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[Paul]

I've been writing a novel in my spare time for a while, and I'm finally taking the plunge and decided to start getting it out there. I've written copy professionally and done a lot of various fiction writing for fun over the years (mods for PC games, tabletop game stories, stories to tell my kids, etc) but never actually tried to get anything published under my own name. At this point I've pretty much written the whole first book (67,691 words) and am working on a strategy to get it in front of people and maybe even make enough money off it to quit some of my side gigs/overtime work and focus more on writing. I plan to make it at least a trilogy, possibly as many as 7 or 10 books, depending on how it's received.

The current plan is to put it out on Royal Road a chapter at a time and possibly other sites (I have a domain of my own, but haven't bothered putting up a website yet) over the coming few months. Once it's got a bit of a following and I'm solidly into book 2, maybe pull it from there a book at a time and put it on Kindle Unlimited. Right now it's pending approval on Royal Road, so it will probably be up there tomorrow or the next day.

Basically, it's a spin on those stuck in the game stories. Guy plays a VR MMO, weird stuff happens, he can't log out, and then people are trying to kill his character. At its core it's a Sci-Fi story. Going for believable sci-fi, but not too hard - plenty of room for fun things. The Weave is a fast travel system and a lot more, but that won't be elaborated on much for a while. I'm posting the prologue and chapter 1 here today to gauge interest, which is basically just the intro to the story and probably a bit too much exposition. Much more action in coming chapters, which I hope doesn't detract from it too much.

Book 1 is called Seeds of the Weaveborn. I made up a fairly creepy looking cover for it:

Spoiler: Cover (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Prologue (click to show/hide)

Three unusual, humanoid figures stood around a large table in front of a seated man in chains. One, a woman, was tall and lithe, with bright white skin, shimmering silver hair, and eyes so blue they almost glowed. The second, a man with dark brown skin and jet black hair and eyes, was short and stocky – his facial features rough and caveman-like, with a protruding brow and wide chin. The third was androgynous in appearance and stood at a height between the others, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and pale skin with a faint greenish tinge. All three of those standing wore a form fitting, jet black dress uniform with a multi pointed half star insignia on the lapels that seemed to represent a rising sun.

The chained man was human and looked to be in his early twenties. He had the look of a soldier – tanned, clean shaven, sporting a buzz cut, and very fit. He had been stripped down to his boxers and chained to his seat, but he stared defiantly at the other three. The three unusual figures were attempting to speak to the man, but all they got in response were expletives and threats.

“It’s no use. None of them can understand us.” spoke the shortest one. 

The tall woman replied “But we’re speaking his language Kodai! He should be able to understand!”

The short one, Kodai, continued “It’s no use. The programming is too strong. No matter what we say, this one thinks we are threatening or torturing him. Tell her Bann!”

The blonde, Bann, replied in a deep voice “He’s right, Reema. This isn’t going to work. This is the fifth one we’ve captured since learning their language, none of them can understand us. Even speaking their language, they still don’t truly hear us. It’s the network, they’re using it to control perception.”

“What about the network?” asked Reema “Can’t you find a way to bypass it?”

Bann sighed, replying “You know what happened to the others Reema, as soon as you tamper with the system, the kill switch engages and their consciousness transfers. We haven’t even figured out a way to stop them from the rebirth, let alone disable the part that controls perception without tripping the kill switch. The tech is too advanced. Maybe if we had the original Weaveborn artifacts we could do something, but everything we get from these ones self destructs.”

The human heard none of this. To him, these aliens were plotting how they would torture him and telling him he would divulge all his secrets when they started skinning him alive. No one was coming to save him, they would skin him and eat him alive. The rest of the conversation was growls and them arguing over which part of him they would eat first.

He sighed and waited for the countdown on his Log Out command. Once it was done, he would have to make a new character. He would have to start over, but he could see no other way out. He had already lost all his gear. He had been warned to stay away from flesh reaver space – the mobs here were much higher level. But the loot out here was incredible, and he was promised a share of the bounties. Ah well, no risk – no reward, the man thought, as his screen went black and he mentally tapped the Delete Character button.

