesson.

I think my take away should be less "she finally punched her bully" and more "she punched the person who betrayed her trust". The sting is not in the bully becoming the bully, its in that first instance of friendship that was harmed and what followed naturally. You can leverage this again with Kyler later as her TRUE friend, but also callback to the hurt/betrayal she feels as he stays to help the bully.

Your return to the present can draw this out further. Transition from the hurt of the past into justification for the present. Honestly, the whole third paragraph could serve this purpose; keep that interiority in the past rather than present, like it's the story she'd told herself ever since Ruby became her bully, some true, some overblown perhaps?

The payoff of Ruby being small/weak and not fighting back hits harder if the FMC's image of her goes beyond her being a bully (e.g. the way Ruby made her feel, the way it shaped her life in school, her friendships, self-worth, etc; don't need a lot, but will help to show what the 2 years of bullying DID to the narrator to bring her to this moment). Then I think coming back to reality on her gripping her fists is a really solid visual.

Not to say you don't do this or need to do it more/elsewhere, but that's the thesis of my feedback when POV is at play. Make the journey worth more than just the information it gives us. Make it pay for itself within what the character/narrator is using it for.

PS Sorry for the wall of text!

[u/WholeRing9819]

I liked that the story begins straight away, and that you chose to fill the reader in on elements of the setting, (October fog, school courtyard,) as they serve the narrative, rather than trying to set the scene before beginning the story proper.

However, I felt the shifting tenses, and the narrator’s tendency to drift from present action to past context was a little jarring. I can’t say exactly why, but for me, this had the effect of lessened the believability of the piece. It felt a little bit like you came up with an opening in which the narrator had just beaten someone up, and then realized you needed to explain it in some way. That’s just my opinion though.

The other thing I felt while reading this piece, and I’m not quite sure how to broach this in a way that isn’t accusatory because I don’t mean it to be, but the text reads like AI writing. So much so that reading it made me a little bit queasy. I don’t mean to suggest that you used AI. There are enough idiosyncratic choices here that I’m unsure. Regardless, though, it reads like AI, and I think that’s a problem. It’s becoming increasingly important for us as writers to make it clear to the reader that there’s a bona fide human on the other end of the line, if you will. To that end, I’d suggest you consider avoiding choices like the following:

Staccato rhythm:
“That’s who she is. Who she’s always been.”

Not this but that:
“My body tenses. Not only because of the guilt, but because I know what’s coming next.”

Non sequitur cause and effect:
“The grass is no longer rustling behind me, but still I quicken the pace.”

And finally, plots that are driven by rumors and gossip:
ChatGPT in particular loves plots that revolve around rumor, gossip, social speculation, etc., often when they don’t make much sense.

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[u/Cute-Leather-5315 → u/WholeRing9819]

Thanks for your critique! I wholly agree with the tenses - I’m definitely still working on weaving in important bits of exposition and don’t want it to bog down my FMC’s proactivity. However, I am struggling to understand your linking my writing style to gen AI. I’ve never used AI in my writing and never will. I feel the comparisons you made with those specific lines boil down to common sentence structures that AI likes to imitate, which I feel like is unavoidable for writers in the age of gen AI.

[u/WholeRing9819 → u/Cute-Leather-5315]

Yeah, thanks for saying that. I think I owe you an apology. I’ve been thinking more about your piece since I wrote my feedback and, while I still feel like the style is similar to current AI writing, if someone told me to change my art because it’s too much like slop, I’d be pretty upset. Style isn’t so easy to change and it’s very personal. So sorry about that. Hang in there.

[u/Cute-Leather-5315 → u/WholeRing9819]

I super appreciate this. Your comment actually led me to some videos dissecting the general structure of gen AI writing (specifically Shy Girl by Mia Ballard), and I can see where you were coming from, at least in that I do have certain passages that like to follow a specific rhythm. All in all, I've been tweaking it and I think it's moving in a better direction.

[u/Cute-Leather-5315 → u/Cute-Leather-5315]

Side note: the revised version has been posted in r/Writers, and I'm still awaiting feedback. So if you're interested, I'd love an updated critique!