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EldritchBlade Oh my world. What I wouldn't give for a review like this on my book. But this is quite good, though. I have some books you might enjoy reading with the level of knowledge you have

Try reading: Justice And Desire and Deadly Bargain

Mallory_reads Well, you clearly have a better understanding of writing than most people on this site, lol.

In Chapter 1 of JnD, this paragraph stood out to me in the beginning:

And although I knew I should be investigating big cases-cases that involved the Bologna or the Morellos, the worst and most dangerous families ruling these streets for lord knew how long, I'd take anything that has to do with protecting civilians in a heartbeat. Even if it meant me chasing dumb criminals who had shit for brains. What could I say? I loved my Job.

Of course, "job" shouldn't be capitalized. The main thing that caught my eye was your parenthetical. You can use a few different ways to give a parenthetical, the first of which is obviously with parentheses:

I went to the store (the one on the other side of town, since the usual one was closed) and bought a turnip.

But the more common ways are with commas and em-dashes.

I went to the store, the one on the other side of town, since the usual one was closed, and bought a turnip.

I went to the store—the one on the other side of town, since the usual one was closed—and bought a turnip.

(I prefer em-dashes to the other methods)

However, in your paragraph, you mix a regular dash with a comma. You should never use a regular dash to offset a parenthetical like this, and you need to make sure you use the same offset character on both sides.

If you're on Windows, hitting the Windows key plus the period key will bring up the character map. You can easily select the em-dash from that, if you're not already using writing software that autocorrects -- to —.

Formatted properly, your sentence would look like:

And although I knew I should be investigating big cases—cases that involved the Bologna or the Morellos, the worst and most dangerous families ruling these streets for lord knew how long—I'd take anything that has to do with protecting civilians in a heartbeat.

In general, aside from the parentheticals, you also should be using an em dash instead of a regular dash to set off lines like this:

I was about to eat lunch—and this time, it would be personal.

Also, definitely make sure to be consistent with your past tense in the narration. "I'd take anything that has to do" should be "I'd take anything that had to do".

On that note, looking at the first paragraph of Chapter 2:

We finally walked through the revolving doors of the local district station, and I smelled the fat-induced, sugar and spice scent of a fuck-load of doughnuts. Really? No wonder all cops get stereotyped as doughnut-eating slobs—because it's true. In all my years in the force, all these fuckers did was prove every horrible thing ever said about them. No wonder they hated me for being the best of them all. Jealousy they say kills.

For this:

No wonder all cops get stereotyped as doughnut-eating slobs—because it's true.

This is fine to have in the present tense because it talks about something continuous and habitual. The narrator's thinking back to the story events from the future, but the stereotype and habit of the cops is still valid to him.

On the other hand:

In all my years in the force, all these fuckers did was prove every horrible thing ever said about them.

This implies the narrator is looking back to the past from a future where he's no longer a cop. If that was your intention, then great. If instead you meant this in a more general way, to say "I'm still a cop and I'm thinking back to my older history as a cop", then you'd want this:

In all my years in the force, all these fuckers had done was prove every horrible thing ever said about them.

Make sure you're separating your actors into their appropriate paragraphs. This:

"Fuck you, Gunner," he groaned and I smirked.

"Funny enough, you're not the first one to say those exact words to me today."

Should be this:

"Fuck you, Gunner," he groaned.

I smirked. "Funny enough, you're not the first one to say those exact words to me today."

The other thing that stood out to me is this is supposed to be contemporary romance, but I was getting, like, 1920s-1930s vibes in the first couple chapters. Especially with lines like:

I hear more cursing than prayer these days, anyway.

And... the fact that Gunner being half-African makes for lots of gossip, with someone calling him "Brown" with a capital B, something that usually refers to Middle Eastern people?

I'm not sure whether this is supposed to mean one of his parents is an African national and so they see him as a weird foreigner with a strange accent, that this is an extremely insular Italian-American community with strong prejudices against black people (which I'd find more believable if the story took place maybe 20 years ago, but would have a bit more trouble beliving in an era where people are talking about their "followers" like the are in the synopsis... from like 2012 onward, probably), or that you as the author aren't hugely familiar with modern American race relations.

It definitely contributes to a feeling that this story took place almost a hundred years ago, rather than in the modern day. Even if it's simply true that one of Gunner's parents is an African national, I'm not sure why that would make people stare and gossip, and it's really strange that he'd refer to himself simply as "African" and not mention the actual country where his parent came from.

Also, the fact that there's no use or mention of modern communications tech in the opening chapters contributes to feeling like a historical setting rather than the modern day, except for the Glock (which could still make it feel like it took place in the 80s to someone who doesn't know when the '23 came out in 2010) until Vanessa shows up and her Facebook page becomes a plot point.