Spoiler: Chapter 1 - Meet Cian (click to show/hide)

It had been three days since Cian had received his voucher for a free TIVI (Total Immersion Virtual Interface) unit. He had spent every free minute planning and strategizing about Worlds & Empires. It was the premier, cutting-edge, virtual reality game. It was also the only game the TIVI unit ran, being developed jointly from the ground up. Since the launch two years ago, there were a few knock-offs made. Cian had even tried some. But nothing compared to the real thing. The gaming world had been abuzz about the TIVI and Worlds & Empires – it was amazing. Virtual reality like never seen before – players bragged that it felt more real than reality.

The setting was a dystopian, science fiction future where numerous alien species vied for domination of known habitable space. It had grand combat – from fighting on the ground, to dogfights in fighters, to huge capital ships; resource gathering and crafting skills in every imaginable field that expanded on real sciences; and a deep economic system of inter-species trade and investment. The skill and class system was so complex that even now, after two years, new skills and classes were being discovered. It was so popular among the elite that the world stock markets had started trading in virtual resources and tracking in-game markets.

Top players made their living solely from playing, and top guilds attracted investors and sponsors in droves. It was a harsh and unforgiving game, where a misstep could cost you thousands of real dollars worth of in-game value. Death was permanent, but if you had the money you could buy back in – and with the right amount you could even buy back the lost skills and experience and rebuild your character. The only things that you couldn’t lose from death in the game were your penalty points and your bank account.

The bank account was effectively a real money account – there was so much trade volume on the Worlds & Empires currency markets that in-game currency was as liquid as any real world currency – more liquid than paper money.

Penalty points were acquired for destruction of property and unprovoked killing of others, with a higher penalty for killing low level players and unarmed NPCs. Some of the top Player Killer (PK) players had racked up millions of them by destroying whole transport ships full of low level players and unarmed civilians. Above a certain amount made you hostile to the Dromon Peacekeepers, the empire controlling the starter planet Kiana Prime; but there were other empires that didn’t care and had their own justice system. They slowly went away on their own at 1 every 8 hours. There was also a way to pay to get rid of them, which players often abused to steal valuable things from each other without penalty.

Cian had been reading about it for the last two years, and was expecting that he would never get to play it. The TIVI unit alone cost $50,000, and the monthly fee for the game was a whopping $500. The lucky ones got a “scholarship”, which gave you a free TIVI and half price subscription. No one but WE Co., the developers of both the TIVI and W&E, knew how the scholarship process worked.  He wasn’t sure how he ended up being selected. Other than being an avid gamer, he really didn’t stand out. He drove a crappy car, lived in a tiny apartment, and was barely paying his bills. Like most recent graduates, he was up to his eyeballs in student loan debt with no decent job to show for it. He had graduated in the top 10% of his class and earned a degree in mechanical engineering, but with the economy as bad as it was – nobody got a job without connections. Cian had no connections. He was a janitor at a local hospital.

When the invite arrived in his inbox, he almost deleted it – while he had signed up on their website two years ago, the phishing scams claiming to have your W&E scholarship were everywhere. But when he realized the link in the mail actually went to the WE Co website, he tried his invite code and found that it was real. Cian started going back and forth between feeling like he had won the lottery, and panicking – The invite said he had 5 business days to claim his account and log in. Where was he going to get the money for the subscription? Was there an installation fee or taxes? After he finished filling out the information and setting up his account, he wasn’t sure what to think – it asked for his bank account information and even synced up to his online bank account, but never did say anything about how much it was going to cost. In the end it simply told him that he would be contacted within 72 hours.

The next three days, Cian spent every waking hour planning out what he wanted to do. He barely focused on his work, just doing the bare minimum and sneaking off at every opportunity to look up details of the game on his smart phone.

