Hi Tangerqueen
Overall it’s good, the cover is really nice and eye catching, nothing to complain about there. I like your choice of font and it’s clear there’s been some effort into the cover.

I’ve read three chapters and I have to say your writing style is definitely readable. It’s simple, easy to understand and the pacing is also great.

I think, as someone unfamiliar with a lot of gaming terms, you should probably put the full word instead of abbreviations the first time is used (Eg ‘guy is a something (ADC)’ then afterwards when you use the abbreviation ADC everyone knows what it means or can at least connect the dots). Even just a casual half sentence explaining the meaning would help. For gaming stories it’s best to assume readers are noobs, like, not dumb enough to not know what basic terms like DPS or tanks are, but definitely not knowledgeable about pro gaming (Worlds) and less generic terminology.

Honestly even though gaming isn’t my favorite story, it’s well written so far and I like the main character’s reaction to traveling back. The reason for going back in time (the disembodied voice) is a bit iffy- like, what does that guy get for sending him back anyway? There’s no demonic pact reason or general motive- but honestly it’s not a big deal and can be ignored lol. Overall, it is definitely different to the other high paced game stories but not in a bad way.

I think the weakest thing is your synopsis. It’s long and sort of feels like there’s two summaries at the same time. There’s various ways to cut it down but I recommend scraping parts of both and mesh the two together. Here is a quick idea of what I may have done (I just copy and pasted parts of your summary together, it’s just to give a suggestion, it’s better to edit and such yourself lol)

Nine times to Worlds. Nine times failed before Quarterfinals. One last shot before retirement.
In front of the gaping 50 million-member virtual audience, “Pentakill” Yu Pengkai slammed down his headset and strode out of the arena, leaving behind his destroyed base, his four equally-dead teammates, and his last chance at Worlds to crumble.

It was the most anticipated match in Kings of Valor history, their ticket to redemption, and of course, his team didn’t even put up a fight.

From the esteemed legendary ADC in the popular MOBA game, Kings of Valor, to the player everyone wished would just retire, he carried both the former glory and the blame of it all.

And after a final crushing defeat, he knew he had to say goodbye.

“If you could go back in time, would you end up here again?” A voice sounded in the dark.

Yu Pengkai looked up. “Is that a bet or a challenge?”

Hope that helps a bit :D

    Mel_Aniv I'm glad your enthusiastic about your friend's novel but I'm giving criticism and such here and I feel better if I have the author's permission to do so ah. Especially when I have quite a few things to say, eg. the grammar problems and such. Sorry >_<

      Hiya [unknown]
      Let’s start with the cover. Putting aside my feelings on the cover itself your colour choice and placement for the title Unknowingly Lost is only okay. The biggest issue is the word Lost stands out way more than Unknowingly due to the colouring of the mountains. It’s not the biggest deal up close but when people are scrolling through stories, they may not register the full title (and your title is very intriguing).

      I actually don’t mind the cover, it’s very mysterious and the mist in the dark forest shows us this is a tale of intrigue which I’m sure that’s what you’re going for. However from the few chapters I read, it doesn’t sound like the forest is really involved here.

      You could probably consider a different cover soon that is more related to your story. Have you seen the artsy Twilight book covers (yeah I’m sorry I’m bringing up Twilight but it’s the first one I could think of lol) that sort of simple black, white with a splash of bold colour type of cover art choice might suit your story quite well plus it’ll make people’s eyes naturally be drawn to it when compared with the brightly coloured covers of other stories.

      The first chapter I can tell your basic writing is okay however for some reason your dialogue is a bit weird. I have no idea why but when it comes to your dialogue, the grammar and sentence structure is strange and doesn’t flow well, very different to your descriptive writing. The banter in itself is eh but that sort of thing only can be improved with time and practice so it’s not a big deal and it’s still passable, however as said before, grammar and sentence structure have made it difficult to enjoy.

      e.g. Sara falls forward, roommate asks “What are you doing?” and Harith quips “Honestly, she thinks she’s a door perhaps? You failed miserably if you planned to be a ninja Sara!”

      I would have rearranged that quip to something like “Maybe she thinks she’s a door?” Harith chuckles and shakes her head in exaggerated disappointment, “Honestly, the council of ninjas will never accept you at this rate.”

      In your second chapter dialogue is also your weakest part of the story. You should know you can break up dialogue (like what I’ve just done above), using brackets to put in actions in the middle of the dialogue is a big no-no. Not for any grammatical reason. But it’s just kinda ugly (sorry).

      Now finally the synopsis. It’s messy. I’m not gonna lie, you need to change that. Your story is good okay. It is good. The description, the actions, and the way plot is moving is all written well with only the dialogue dragging it down. Anyway, your story is good and should definitely have more viewers but this summary is all over the place. The only thing I personally liked from the summary is that last line- it’s f*cking great.

