Originally Posted by
Cursed by Fortuna
@ Ismail
I've read through it and while I won't say I am the defintive source on literary crtique and writing savvy, I think I can give a few bits of advice here and there. First there seem to be a few anarchisms in the section, such as with the into it's mentioned that your perspective character ends up reacting in pain to a thrown marker, but that can only be intuited after the fact as we jump straight from her looking out the window to reacting in and saying "Hey! Ouch! What was that for?!" as such a transition of some sort explaining how she reacts in pain at feeling something hit her, may clarify the segement a little. Also that Faker line seemed pretty forced as while I don't know if it was a reference there are more neat ways to do those (generally with a great deal of subtlety and without trying to draw attention to the reference, and only in sections where it makes sense or after doing enough to make your own work stand out, and not with great frequency lest you break the immersion too much [unless the lack of immersion and outside references are the intent]). In this case it just highlights how much this seems like frankly, a less interesting or worse version of Fate:Stay Night's Intro sequence (Saber being summoned, a master who is school, a fight with Lancer, Saber's master getting injured, someone gets killed by impaling).
Aside from that while I am far from the expert or the master of proper and full grammatical expertise, there are some issues which could use adressing here. Double spaces, things that should be capitalized which aren't, and some cases of words being used in contexts which don't fully make sense such as "raking his knuckles" [raking generally in this context means "to scratch or scrape, especially and often across one's flesh, with long sweeping movements" ie. "the savage beast's claws raked across the victim's back tearing long strips out of them"] in this context one would rake one's fingers across a chalkboard, but it would be pretty unusual to do so with their knucles at least in my mind. Rapping one's kuckles would make more sense if the knucles were that was meant, as that would imply to "strike (a hard surface) with a series of rapid audible blows, especially in order to attract attention" ie. "the executive rapped the meeting table to draw attention to the fact he had a comment about the current debate".
Also Grammerly which is free and if you have a google account you can sign in with that could be of great usage here, even if you lack a premium account it can be massively helpful and alsongside verbally (as in reading aloud) reading the script to yourself or another (or having someone do that to you) can really help in ctaching things that just sound a little off, finding spaces where a break point be it a comma or period may be needed, and so forth. As for if things sound off, just toy with sentence structure, word choice (google _____ [insert word of choice here] and add the term "synonyms" and it will give you some to pick from to possibly vary things up). Other tips. Maybe make a document with just words or terms you think could help with wrting that you come across to expand your vernacular and have that open when you write and edit stuff (and maybe cross-reference it). You don't have force the use of those words, but it could help make your work a little more be distinctive or personal.
I apologize if this stuff may be obvious, but I'm just trying to cover my bases on both general and more specfic writing advice.
Now for some more serious stuff. My first point is that I feel this needs a bit of a better hook, you do have a narrative hook, but it's at the end and the opening just doesn't do it for me. Also you have that bit where you seem to break the forth wall and reference the character's own thoughts on the first page which is a little odd, as even with 3rd person omniscient I don't generally think the narrator or perspective generally has a voice unless they are meant to be a character rather than simply a lens of viewing the story. To elaborate more on the opening, having a hook at the end of chapter one isn't bad per say, but you still need to have it be interesting enough to have people want to keep going until they reach the hook, otherwise the hook fails to work, because they never see it. One way of circumventing this would be to start "in media res" with a section that has more action and interesting stuff in it, then work back there. Because you've given a bite of something more interesting to start, people will be more willing to sit through your setup, to see how you got from point A to point B, expecially when point B seems to much more explosive than point A.
This could be done by starting off with a fight scene, possibly even without introducing you characters by name, or giving the hint of who the main character is supposed to be or who you're supposed to be rooting for, maybe have that fight with Lancer and Saber, with Saber's master, without giving them or the master by name, from third person, except with more focus on the fight itself. Plus make sure to show a lot of energy and care with it, possibly like an ocean swell have Lancer makes some moves and Saber make some moves, show off them a bit, maybe have a fake out where it looks like the fight's over but not really, give a bit of personality to them (kinda like a mongoose versus a cobra), show the sheer power of these servants with words like maybe "titanic" "shattering" show how the environment and world around them is nothing more then just a setpeice in the batttle, with the room or school being torn apart as they fight, and get people interested, then maybe end it with a cliffhanger where you aren't sure who won. People will be interested then, they'll want to keep reading beacuse
"who were those guys? Who should I have been rooting for? Who won the fight? Why were they fighting?" etc.