When he got home from work on the third day, he was surprised to see a WE Co. truck waiting outside his apartment building. A whole team of technicians had given him a pile of waivers and other paperwork to sign, and quickly began installing the TIVI system. They had explained that the basic TIVI package and first month of game play was free. Additional months would be $250 a month. In his excitement of even getting a chance to play, he had signed a one year contract with a $1000 restocking fee for early cancellation.

Now Cian was sitting there, staring at the TIVI and wondering what he had gotten himself into. Even with his 60 hour work week, he barely made enough to pay his bills – let alone an extra $250 a month. He knew from his reading that he had to make a character as soon as he logged in. He didn’t have enough money for a do-over, and if he didn’t figure out a way to make real money in-game he would be forced to return the TIVI and be financially ruined.

His days of reading and planning had just left him frustrated. He just couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do in the game. There were numerous classes and skills, with roles for trading and piloting and crafting. From what he read, the combat players were the ones who leveled up faster. The top players had all started as combat classes, fighting on the ground until they had the resources to pilot ships and on from there – many of them had made fortunes trading and crafting, but all the best ones got their start by fighting. He always played for the long game, and had spent every waking moment trying to figure out the best build for his character. Using an online character builder, he had checked out available classes and equipment. Once he actually logged in, he would be stuck with his choices and have to make do with whatever his measly finances could afford. You could only have one at a time, and it cost $1000 to restart even as the most basic character.

The game started you on your choice of a city on the starter world called Kiana Prime. The Kiana system’s star was an orange giant, and the system had four planets: an extremely hot, volcanic world that orbited dangerously close to the star; Kiana Prime, the only habitable world in the system; a large gas giant, which was host to an orbital fuel mining facility; and a cold, lifeless rock out near the system’s dense asteroid belt. Kiana was a hot, mostly dry world with forests, plains, and vast swaths of desert. The planet had deep aquifers full of water, and the larger cities had tapped into them. Alien species from across known space made it their home, and it was a major trading hub.

Players started as a completely average human with 25 attribute points in all 6 statistics. You could add and subtract points in order to shift them around a bit, but you couldn’t go below 10 or above 50. Raising an attribute over 40 cost double, but only during character creation. They were divided in two sets – three physical, three mental. Strength, Agility, Endurance, Wit, Presence, and Will. There were no other races to choose from, and the starting class selection was minimal.

The classes weren’t very limiting, skills were on a percentile system from 0 to 100%, the higher you got the harder it was to progress more. Most of the skills were general and were available to every class, but the best ones were class-specific. Optionally, you could pick a new active class every ten levels. You kept your old class skills, but raising them was very slow while a different class was active. The classes were on a tier system, with tier 1 classes being available from the start and tier 2 and 3 classes requiring advance knowledge and higher and more specialized attributes and skills. You earned more attributes as you leveled, and it was based on what class you were. Cian had read the descriptions of all the attributes carefully.

Strength – Physical power. Influences how much physical force you can apply. Determines how much weight of equipment you can comfortably carry and use.
Agility – Fine motor control. Influences how quickly you can perform actions, especially intricate ones. Influences movement and attack speed.
Endurance – Ability to physically endure. Affects how long you can perform physically demanding actions and how well your body resists damage of all types.
Wit – Mental power. Increases ability to learn – both in speed and in understanding of advanced skills. Influences perception.
Presence – Mental control. Improves ability to focus, quickly read situations, and multitask. Boosts perception, social skills, and leadership ability.
Will – Ability to mentally endure. Affects how long you can perform mentally demanding actions and how well your mind copes with trauma.

According to posts he read online, the attributes actually changed how you interfaced with the world – high agility actually made reaction times to things faster, and higher endurance made things hurt less.

Tier 1 classes were pretty basic – their skills were stuff you could do in the real world like soldiers, medics, business professionals, and scientists. Tier 2 classes were the peak of human performance in some way, but starting as them required sacrificing some attributes to meet the requirements. Tier 3 classes were superhuman – you could wield magic, run as fast as a car, or interface with machines on a subconscious level.

