The Stains Beneath Our Skin By sxxaint

Petrichor (Part 1) (Chapter Title)
General Fiction (Genre)
Coming of Age (Themes)
Third Person past (somewhat inconsistent)
Suspense level (🌝🌗🌚🌚🌚)

---------------- 8.29.2020 -----------

Hello

thank you for letting me read your first chapter. Things to look for in a first chapter.

- clear genre (Maybe General Fiction???)
- clear time period (Present)
- clear MC (check: Casper)
- few characters introduced (few: Casper, Nona, Roy, Jess)
- tension / suspense (low)
- a life-changing event/ decision (Perhaps, but it's not clearly stated)

It's important for an author to know what he/she is good at. And it's important for the author to know how to gauge that usage. I'm very sure that you know your strengths—your vivid prose. You have a way of painting your world so that it jumps out at the reader. And not just jumps out, it jumps out and grabs us. That's a very valuable talent to have as an author. It's like going to a banquet of ideas and your prose is the centerpiece, this refined, expensive, rich, satisfying chocolate. And each taste we have is exquisite. So as I read your story, all my sense were on full blast.

So imagine a first chapter like a first date. And your first paragraph--no, first sentence, it arrives and it's this rich chocolate cake. And then as we go on, there's more of it. If one piece is good, then two is amazing. Correct? And it is.

Reading your chapter was like having expensive chocolate for breakfast.

Lunch.

Dinner.

And snack time.

But it doesn't stop there. Because the day following that, I have it again. And the day after that, and the day after. And as lovely as it was on day one, at the first sampling on day one, by day ten, I'm not sure what to do with it.

You have beautiful words and I was treated to 11 minutes of refined English. Once or twice I questioned if this was native English but ultimately that didn't matter. It was well written. But I cannot ignore that after 11 minutes of reading, I don't know what this story is. I do not even know the genre. I do not know the main character. What do I know? Every inch of that city? I know more about the structure of that bar than I know about the character plans for this book. I know his body size and his sexual interests and I know that he is unreliable.

As an MC, I hardly had the opportunity to root for him. He is lackadaisical, impulsive, oh, and he robs the inebriated. All can be fine, and all can be funny, if...there was a positive. I search myself but could not find the redeeming quality to cling to. If he'd saved a cat from being flung into the river, that'd be one thing, but he does not do this.

Lastly, with great power, comes great responsibility. Your power is in your world-building. However, the world you build isn't one that every reader would like to inhabit. Having a scene painted vividly in sludge, pollution...and excrement, may be appealing to some. But there are others who won't want to live in this world with this main character—not for long. There were a lot of negative tones in this chapter, and if that is with intention, then you more than succeeded. In the end, however, my main question does not deviate. What is the genre? What is to come later on in this story? What is the conflict and what is the consequence and solution?

We've eaten chocolate for every aspect of this meal, but we cannot see the forest for the trees. So while the food was plentiful and detailed, a reader might devour it but still struggle to categorize what they've just consumed.

(end)