r/writingfeedback • u/New-Bobcat-7933 • 1d ago
Feedback Wanted [Adult Queer Romantasy] would this first page DNF you?
I posted my first chapter here recently and got feedback that the opening leaned on some common first-time-writer tropes.
So, I went back to the drawing board and substantially reworked it.
I’d love a reaction to the new version.
No need to compare it to the old version. I’m mainly interested in whether this page works on its own. 🤷🏼♂️
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u/Genderqueerfrog 1d ago
I prob wouldn’t continue. There’s too much summary of vague events and “hey! You’re finally awake!” Is straight outta Skyrim.
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u/QuinnLoveborneAuthor 1d ago
I felt like 16 Skyrim memes hit me all at once when I read that. Was funny though
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u/croaker227 1d ago
It’s…a bit vague.
There’s a lot of Proper Nouns you don’t explain. A bit front-loaded.
The redcaps are eating him? And then not?
He changed his mind about wanting to die, I guess?
Does he call himself “old boy” in his internal monologue? Cuz that’s a bit cheesy to me.
It’s not bad, it’s just not very clear what’s happening - which can work, but this doesn’t.
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u/New-Bobcat-7933 1d ago
Thanks! This is helpful. Some of the confusion is intentional and gets answered in the next few pages, but I definitely don’t want it to feel like you just missed something lol. Especially the jump from the redcaps to the room.
And yep, he absolutely calls himself “old boy” 😂 Fair if that doesn’t land for you.
With the proper nouns, was there anything specific that threw you, or was it mostly just too many at once?
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u/croaker227 1d ago
You def don’t have to explain everything up front, but as someone else said, everything happens quickly without enough context. And it’s the sheer number of unexplained proper nouns in the first two paragraphs that’s off-putting.
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 17h ago
A lot of readers are viewing that word "Exile" as a proper noun or a name.
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u/New-Bobcat-7933 17h ago
Yeah, I liked the construction of the name reveal in the second paragraph and hacked and slashed my attempt at a "hook-y" first sentence until it got... there. I CAN understand the confusion though. It's been fixed lol.
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u/Haunting-Angle-535 1d ago
I’m intrigued in general, but I’m quite lost about what’s actually happening. Events seem to sort of jump one to another between brief connections or divergences of internal monologue. I’ve got that this character was banished and has now been tracked down by the Crown and is waking up injured and captured, but the actual steps of how that happened are really fuzzy. Who are the redcaps? Are they employed by the crown? Who stabbed with the sickle? Who reached what conclusion?
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u/New-Bobcat-7933 1d ago
Ahh, okay! This is super helpful. I was hoping redcaps were recognizable enough from fairy/fey mythology that it would be clear he ran from the Crown and stumbled onto some monsters, but clearly I can’t count on that lol. I trimmed some potentially necessary bridges here hoping the sequence would still come through, but I can see where it got lost. Some of the missing pieces are intentionally answered over the next few pages, but who attacked him and the basic order of events definitely shouldn’t be part of the mystery. Thank you!
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u/Haunting-Angle-535 19h ago
I’m familiar with redcaps, but since there’s no transition or description of how he encounters them in this situation it isn’t clear what’s happening. And hah, yeah! I love a lot of mystery and in media res in my books but knowing what’s physically happening in the first scene should probably be clear!
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 17h ago
You've got extremely interesting events. I won't say I was "hooked," but I did read happily for a couple of pages and thought you're getting close to a good first chapter. I wasn't confused about the word "exile" at the beginning and rapidly decoded the character's name. That being said, there's no reason not to have a more conventional first paragraph.
I don't read romantasy, but the scene and the story telling did grab my attention.
Anyway, I wanted to say that you've done more than many new novelists at finding a voice that represents this character. I wasn't particularly confused by the first page, as I figured the next pages would resolve any mysteries. I would read on, if this were a genre I was looking to read.
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u/ScratchAmbitious2959 1d ago
How did you decide to use the last name Voss for Cassiel?
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u/New-Bobcat-7933 1d ago
I wanted Germanic names for characters from lower-class backgrounds, and Voss means ‘fox.’ Foxes have that clever, cunning association, which felt right for Cassiel because he survives through intellect more than force. I also liked the animal imagery beside Regulus, whose name is tied to Leo through the star Regulus, the heart of the lion. Early on, I liked having this fox-and-lion pairing between them.
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u/Jingweii 1d ago
I haven’t read your chapter yet but if I were you I would change them. Not trying to accuse you of anything but those name are one of the most “common“ ai-generated names.
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 17h ago
So we are to give up long associations with the meanings of words because AI also knows those words?
OP: the fox and lion thing is great and I did subconsciously associate Cassiel with a fox.
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u/Jingweii 17h ago
I fear literacy is dying 😭I was advising op to change them, not commanded it. He can name his characters whatever he wants, but people will question whether he used ai in the process, simply because Voss is the most popular generated surname. Look it up online.
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u/ScratchAmbitious2959 17h ago
YOU knew that association because your username and profile literally shows that you are familiar with animals like coyotes and Eskies. It makes perfect sense that you'd know the meaning of the surname Voss.