Higher tier classes were able to be unlocked during character creation without the required skills – if you knew the name of the class. There was a little box where you could input the class. If you got the name wrong, it simply told you the class didn’t exist. If you got it right, it would either give you the class or tell you that you didn’t meet the attribute requirements. Nowhere did it say what they were unless you already met them – you had to find out from someone else, or guess.

The top players were all playing various tier 3 classes. The requirements of the tier 3 classes was a closely guarded secret of the top players and guilds, and a few even managed to start as Tier 3 by focusing heavily on certain stats and taking heavy penalties. You could buy out of these penalties later on, but without help it was nigh impossible to get started. It was worth it, since higher tier classes got more attributes per level. Tier 1 classes gained 4 attributes every 10 levels. Tier 2 classes gained 8 attributes every 10 levels. Tier 3 gained 10. And the class skills got more powerful with the higher tiers. All tiers gained 5 character points every 10 levels, which could be used to buy out of penalties, buy bonus traits, or increase attributes.

There was no known maximum on levels, but even the best who had been playing professionally for two years were only in the low 200s. It was rumored that a few had survived long enough to reach level 300+, but the cost of death and rebuilding a character at that level was astronomical. Millionaires had spent their entire fortunes rebuilding a top tier character.

Cian had spent the last three days perfecting a tier 2 class he had learned about on the forums, the Brute. It turned out that this class was considered the meta, or “most effective tactic available”, build for new players just starting out. The starting equipment needed was cheap (large stick as a club? Good to go! Sharpened piece of metal? Even better!), you didn’t need expensive ammunition, and you could grind your way up on readily available quests outside the starting towns.

It required 45 endurance and 35 of both strength and agility, and came with impressive close quarters combat skills. He even learned that there was a tier 3 class called a Juggernaut one step up from Brute. It only required more of the same attributes and higher levels of the skills he was starting with, and finding a trainer for it was supposed to be easy.

But no matter how effective it was, it didn’t feel right. Cian didn’t want to play the same cookie cutter character that everyone else had.

The other option he had come up with was another tier 2 class, the Marksman. It was a generalist ranged class that started with impressive gun skills, some of which even worked in ship to ship combat. It had required 40 in Agility, plus 30 in Strength, Endurance, and Will. But it was only recommended for advanced players who could get around the starting weaknesses. Top players simply re-started as tier 2 or 3 and bought their way into enough experience to shore up these weaknesses from the start. He just didn’t have enough information to make an informed choice.

After a few more hours on the online character builder going over his options, Cian finally plopped down into the TIVI unit and started it up.

I wanted to post it here since I've been a member of this community for ages and always see a lot of cool stuff here first. So. Thoughts? Opinions? Is it something you would want to read more of? No outside links here yet, since I don't even have it approved on Royal Road yet and I haven't done anything with Patreon yet.

[Loam]

As one aspiring author to another (recently finished a draft of my own book), I bid you good luck!

I'm probably not exactly the target audience here (I've watched most big-name sci-fi shows/films, but I mainly read classic literature), but already in these two segments there's some themes building that I find very cool!

The disconnect in the Prologue between what the aliens say, and what the man thinks, is well-done, and leaves me wondering (in a good, mystery way) where the "real" reality lies - there's a sense that the game isn't "just a game".

Perhaps I'm reading into it a bit much, but Chapter 1 seems to set up a theme of the hyper-monetization of gaming, and by extension consumerism and financial exploitation generally, in the way the game costs far more than a game ought to, contrasted with the mention of a struggling economy. Sci-fi is often more about the author's own time than about the future, and that certainly seems to be the case here (the word "microtransactions" comes instantly to mind). There's a nice irony brewing in that the game takes place in a "dystopian sci-fi future," while the book seems to take place in much the same sort of setting - rich elites playing expensive video games while ordinary folk can't find decent jobs, that sort of thing.

