I have just joined this site and have published my first story. I was hoping to get feedback on it, positive or negative. Here is the link if you would like to read it: https://chyoa.com/story/The-Chronicles-of-Lilinevera.37457
So my views. These aren't intended to nitpick or made just to hurt you, but to just give you an honest opinion. I'm not a prize winning author, so how much of what I say is valid might be iffy, but as a reader, and audience member, I can still speak for my reaction to the material. From what I see, you're quite good. Might be a little issue with the pacing, and I feel the intro is a little too much exposition and it's easy to say the chapters run on for a little bit too long, for some, but I take that as seeing the genuine effort put in to try and make it entertaining. Truthfully, first person narrative hasn't ever been a major appeal to me, so I'm not the best judge of it. It does present a bit of....like am I supposed to imagine myself in her position? But there's no real choices to make it feel like it's my character or I have any direction over her personality. And it's a first person narrative, so we know the character's actions and thoughts our or character's actions, since it's in their perspective. The use of "I" so many times, is probably not as necessary as you might feel. Readers will know that it's her viewpoint, because that's the structure of the narrative, so it can be cut back on using a bit. I do feel that as I already said with pacing, it can hurt that there's no real suspense to the sex happening, but I do feel the scenes themselves are not bad, if not just lacking a bit of excitement that comes from the kind of feel of "Two characters meet. Then they fuck." without too much really building towards it. You don't need to go crazy with descriptive factors, but just "Cock" and "Breasts" on their own doesn't usually lead to much. "So not only I'm I in Hell for some reason, but I'm a demon. I wonder what I did to deserve this? But I must say, the strangest thing about all this is how calm I feel. I don't feel fear at the prospect of being trapped here. The only thing I feel right now is intense hunger." Just a little mistake there with that line. Those happen all the time. Truth is, you clearly have skill and are probably already better than when I first started. It just needs some polishing, and fact is, while female perspective stories just aren't as popular as generic male with power stories, I feel we still don't have enough female main character stories that actually have a female main character rather than the female lead the actual generic male character fucks. There's definitely promise here, I believe that.
I like the premise of the succubus being a composite soul. It could be interesting to encounter situations that called forward an emotional memory or drive that isn't conscious, but exerts a strong pull on Lilinevera. Does a succubus have friends? Allies? It seems like Lilinevera has a master, who is feeding her a particular point of view and sending her to cause mischief. Does he use her as a tool? Has he revived her as a new succubus after using her to fight his battles?
Thanks for the help. I definitely agree I repeat things like "I" too much as well as not building up the sex scenes or being descriptive enough. I tried to work on that in my latest chapter. I'm trying to shorten the chapters, I plan to have choices come in after the prologue. I'm still in the prologue, it was meant to be shorter but I wanted to introduce other recurring characters. The reason I went with the first person style is that this is supposed to be the chronicles of a succubus. My plan from the start was always to have a "hub" chapter, a lair in Amsterdam when Lilly would go off on story threads that would eventually link back to the hub chapter, in a closed-loop. Allowing all threads to be cannon. That's why it's in Game Mode. And with the ground rules set in the writing guide, as well as lore in chapter 1, I was going to take the story into "moderation". Me wanting to get to that stage is probably why I'm rushing things. What I want is to set up the setting and the main character then start approving stories that fit. I'll take all your advice on board.
I plan to set up a hub chapter later to allow the reader to go on story threads that lead back to a natural hub. I don't know if game mode is necessary to link chapters but I know conditions are. If I don't need game mode I'll turn it off. But I honestly don't know how to do that.
What part of that line exactly. I'll do fix it. I most likely have a tonne of types, hard to spot without a proofreader/editor. But I still can't see that particular one.
I'm working on adding servants. Humans, demons and possibly other succubi. Maybe a mentor-type character. And I didn't exactly say who her master is but I did hint at it with a rolling stones reference. I stated that if she falls in battle her soul would be split up into lesser demons. Not sure if I want dead ends in the future. I want all possible routes to be cannon in a closed loop. But if I ever write any proper endings I might explore that in an alternate bad ending.
Game mode gives you conditional chapter choices, so that the reader can move on to a particular next chapter or not, depending on previous chapters visited or other conditions tracked in game variables. Linking chapters, by itself, doesn't require game mode. So the end of a given storyline could link back to a hub chapter.