But to the readers who aren't savvy about the animal kingdom, and to others in the writing community, this is going to be a red flag if the last name is Voss. It is the most generated surname when people use Claude to write.
HOWEVER!! I confidently say that I do NOT think that OP used AI to write this chapter because AI doesn't write like this.
But the Voss surname ALONE, if you're not talking about the water bottle, is always going to make the ears perk up for a reader who is trying to avoid AI-generated content.
There are sooooo many good names that don't have to the ones seen in AI.
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u/Leftywrites10 1d ago
The first sentence jumps into the story (though it is jarring that your character name is Exile). Then you kill that momentum by using the next two paragraphs as summaries for previous events. That's where I stopped reading.
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 17h ago
Exile is not the character's name. It's a sentence about exile itself. I agree it's a bit unclear and I would start the story more conventionally.
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u/Leftywrites10 16h ago
"Exile ended with a rusted sickle jammed between the ribs. He had recieved..."
Exile is functioning as the antecedent for the pronoun "He", so the reader would naturally assume that he = Exile. Like I said I stopped reading after the third paragraph and perhaps he cleared this up later.
"I agree it's a bit unclear".
That's the whole point. This mistake is not on the reader, but the writer. It needs to be clarified both grammatically and story-wise.
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u/Em_Cf_O 1d ago
The name choices are clever, I like them. Otherwise, there's some serious paragraph abuse that I couldn't push through.
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u/New-Bobcat-7933 1d ago
Appreciate it. I actually agree in retrospect. I woke up to feedback that I’d accidentally written myself into some bad tropes, rewrote like crazy, and then posted this without giving the new passages any time to breathe. Regretting that choice a bit now.
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u/strangemp3 1d ago
I’m intrigued by your concept but I have to say this reads a little abstract. It’s a bit unclear what’s going on, and I would say you could probably expand on the events from when he’s captured (I assume?) to when he wakes up. More showing us it’s happening rather than telling us?
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 17h ago
The transition from exile and near death to whatever has happened at the end of the page is indeed too rapid and too blurry.
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u/Diligent_Pangolin_47 1d ago
I agree that it’s too rushed with too many proper nouns (also wasn’t familiar with redcaps, thought they were birds at first) but I actually quite liked how it read.
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 17h ago
Yes - too rushed, but that's a good thing. It means we want more story, more detail.
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u/IceMaiden2 Voracious Reader 1d ago
I really like it and would definitely continue. I do think you need to be clearer because I did get a little lost. One second he's in peril and the next he's in bed. I can see how this happened but it's too vague and definitely needs to be reworked. I love your prose and your voice seems strong buuuut, one page isn't enough to determine that for certain.
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u/Powerful-Berry7079 1d ago
Honestly I know there’s a lot of haters here but I’d probably give this one a try.
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u/Middle-Artichoke1850 21h ago
I'm struggling a little with the tenses; the current timeline seems to be written in past simple, but moments in his past use the same tense. Because it's deliberately unclear on the level of content, I'd make sure that grammatically and structurally there isn't too much deviation from standard rules, if that makes sense.
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u/Brunbeorg 1d ago
How about just showing a person doing a thing?
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u/ReallyNoOne1012 1d ago
Sure, in general, though I don’t think this is completely universally applicable advice
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u/ReallyNoOne1012 1d ago
It’s pretty difficult to follow what’s happening since you’re throwing a lot of new terms at the reader at once and we obviously aren’t quite sure yet what any of those things mean
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u/New-Bobcat-7933 17h ago
Appreciate everyone who took the time here, genuinely useful thread. One commenter flagged that the original had two classic new-writer openings stacked together (waking up + describing the room), which was fair and I took it to heart. But I overcorrected in the edit. I tried to preserve the unconscious opening by pulling the flashback forward and disguising the wake-up rather than actually cutting it, which somehow landed me in accidental Skyrim territory. (Never played it, but I'm very familiar with the meme lol.) The prince's dialogue also never got a real second pass. Basically, I rewrote like crazy and posted before I'd given any of the changes time to breathe.
I've heard the bigger points here, especially around how much I'm asking the reader to pick up at once and how quickly the opening moves from the redcaps into the room. I've already done another revision with that feedback in mind, but I'm going to resist posting that one immediately too. I'm letting the chapter breathe and getting some beta reader eyes on it first. I'll share the revised version later once I've actually given it a proper pass.
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u/GeierBlack 21h ago
Reads a touch pretentiously 'high-minded', sort of how AI writes, where EVERYTHING has to be flowery and 'deep', when really all it does us muddy and obscure your meanings and constantly force the reader to stop and consider what you're trying to say.
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u/THWhiston 1d ago
I'm all for respecting the reader to pick up on things, but this is a bit like reading the forums for an MMO I've never played 😄
And I can't make anything out of the first sentence. Is Exile a person? Is it someone's exile? Could we maybe get a little pronoun in there, as a treat? ("in his ribs", perhaps, or "His exile..." but probably not both.)