This bit here particularly intrigued me:

It was so popular among the elite that the world stock markets had started trading in virtual resources and tracking in-game markets.

It sounds, perhaps, that it's not just the character who is stuck in the game - the real world, it seems, is becoming beholden to this virtual one. That sounds like a very interesting spin on the basic story. If that's what you're going for already, awesome! If not, it could still be a cool direction to take, maybe for a later installment.

The deployment of gaming lingo is quite good - it sounds legit and unforced. I seem to recall most "stuck-in-the-game" stories as being written by people who obviously had never played a video game before... it's refreshing to read it done well.

I do have a few critiques on stylistic and narrative points, but I won't discuss those unless asked (I know some people don't like unsolicited criticism, so I try to accommodate!) Overall, however, I think there's a lot of cool stuff going on, and I can see this growing into a really interesting and thought-provoking story.

[Paul]

Thanks for the comments! Good luck with your book too! Constructive criticism would be welcome, too. I'm new to the whole fiction writing thing, so I know I can refine my writing more.

You have the right idea with the hyper-monetization of gaming and dystopian setting of the book world, but it's for a different reason than you might suspect. It's a reveal that I plan to be a bit of a slow burn, though - probably not fully explained until book 2, but enough hints dropped along the way that I'm sure a lot of readers will get it before that.

I'm glad the prologue worked. It's meant to be a hook and to leave the reader wondering, to get the reader to stick with it long enough to be drawn into the world. On Royal Road I actually stuck the Prologue at the start of Chapter 1, since I know some people outright skip Prologues and wanted have it be the first thing people read.

Speaking of, it got approved so I went ahead and added Chapter 2 on there since it's Friday here now (technically barely Friday, I have weird work hours so I'm often up at 2 or 3 am lol)

If anyone is interested in reading it on RR, it's here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/44782/the-weaveborn-saga

[Loam]

You have the right idea with the hyper-monetization of gaming and dystopian setting of the book world, but it's for a different reason than you might suspect. It's a reveal that I plan to be a bit of a slow burn, though - probably not fully explained until book 2, but enough hints dropped along the way that I'm sure a lot of readers will get it before that.

Ah, cool! Nothing like a little mystery to keep up interest - although too much mystery can work against that (lookin' at you, LOST!)

As for critique - and remember, all critique is based on the critic's personal opinions, and you know your story far better than anyone else, so take it with as much salt as you need:

Spoiler: Critique (click to show/hide)

The most pressing issue I see now is in chapter 1 (which is as far as I've read yet). You use that chapter to outline a whole lot about the game - which makes sense, since it's a big part of the story - but almost nothing about the main character, Cian. I really know only a few things: he's a gamer, he's in debt, has a dead-end job and no prospects. Basically, he's every recent college grad I've ever met. But I know nothing about his personality, interests, etc. - the things that make him special. I don't know his character, and that severely limits my ability to connect with him. I believe characters are the real substance of a story - no matter how cool your world is, or how exciting the plot, if the characters are flat or static the story won't work, because it's characters we care about.

You probably have a lot of Cian's character details planned out already, and maybe they appear in later installments. But I think they should appear now. In fact, I'd argue that chapter 1 shouldn't start with Cian getting his TIVI unit at all - it should start earlier, before he's won the scholarship, with some scenes of his routine and daily life, and some hints at his personality. Gradually show us him and his world in the first chapter.

On a somewhat related note, the info-dump about Worlds and Empires in chapter 1 often reads more like a manual for the game than a novel! I think you might consider not going into quite so much detail about the game just yet - again, give it to us gradually, over the first third of the novel.

There's a sort-of writer's golden rule, which you may have heard: "show, don't tell." Ideally everything that is written should be part of a scene, even if it's mostly in the character's thoughts. There shouldn't be disembodied narrators explaining stuff - if you have to explain something in detail, make the explanation part of the action or the dialog. So perhaps weave what information you do give us about W&E into Cian's actions: show us Cian daydreaming about the game as he's mopping floors, or have him reading about it online, or talking about it with people, or planning his character, etc. These would be good ways to feed the reader some exposition, while still keeping us within the narrative flow. And it would make Cian getting the scholarship more exciting for us, since we've seen - that is, we've been shown - how much it means to him, instead of just being told that.