      Here’s a possible suggestion for your synopsis- again I’ve only read a small part of your work so take this as an outline, not as something to copy and paste. If you don’t like it, then don’t use it but try look at other summaries of popular original stories and get an idea of how they do it okay?

      There is an unknown world out there. A strange, magical, dangerous world filled with those that can grant wishes and those that drink blood.

      And Sara is about to stumble into it.

      After the death of her ex-flat mate, the institution Sara works at is not the only thing that is exposing it’s true face to her.

      The web is slowly being weaved. Entangled in revenge, caught in the institution’s lie, will she struggle and be consumed or will she find a way out?

      In between this world and the unknown world, in between her conscious and her subconscious, she is unknowingly lost.

      Cheers, hope I helped :D

        LittleBlueLake
        Thank you so much for the constructive criticism!! :D

        About the cover - I was randomly picking one that looked mysterious but thanks for your advice, I should put more effort in this. I never knew it would make any difference. Although the forest part would come on much much later :p

        Will work on my dialogue and the synopsis too.

        Thank you kind stranger for helping me out. :D

          LittleBlueLake

          Ohhh thank you so much for the advice! I think I just took a lot of terminology for granted, and I'll probably add disclaimers or like quick glossaries at the bottom of the chapter to clarify! I was going to like slowly explain the voice later on (like sorta of leave it hanging to not give it away all at once, but I honestly never considered pacts with demons lolol).

          For the synopsis, only the first half was intended to be a synopsis kek. The bottom part after the divider was more of an excerpt, but I'll probably mark it off as an excerpt just to clarify.

          Thank you so much for the feedback!!!

            Nekonigiri001 Haha no problem ;D
            Yeah cover is important. I'm sure everyone has dismissed a story due to an ugly cover or a super plain cover before (eg those ones that just have the title on something that is meant to resemble a book cover like ugh). It's literally the first thing people see apart from the title itself. Honestly your cover isn't an urgent issue, as I said before, it's not bad, people can tell it's a mystery book from it etc. Take your time to pick out a good cover that you won't change for a while. Lol if the forest part comes later it's still better to pick a cover either more relevant to the events in the nearer future or something symbolic like a lamp/bloody rose/I dunno hahaha

            No probs, good luck on your stuff!

            Tangerqueen Haha no problem. In my story if I have any terms people may not get I started doing it like this:

            Blah blah blah dogblood* blah blah blah (end of paragraph)

            *meaning very dramatic, think daytime soap opera dramatic

            That way readers don't have to scroll down to understand the term before scrolling back up to find their place in the story again :D

            Lol I totes get what you're saying about keeping the readers hanging about the ghost voice ah. I just thought it was strange that it seems like it was doing such an energy consuming deed like time travel for free and then gave a rather ominous 'I'll see you on this very day' that's sort of typical of demons who are waiting to take their victim's souls after finishing their pact hhahaha.

            Yeah, probably mark it off if you wanna keep that in, though it does feel like a rehash of the actual synopsis in a different format. You can try make the synopsis less detailed or vague (less is more after all) and let the exerpt fill some of the blanks in the readers mind. Just a suggestion :D

            Good luck~

              Assiddeeq Okay, so to be frank, the biggest problems are the writing. I've only read one chapter and I have to say, it's not the best and there's definitely a few pet peeves in there for me.

              One, and this is basic, grammar problems. Mainly it's capitalization where I see words that shouldn't have a capital letter have one. There's also spelling errors (like 'Uriel shit him down' lol :D). However I saw that english isn't your first language so it's understandable there are some mistakes, I strongly recommend getting a proofreader or a grammar app like Grammarly if you're having trouble.

              Two, the brackets (these ones). Don't use them to explain things. You can explain without the brackets and I'm really not sure why you've done it this way it's a bit strange to me. There was even a paragraph describing Michael's weapon where you randomly put brackets in the middle of one of the sentences for no reason. No offense but it's unnecessary, ugly and readers will be put off by it.

              For the synopsis, it's actually alright. Short, simple, sweet. However it has grammatical errors and sentence structure problems. Proofreader or use an app to try improve this as said before.

              For tagging take away the tag #soul since that's not going to be a popular tag maybe replace with #magic or somethinf. #Angels and demons can be two separate tags #Angels #Demons

              Your cover is actually not bad but the font and title colors should be changed. I saw you plan to change the cover anyway so I won't say much there but your username should always be much smaller than your title and the title needs to stand out more on the cover. I would change the title to a light blue and put it on the bottom of the cover where it is darkest for color contrast.

              Hope that helps a little.

                LittleBlueLake

                Ahahah idk I just thought having parentheses would interrupt the flow that I was trying to go for rip ;-;

                And omi now that I see the demon and the pact, I can't unsee it LOL

                I'll definitely try to patch up the synopsis a bit and try to make it clearer and less redundant!

                Tysm once again for all your help!!!

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