Overall, I didn't get a strong sense of time and place from the opening chapters, and I felt like Gunner's ego clashing with everyone around him got really old really quick.

But then, I'm not a romance or erotica reader, so my tastes are different from your audience. If your readers enjoy what you're writing, then you're doing it right.

ThePotatoKing I have a soft spot for synopses that use quotations from the story, so I liked yours. Your mechanics in the synopsis are pretty bad, though.

1. Never use all caps for emphasis in dialogue or narration, though I think it's fine to use it in sound effect lines (though this isn't exactly standard formatting).

2. Always use punctuation at the end of sentences.

3. Make sure to use only one tense in a given section. This:

Do you ever feel that you were meant for something much greater?

Should be:

Do you ever feel that you are meant for something much greater?

4. Always use double quotes, unless you're already inside double quotes. Then you shift back and forth with single and double quotes as you nest them, like this:

"Today," he said, "We will examine the speech by the evil man known as 'Slim Tim,' particularly his first words: 'There once was a king called "Marcus 'Cool Philosophy man' Jellius"...' which were then followed by these even more evil words..."

5. Never use comma splices. This:

"Welcome to Hell, the only escape is insanity"

Should be this:

"Welcome to Hell: the only escape is insanity!"

Or this:

"Welcome to Hell—the only escape is insanity!"

Here's an edited version of your synopsis:

"You are fucking crazy!"

*BANG!*

The bullet pierced through the man's skull, splattering blood over Sebastian's face. He calmly cleaned his face with a handkerchief, then replied to the corpse, "Maybe... Maybe I am crazy. But I don't know any other way to escape this hell."

He laughed some, he cried some, and he did a bit of both.

If despair was a face, he was wearing it now.
***
Have you ever felt that you were meant for something greater?

Has the real world held you back, constraining your true talents? If you just had the opportunity, could you achieve your true potential?

You're not alone!

Listen: this Earth just doesn't cut it. What you need is a brand new world, one full of new hopes and grand possibilities.

Then allow me to introduce you to the wonderful world of Purgatory!

In this world, "sinners" are invited to take part in regular trials. Every single trial is an uphill battle for survival with death and deception lurking around every corner!

But don't worry!

Only the weak, pathetic masses need to fear all of that. For the chosen few, these trials are instead opportunities for power and supremacy.

Come to Purgatory, sinner! Defeat monsters, devils, and remnants of eldritch entities as you gain glorious rewards and claim their power for your own!

And, even more exciting, fight in battles of wits against other sinners! Wring every drop of potential out of your wretched, wonderful soul, because each encounter is an exciting tango between life and death where the winner takes all!

This is the story of one such sinner. Armed with nothing but the ghosts of his past, watch as Sebastian Alaister crawls his way up to the top and forges his own legend.

Yet... before he can enter Purgatory, Sebastian must first clear the tutorial.

[Your fatal flaw is Extreme Denial]
[Trial Selected—Trauma Re-enactment]

Welcome to Hell. The only escape is insanity!

I recommend removing the author's note and probably the prologue. Every chapter added before Chapter 1 makes it less likely that readers will actually read Chapter 1 because you're using up their "first impression" mental space on non-story content. Good work making it skippable though, lol. Most writers don't understand that they can't put anything important in the prologue because so many readers skip them.

I don't like your opening in "Happy Birthday ... to me!" Your various descriptions of Alaister in the opening two paragraphs seem contradictory and nonsensical to me. Even besides that, you're just giving me a list of traits and not showing me anything interesting in description or character action.

A lot of your phrases just make no sense to me:

For some reason, the small studio apartment was really crowded this time.

What do you mean "for some reason?" He invited a bunch of family and friends over to his birthday party. That's the reason. "For some reason" means "for an unknown or peculiar reason."

Sebastian really doted on his little sister, even though it wasn't at the level of being a sis-con, it was still quite a bit.

The fact that the narrator's PoV assumes that someone who is affectionate toward his sister might logically want to bang her makes me not want to read any further.

His friends from high school were all laughing merrily, the sounds of laughter drowned his ears, and the smiles on their faces were etched into his sight. It should have been the happiest day of the year.
.
.
.
Nonetheless, he was not happy.

There's no reason to ever use a set of line breaks like this. If you were to denote a new scene, then you should do so with three asterisks, like this:

But when he shot the cat, to his surprise, it turned into a palm tree.
***
Three days later, he was lying in the hospital, recovering from a concussion caused by being savagely beaten with ripe coconuts.