Now, all of that would take a far bit of rewriting, and maybe that's something you don't want to do at this stage. But I think it would really strengthen the first chapter if
   1) we have a stronger sense of who the main character is, and
   2) we aren't overwhelmed with info about the game, which we may not need to know for several chapters yet.

---

For the prologue: I'm not sure how to describe the problem I see here. But take a look at this first paragraph:

Three unusual, humanoid figures stood around a large table in front of a seated man in chains. One, a woman, was tall and lithe, with bright white skin, shimmering silver hair, and eyes so blue they almost glowed. The second, a man with dark brown skin and jet black hair and eyes, was short and stocky – his facial features rough and caveman-like, with a protruding brow and wide chin. The third was androgynous in appearance and stood at a height between the others, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and pale skin with a faint greenish tinge. All three of those standing wore a form fitting, jet black dress uniform with a multi pointed half star insignia on the lapels that seemed to represent a rising sun.

Lots of description, but no action; and the descriptions of each character come one after another, in an orderly sequence, and hit the same notes: build, hair, skin, eyes, dress. It doesn't really grab my attention - in fact, it almost rebuffs me with how much detail there is to take in, all at once, and I can't know how much of it is really significant.

If I were to write this prologue - and I offer this only as an example, certainly not a perscription! - I'd start off something like this:

The room was dark where the man sat, stripped to his boxers. His hands were chained to the chair...

That focuses instantly on the most interesting part of the scene: the naked chained dude. Who is he? Why is he naked? Why is he chained? It's mysterious, and more than a little perilous, and that grabs our attention.

Then I'd move on to the unusual figures around him, and rather than describing them all at once I'd do so when each speaks:

“It’s no use. None of them can understand us,” spoke the shortest one, a man with dark skin and jet-black hair, his face rough and troglodyte, with its protruding brow and wide chin.

The second figure, a tall woman with bright white skin, replied "But we’re speaking his language Kodai! He should be able to understand!” Unconsciously she flipped a lock of shimmering silver hair away from her eyes, so blue they almost glowed. (...)

And so on. Again it just keeps everything from piling onto us all at once.

The rest of the prologue is good, it's just that very first part that's hard to process. But that's the most important part!

I hope some of that helps. It's probably a lot of stuff you already know. It sort of boils down to this: slow down a bit and don't dump so much info on the audience. Oh, and give Cian more personality!

I'd also like to say that your prose is extremely clear, very concise, and eminently readable. These are excellent qualities, that many writers (even professionals) don't have!

[Paul]

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it, and I agree with you on the prologue and first chapter. It's probably my weakest part of the book, and I've struggled with rewriting it. I already moved some of the info out of the chapter and into further chapters, but I didn't want to take too much away from it. It still needs work. I actually tried to do the show don't tell bit - the rest of the book has him learning more about the world while playing.

I'll have to see if I can build a bit more personality into the start for Cian. I wanted to be a bit vague about his appearance so that the reader can draw their own conclusions and imagine him how they like, and he's supposed to be kind of the average down-on-your-luck college grad in a failing economy. His personality comes out more in later chapters as he interacts with the characters.

I think I will take time to rewrite the first bit. I have enough of a backlog to keep posting while I reformulate it a bit. Especially if I ever put my work on Kindle Unlimited, I need the first 10% to be a hook that gets people wanting to read the whole thing.

[Paul]

What do you think of this for a revised prologue?

Spoiler: Prologue (click to show/hide)

A man shivered, stripped to his boxers and chained to a metal chair by his arms and legs. He was in his early twenties and had the look of a soldier – tanned, clean shaven, sporting a buzz cut, and very fit.

