Author's diary - 02 - Criticism

Spoilers for volumes 01 to 05!!

So anyway, before going into the next volume I would like to take a look back just like last time, but instead of talking about how much I love working on this book, I would this time try and point out all of the things that pissed me off about it.

For a while now I have been doing something called "Review swap" with other writers, where we read a bit of each others's novels and try to make a review from our experiences.

I decided that it could be cool to try and review my own novel and see what problems I could find with it, so let's do this then.

Here are my top 10 things I hate about my novel:

1 - I'm an absolute disaster when it comes to detailing things. What I mean by that is that many times a scene will just say "There was a young girl, there was a city, there was a creature", and that would be it. What was the girl's hair color? What was she wearing? How tall was she? Was she thin or fat? What did the city looked like? Stuff like that I always forget to detail properly and it always makes me fear that it will be to vague for the reader to picture in it's head.

I try to address this up in volume 06, but man... What a huge, huge wasted opportunity for Daren and Evlin to talk about their shared fear...

03 - I keep focusing on Evlin too much. Yeah, this is just straight-up favoritism, no excuses about it... During the fight against Boris it honestly would have been a great chance to put the spotlight on Lilith, but I imidietly knock her out and make Evlin fight instead. Same thing with the fight with Marcus. Everyone gets knocked out in seconds and only Evlin remains left to fight. I need to stop putting so much focus and Evlin and let more characters shine.

Don't worry thought, I feel like I handled this really well in volume 06!

04 - Speaking of fights... I suck at doing fights! Yeah, I think I mentioned in volume 03 but I never know when it's the right time to end a fight. The battle with Marcus honestly made me feel like I could have done much more... I feel like in the hands of a better writer that fight could have been much more epic... But that brings another problem... Which is...

05 - I'm too soft on my cast. I mean... Ok, no I'm not... "Fragile Heart" is living proof that I have no problems giving characters a hard time. But when it comes to physical damage I always get really nervous and get cold feet. Sure they will get hurt or stabbed or whatever... But I always hesitate when it comes to causing some real damage.

Going back to the Marcus fight, I feel like I could have made him much scarier if one of the characters had lost a hand or a leg or something... But I just didn't have the guts to do that.

In fact, originally, the reason Evlin couldn't fly with sphinx was because the hunters were supposed to have cut off his wings. But again... I just found it too cruel and made it so Sphinx would inherit Evlin's fear instead.

06 - Every single Evlin fight ends the same way. She makes a gauntlet and punches someone in the face or stomach. I kinda joke that this is her signature move, but yeah, I need to work on that.

08 - My other bizarre obsession with changing the status quo. This is more of a volume 01 problem, is not that big of a deal right now... But during volume one I just could not stop changing the status quo.

I just imagine the reader going, "Oh, guess we will follow Daren's adventures with Marceus then! Switch!! Oh... Guess we will be following Marceus time serving the Goddess then! Switch!! Ok... Guess we will be following Marcus serving the goddess then Switch!! ... Will... Will we follow Daren and his team waking up from their sleep? Switch!! Evlin...? Who the heck is Evlin???"

10 - And the last thing that I hate about my novel, which is kinda also part of number 05 and 07's problem, my bad guys lose too easily... Because I keep trying not to hurt Evlin and the gang too much and I keep trying to keep volumes condensed, it sometimes feels like my villains will suddenly run out of hp just so we can move on.

I think that's enough bashing my own novel for now... Let's hope I can learn from my mistakes and can do better next time... Enjoy volume 06 Coming tonight, something around 18:00 pm Gmt+1.

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