Dec 28, 2023
There are a billion and one generic fantasy stories with a billion and one generic opening chapters. If you want to gain a readership, you need to stand out from the very beginning. This chapter doesn’t stand out.
For starters, the entire fight against the demon lord would have been better as an epilogue separate from the first chapter. The two halves of this chapter aren’t connected enough to justify having them be one long chapter, especially right at the beginning when you’re trying to hook people in.
The events are told way too blow-by-blow, feeling more like the the descriptions you’d see in children’s picture books than a real novel. There’s little depth to it, and little suspense either.
The first two parts move at a very strange pace. We’re given an exposition dump on the world’s history, then suddenly thrown into a love confession, then a pretty uninspired fight scene that feels a little all over the place. It almost feels like an imitation of the opening of the first Lord Of The Rings movie, but without the interesting lore that it comes with.
The way it’s written is tonally confusing. The writing style, especially pertaining to the very excessive use of exclamation marks, feels like it’s written for children. But the events it’s describing (gore, genocide, sexual content etc) aren’t exactly child friendly topics. Harsh though this may sound, it feels like a child trying to write a story for adults. I would tone down the edge quite a bit, and try to pick a writing style that reflects the tone better.
Good luck going forward