He stared defiantly at his three captors. The bright lights reflecting off the table in front of him hurt his eyes and his head ached from the blow that had landed him here, an angry bruise still forming behind his ear.

The three unusual, humanoid figures stood around the table opposite him wearing a form fitting, jet black dress uniform with a multi pointed half star insignia on the lapels that seemed to represent a rising sun. They had been trying to interrogate him, but all they got were expletives and threats.

“It’s no use. None of them can understand us.” spoke the first, a man with dark brown skin and jet black hair and eyes. He was short and stocky – his facial features rough, with a protruding brow and wide chin.

A woman replied “But we’re speaking his language Kodai! He should be able to understand!” She was tall and lithe, with bright white skin, shimmering silver hair, and eyes so blue they almost glowed.

The short one, Kodai, continued “It’s no use. The programming is too strong. No matter what we say, this one thinks we are threatening or torturing him. Tell her Bann!”

The third, Bann, replied in a deep voice “He’s right, Reema. This isn’t going to work. This is the fifth one we’ve captured since learning their language, none of them can understand us. Even speaking their language, they still don’t truly hear us. It’s the network, they’re using it to control perception.” He was androgynous in appearance and stood at a height between the others, with blonde hair, brown eyes, and pale skin with a faint greenish tinge.

“What about the network?” asked Reema “Can’t you find a way to bypass it?”

Bann sighed, replying “You know what happened to the others Reema, as soon as you tamper with the system, the kill switch engages and their consciousness transfers. We haven’t even figured out a way to stop them from the rebirth, let alone disable the part that controls perception without tripping the kill switch. The tech is too advanced. Maybe if we had the original Weaveborn artifacts we could do something, but everything we get from these ones self destructs.”

The chained human heard none of this. To him, these aliens were plotting how they would torture him and telling him he would divulge all his secrets when they started skinning him alive. No one was coming to save him, they would skin him and eat him alive. The rest of the conversation consisted of growls and them arguing over which part of him they would eat first.

He sighed and waited for the countdown on his Log Out command. Once it was done, he would have to make a new character. He would have to start over, but he could see no other way out. He had already lost all his gear. He had been warned to stay away from flesh reaver space – the mobs here were much higher level. But the loot out here was incredible, and he was promised a share of the bounties. If only those bastards hadn’t left him behind. Ah well, no risk – no reward, the man thought, as his screen went black and he mentally tapped the Delete Character button.

[Loam]

Great! I think those changes really improve both the tension and readability of the scene. Focusing on the man at the beginning wonderfully heightens the irony later on.

I actually tried to do the show don't tell bit - the rest of the book has him learning more about the world while playing.

I figured you knew that adage, and the revised prologue is a great example of it I think.
I still think Chapter 1 could be expanded into at least two, maybe three chapters*, more slowly introducing the concepts so that it doesn't come all at once.

* - of the same length, ~2500 words; I think you could pull off longer chapters if you want - mine, for comparison, are usually 5000 - 6000 words.

I'll have to see if I can build a bit more personality into the start for Cian. I wanted to be a bit vague about his appearance so that the reader can draw their own conclusions and imagine him how they like, and he's supposed to be kind of the average down-on-your-luck college grad in a failing economy. His personality comes out more in later chapters as he interacts with the characters.

Appearance doesn't really matter - I didn't even notice you didn't give him one! And it's probably okay to put off any deep characterization until later - his situation is likely to elicit enough sympathy to interest the reader.

I'll keep reading as I can, though it might be slow going! Giving good critique takes time and focus, neither of which I have in great quantities these days.

[Paul]

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't want to stretch the first part out too much. The beginning arc is already pretty long before things start really happening. The chapter posting tomorrow is the start of the second arc where Cian changes his class and things start to break and he loses the ability to log out. And it won't be until a bit into book 2 that the "starring cast" as it were actually starts to come together. It already feels a bit slow to me, but I don't want to rush the story either.

I'm glad I started writing. Even if I don't ever make a penny on it it's still a fun experience.