However, you're not doing a scene transition here. The best way to achieve the long, dramatic pause is simply to have a single set of ellipses and use more line breaks, similar to what you do a few lines later.

His friends from high school were all laughing merrily, the sounds of laughter drowned his ears, and the smiles on their faces were etched into his sight. It should have been the happiest day of the year.

Should have been.

But Sebastian was the furthest thing from happy.

Later on, your section with several sets of multiple line breaks that goes into Sebastian's true mental state should be similar to this:

This time he wasn't greeted with the sound of laughter, nor the sight of countless vibrant smiles. None of those people were really cheering, really smiling.

How could they?

After all, most of them...

...Were dead.

In truth, there was no one here with him.

He was all alone in this little room, this studio apartment.

No people. Only trash and laundry.

No laughter, only silence.

The smell around him was not the hot, mingled cloud of countless colognes, but those of moldy laundry and unwashed dishes.

Sebastian was alone.

That said... I really liked the chapter once you started getting into Sebastian's true mental state. be careful about consistency in when you refer to him as "Sebastian" vs "Seb," though. I'm getting the picture that his idealized or self-confident state has the narrator refer to him as "Sebastian," while when he's actively in a miserable or mentally broken state, he's called "Seb," but I have no idea if you just got tired of writing his full name out, lol.

I see your author note in Chapter 2 that you're putting thoughts in single quotes, but I'd strongly recommend putting them between asterisks instead. That's a much more standard way of doing it when you don't have access to italics for thought formatting.

Then there's this bit:

"Are you done?"
"…"
"…"
"… yes, I am done…"

Please, please, please don't format a pause in speech like this. It's just deeply wrong and hurts the reader's ability to figure out who's talking. It should be something like this:

"Are you done?" Seb asked in a flat voice.

Josh met his gaze for a long moment before rolling his eyes. "Yep. I'm done." What a waste of good feelings! For a moment, he'd forgotten how much of a humorless, narcissistic douchebag Seb could be.

That's assuming it was supposed to be Josh thinking that last bit. Your narration is completely unclear on that, lol.

I don't have any time to look at your second story, sorry. I strongly recommend editing all your chapters with the free version of ProWritingAid. It will catch many of your writing issues.

Good luck and keep writing, both you and Mallory_reads !

I'm looking to take on more editing clients in the near future, if anyone is at the point in publishing their stories where they think investing some money in good editing would help their readership.

To be clear, I'm a freelance book editor, not one of Webnovel's "editors" who helps you manage your contract with the site.

If you're interested, you can message me at frothingnome#7517 on Discord. Just be aware that, depending on what you need, the service isn't cheap.

Also feel free to message me with small-scale editing questions and I'd be happy to help out if I have time!

EldritchBlade

Thanks a lot!
This has given me a lot of food for thought in cleaning up my writing style.

This has been really helpful!
I will keep you in mind if I ever am in need for some editing in the future,
Thanks once again!

EldritchBlade idk, but is it possible to check my novel and give a review on my first 6 chapters? You obviously don't have to put the review on my novel and simply put it here, I just wanna know from the beginning what should I improve on etc etc.

https://m.webnovel.com/book/reincarnation-of-the-strongest-demon-emperor_24949945906647605

Choka

On the highest platform on devil peak,

Make sure to capitalize location names. This should be "Devil Peak."

High above the clouds, the sun hung on the space,

Saying the sun "hung on the space" is very poor English and would immediately make me stop reading. It would read naturally as "hung in the sky." It's really odd to use the reference point of the planetary surface and also the reference point of the sun far, far away in outer space, so I don't suggest referencing space at all in this section.

The man took deep breaths as he spread his arms toward the sky, with that simple movement, all the lights got sucked in his palms, and the world dimmed.

You should never use comma splices: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-splice/

I do like a lot of your descriptions, though.

Rumble!!

Never use two (or more) exclamation marks or question marks together like this.

" How are all the twelve of you here? Didn't you all despise us demonic cultivators to no end? That you never even came close to my territory. "

Quotation marks should not have a space between them and the text inside them.

In general, your writing mechanics are very poor, and I strongly suggest using the free version of ProWritingAid to fix many of these errors.

I generally like the pacing of your first three chapters. They're a pretty good word count for Webnovel, and the pacing of introduction → fight → waking up works well. I definitely recommend you adjust the pacing so that Chapter 1 is a bit shorter and ends with the first attack in the fight, then start Chapter 2 with the fight having just started. On my first read-through, I rolled my eyes when I got to Chapter 2 because it seemed like I was going to get another chapter with these people just boasting and sneering at each other before anything actually happened.