As for Esma Ilda, I feel this opening scene could do so much more, I mean we meet her, we meet her "self-proclaimed" best friend, but who is she? We know she's been bullied, but who is she as a person, what does she want? Shirou is etablished very early to want to help others and think about them first, even to the point of being frustrating with him craing more about at one point getting blood on another person's outfit over the fact that he got impaled and someone is trying to now help him. He's a character who thinks so little of themsleves and is so "selfless" that it bommerangs back to being increibly "selfish". Then from that point keep those character traits and apsects in mind and use them. Fate:Stay Night takes time to explore with how at a superficial level Shirou and EMIYA's actions were very selfless, but how incredibly selfish they were in terms of the effect they had on those who did care about Shirou, and how much it must have hurt them to see him walk towards his own ruin due to never caring about his own life, particularly given that the only reason he does so is to uphold an ideal, a personal dream (and thus a personal fantasy) that he inherited from someone else. Much like the Holy Grail war itself in trying to fuifll his own personal wish or goal, Shirou would bring sorrow, hardship, and ruin to those who cared about him, betraying everyone for the sake of his dream, only to be betrayed by that dream in the end (or at minimum the methods he used to try and "save everyone"). I don't think you need to necessarily argue or come to a conclusion about whatever message or underlying ideas you choose to have as the central focus of your story (of which I would hope you have in mind and at least have some idea of how your perspective characters interact with and graple with those ideas and themes), but you should at least provoke thought on those subjects and help others make their own conclusions.
So I think a lot could be done to try and establish who Esma Ilda is and doing it early on would be a good start. Does she act out when she feels she is being mistreated, does she care about schoolwork, what are her goals in life, etc. etc. Give the people someone to be invested in, and then show the twists and turns that person faces along the way. The stuff with the Gin and Belle, frankly just feels like space filler, it doesn't really tell me all that much about Esma / Es aside from the fact that she's sarcastic, doesn't care for people she thinks are stuck up (which we learned on page 1), and has a kinda-sorta freindship with Belle. Not much established, nor much occurs. Then we get to the ending segment. The "fight" with lancer feels like it could use a lot of work, mostly because it feels like it barely exists or happens (I know fighting outside the moon ceel's areana is against the rules, but I think Lancer already doesn't care, so go ham), teacher dies, but we barely know him so it has no real impact, then there's some weird stuff with the MC seeing things (which I think may have something to do with the Moon Cell the second time [with the 0s and 1s representing computer binary] and the first time maybe having something to do with either her heroic spirit's origin or maybe her mystic eye or evil eye) then the chapyter kinda just ends with us meeting Saber.
Esma in the ending segment kinda feels off, in that she seems pretty sarcastic, somewhat impatient (or just doesn't really deal with nonsense all that much), and almost somewhat self-deprecating in one part, but just suddenly shifts to simply reacting to the strange / weird things like "generic protagonist #422" I mean being frecked out is one thing, but even then you can show character in the way a person reacts, have her maybe think someone's messing with her, or annoyed and frazzled, maybe have her go back to that Karma comment and wonder if this was karmic payback for her sleeping in class twice, etc. But as is, alongside with how little we know of Esma, it feels like it ends with them suddenly becoming "character" the character, rather than a supposed "real person". Now I applogize if this seems really harsh, but I feel intros are something that needs to be done right. Unless you want to have a slow burn intro, which is a legitimate option, but in that case should generally establish a fair bit about the character, the world / setting, the central themes and ideas of the work, then you need to get the intro right. This is because in any case if a person doesn't like the start then odds on you've already lost them and unless you can really, really, have it get good or interesting at least maybe no fartehr than 40-50% into the work (as any farther than that and that's less than half of the work itself that can be "the good" part and is asking for the reader to sift through a whole ton, just to get to the part they may end up liking), then odds on you aren't going to get them back.
PS. Am I the only person that "Reply with Quote" isn't working for?