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Abelysk

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I published a book preview

I published a book preview -- the name of the book is The Onyx Advent.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G7JMP2I

It's set in a middle-age-esque setting starring a main character who goes by the name of Lans Loqui.

I'll probably finish the book later when I have the time. I'm really excited to be able to publish it.

Zumza

Member

From: root

Joined: 2015-02-17

Posts: 4,658

Re: I published a book preview

It treats adult things in a childish way.

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Abelysk

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Re: I published a book preview

It treats adult things in a childish way.

What do you mean?

AlphaJon

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From: Who knows

Joined: 2015-07-21

Posts: 1,297

Re: I published a book preview

If you want to have more people getting the full book, you should make the preview free when you release the full version (at least a chapter if not the 2). In the end, you will have more people having it if the preview is well-written.
I haven't read it, because my card is locked and I will get a new one only in about 10days, and mainly because I'm not the kind of person that reads much.

Zoey2070

Moderation Team

From: Shakuras

Joined: 2015-02-15

Posts: 5,511

Re: I published a book preview

So, what I can see from the preview of the preview (it ends after the paragraph about electricity), there's a few problems.

The entire prologue seems completely unnecessary and serves as an info-dump. One of the major rules or writing is "show, don't tell." don't tell your readers that x character draws a lot. have the character actually draw a lot.
i think you could easily manage to convey all the information put into the prologue into the actual story. Bits at a time. Pretend the reader already knows what's up.

the entire first paragraph... kinda reads like a random book you'd find in the middle of an RPG game? like skyrim or something. it gives you information. it doesn't work when it's an actual chapter in a book, and especially not when it's the first thing readers encounter. the first paragraph also feels kinda choppy to read. also, you switched between past/present multiple times. (proc was the one who noticed that though). i don't think the quotations around "green" and "friendly" are necessary but that's mostly a grammar issue i guess

the "Lans/knight" paragraph seems completely irrelevant to the rest of the thing.

Lan's home kingdom, Barrec, was ironically one of the green continent's most technologically-advanced kingdoms, despite taking place in the continent of fertility.

this makes... no sense?
All of the kingdoms mentioned are in Jord, the continent of fertility (which makes me thing more of sex and very voluptuous statues than agriculture)
so if it's one of the most-technologically advanced kingdom in the continent despite that being the continent of fertility... like. wat.

if you said it was one of the world's most advanced kingdoms despite taking place in the continent of fertility, that makes more sense. still not ironic though.

"hints of electricity used often" kinda seems like an oxymoron, and i have no idea where the dwarf thing is coming from. like, okay, what did that have to do with the rest of it?

you've also mentioned the fact that jord is a green and agriculturally based place with little technology in five different sentences.

"even more technological than any place in the world". the use of technological is kinda weird.

idk man. some of the word choices and sentence structures kinda give off this non-native english speaker feel? is that offensive to say?

anyways, i think the world you've created seems fairly interesting and obviously i can't base my entire judgement on just the prologue seeing as there's no actual action going on and just a bunch of info, but you have a fairly good start. either way, congratulations on writing something. hopefully i'll read the entire thing when it's finished :>

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Abelysk

Guest

Re: I published a book preview

When I meant fertility i meant the ability to grow crops in farmland, or the overall productiveness of the produce etc.
This is my first book so I'm expecting a lot of issues all over the place.

I had an author come to our school who told us a lot of things about writing. She said she wrote a few books and left them unpublished, just to have a taste of writing. I think that would be a good practice for me as well. She also said editing is the most difficult part of writing, because in my case I need to fix grammar and story inconsistencies. Perhaps even make the prologue less of an info dump.

Structuring sentences for me in books and other forms of written creative media keeps on receiving inspiration from my technical writing side. So, if you're reading the sentences and you  find some really unnecessarily technical format, don't be surprised - I need to get out of that habit of doing so.

Anyway,thanks so much for reading it. It means a lot.

Yandax

Member

From: Where ever I need to be.

Joined: 2015-02-21

Posts: 637

Re: I published a book preview

When I meant fertility i meant the ability to grow crops in farmland, or the overall productiveness of the produce etc.
This is my first book so I'm expecting a lot of issues all over the place.

I had an author come to our school who told us a lot of things about writing. She said she wrote a few books and left them unpublished, just to have a taste of writing. I think that would be a good practice for me as well. She also said editing is the most difficult part of writing, because in my case I need to fix grammar and story inconsistencies. Perhaps even make the prologue less of an info dump.

Structuring sentences for me in books and other forms of written creative media keeps on receiving inspiration from my technical writing side. So, if you're reading the sentences and you  find some really unnecessarily technical format, don't be surprised - I need to get out of that habit of doing so.

Anyway,thanks so much for reading it. It means a lot.

If you're really into writing and stuff like that, you should try Nation Novel Writing Month aka: NA-NO-WRI-MO it's where you try to write a 50000 word book in the month of November. It's really fun.

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