I don't enjoy reading this genre of story, so I wasn't interested in it by the end of Chapter 3 and didn't read any further.

Kmsnmsn

I'm sorry, but your punctuation and writing mechanics are so bad that it's difficult for me to even try to read your story.

Basic guide on punctuation: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/punctuation/

Learning proper punctuation should be your very first step before doing any more writing.

EldritchBlade The first part of your review depends on people taste. The second is normal cause these people are the Strongest in the world, they wouldn't wanna risk their lives and trump cards without trying to talk it out first. Hence talking is always essential. Or else the story will be pointless if people just start fighting without trying to get around it, these are cultivates after all. One injury can waste them a 100 years of recovery time if not more. But I appreciate your review anyway.

Hello All, I am fairly new to Webnovel. I got a contract offer through dm and am still waiting.
But while waiting, I would still like to further improve myself and my story.
Would you mind giving me some advice on improvement?
And do I need to click on the apply contract to contract with WB? or it will become a duplicate?
My novel : ZuoMeng: To Dream.
https://www.webnovel.com/book/zuomeng-to-dream_24984202306740805

EldritchBlade
Thanks for checking it out. I'll love to say that my punctuation marks aren't so bad that someone can't read my book.

I just did the corrections. Most of the punctuation marks are correct.
You should have pointed out the faulty part.

Anyway, thanks for looking at it. I have corrected my mistakes.

Do you know how I can find a proofreader?

Hi, I am writting a novel. It's has 77k words, 48.6k views and collection 287 and chapters is 73.
I applied for the contract in inkstone, approximately 2 months ago. But there is shown continue applying. Now, what can I do?

Rainbow420 that probably means that's your book doesn't mean the requirements to get contracted. Either reflect on your book by starting another and not doing the same mistakes. Or keep going on that book while editing your chapters to be better or improve on story wise... Etc. You can do a lot except for these 2 solutions.

Choka
Thanks a lot.

EldritchBlade Uhh, how do I say this? It's kind of embarrassing but if it isn't too much to ask, could you check mine too? I'm not sure about my pacing to be honest. English isn't my primary language either but I swear I did my best editing it over and over again. Especially on chapter 4, I'm not confident with the fight scene. I'd really appreciate it if you do.
Tittle: Bruise-Filled Ascension
Link: https://www.webnovel.com/book/bruise-filled-ascension_25243504706551905

Hiraya_22

Your English is much better than most people on here, and even some native English speakers I know! You clearly put a lot of work into editing, so good job there. I know you didn't specifically ask for it, but here's a suggestion for editing your synopsis:

When Neil Caiben died after living quite a tough life, he found himself in a dark, squarish room deprived of gravity and with a peculiar, ambiguously-gendered creature at the center.

“Make the most out of this chance, pitiful human," it told him. "We will meet again in the future.” Then a pearl-white smoke devoured him... and he was reborn.

***

Loving parents, outstanding grades, and everything he could ever dream of: Neil had it all in his new life! Yet crippling anxiety haunted him, rooted in the fear that everything that he had, everything he accomplished in this second life, would eventually come crashing down.

Neil tried taking life easy, but things got complicated in his third year of high school. He learned of the boiling turmoil stirred by a group who wanted to cause havoc in the city...

And that his parents might be in danger.

Neil couldn’t take it easy anymore. He had to bring down whoever—and whatever—threatened his family.

The biggest issue in your writing is that you mix past and present tenses in the same narration. Here's an excellent guide for how tenses should work: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/verb_tenses/verb_tense_consistency.html

For example, in your opening paragraphs:

We all have a secret or two.

For some, letting it out was just too embarrassing. But for some, it's a ticking time bomb. One slip of their tongue and they will lose everything they've worked so hard their whole lives.

Most of your narration is in the past tense, so I'll use that as the reference point. You open with a universal statement which makes sense for a narrator to say even when they're referring to the past, so that's acceptable even though the story will be in past tense.

However, you shift from the present tense with the universal "we all" to the past tense with the ambiguous "some." Because we're still dealing with a universal concept, we should still refer to the present tense in this narration. I'd suggest this:

We all have a secret or two.

For some, letting their secret out is just too embarrassing. But for others, it's a ticking time bomb. One slip of their tongue and they lose everything they've worked so hard for their entire lives.

Moving on:

Neil Caiben. A twenty-four year old living in the slums of Rondo. If you ask other people about him, they will say stuff like: An unfortunate man. Sick in the head. A fool. And a man who has thrown away his life for a woman.

His life wasn't really a secret per se. It's like an open book. His mother was a prostitute and he didn't know his father. He graduated high school through the grit of his teeth. Because of this, many thought he was an outstanding student despite his upbringing. What they didn't know was that going to school was his way of escaping his reality. There was nothing he hated more than being reminded of it so he'd rather drown in school activities.

You shift from a universal philosophical statement to describing the MC, so you should shift to the past tense. Keep in mind that in Western English, some contractions like "it's" always have a single, implied meaning. "It's" always means "it is" rather than "it was." However, "he'd" can mean "he would" or "he had," depending on the context.

Neil Caiben.

A twenty-four-year-old living in the slums of Rondo. If you asked other people about him, they would say stuff like: an unfortunate man. Sick in the head. A fool. A man who had thrown away his life for a woman.

His life wasn't really a secret, per se. Rather, it was like an open book. His mother was a prostitute and he didn't know his father. He graduated high school through the grit of his teeth. Because of this, many thought he was an outstanding student despite his upbringing. What they didn't know was that going to school was his way of escaping his reality. There was nothing he hated more than being reminded of it, so he'd rather drown in school activities.

A few things that stood out to me from later in the chapter:

For once, he felt like he was finally pulling his life together. But not until he woke up one morning, she was gone, only leaving a note behind. Saying she couldn't marry him and that she was sorry.

"Not until" means "this didn't happen until the event I'm about to mention." So "not until he woke up one morning" means "He only felt like he was pulling his life together when he woke up and realized his wife left him."

"Saying she couldn't marry him and that she was sorry" is a sentence fragment which doesn't contain the actual subject of the sentence, which is the note. This should be, "It said she couldn't marry him and that she was sorry."

Similarly, a little later on:

He flipped the whole city searching for her only to find out she was about to wed another man. And that the child wasn't his to begin with.

You can sometimes start a sentence with "and" for extra dramatic effect, but this almost always requires you to use it as the beginning of a new paragraph. In this particular instance, the two sentences should just be one sentence:

He flipped the whole city searching for her, only to find out she was about to wed another man and that the child wasn't his to begin with.

My other note on the first chapter is that I have no picture of the geographical place (and time period) where Neil lives. It might just be my ignorance, but I don't know where "Rondo" is simply by the name. I have no idea of the culture and surroundings of the main character, so some concrete details would be great. That goes again for the second chapter with the location change.

On that note, from Chapter 3:

And to do that, the first thing he thought he should do was to learn about his new environment. He found out three things: First, this world was almost identical to his former one; he even suspected he was still in the same place. That wasn't the case, however. He tried asking about famous social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube but people were clueless. They think he was tripping or something. Second, the government wasn't really a public servant. They just sit with their ass all day doing the bare minimum, not using the taxes to their intended uses, putting them in their own pockets instead.

This is pretty confusing to read, in large part because we don't have a solid reference point for his original time and place. Even aside from that, these are the steps I'd expect from someone in Neil's position:

• I assume he can still read, and understands that he's surrounded by text in his own language.
• People will surely mention the town and province/state/whatever where they live all the time, so Neil should know geographically where he is if this same place existed in his first life.
• It seems very strange that Neil immediately assumes he's in a new world instead of reincarnated into his original world. He should very likely assume he's in the same world until he realizes there are major differences between this world and his original one.
• As soon as he can walk on his own, Neil should be able to find books/maps/etc. in his own home that will give him a perfect idea of where he is.
• The existence of computers should come before mentioning Facebook and YouTube. If his family has no computer or cell phone, Neil should then wonder why this is. If computers don't exist in this world like they do in our world, or if Neil gets onto a computer and realizes major websites don't exist despite the year being similar to his original life, then he should realize he's in a new world. But it makes no sense to ask people about Facebook rather than investigating it himself.
• As for the government and police, I have no context for why this is supposedly different because I don't know where Neil lives. There are many parts of the world where the government and police are like this, and there are many parts of the world where this isn't the case. This only points to a new world if the reader has an existing point of reference.

The time-stopping "fight" in Chapter 3 felt pretty inefficient to me. I have no idea why the top hat guy would go to all this trouble of throwing rocks and doing several martial arts attacks instead of just bashing everyone in the face with a brick.

Considering the content rating you put on your overall story, I don't think you need to add a violence warning to Chapter 4.

I don't have any thoughts on the fight description in Chapter 4 itself. I took martial arts for about nine years when I was younger, and the fight description seems reasonable.

Finally, I really like your pacing across the first four chapters! Your chapter breaks happen at places that make sense, and the progress of events feels natural to me.

EldritchBlade Gosh! Thank you so much for this. I'll study tenses from now on. It has always been my weak point. Again, thank you so much!