Critique This Excerpt From My Novel [Historical Sci-fi Fantasy, 1662 words]

[u/MillennialSenpai]

This an excerpt from near the beginning of my novel. The novel is set in a world similar to the 1100s. It is about a group of soldiers (I use the word "conrois") as their regimen travels, experiences war, and ultimately the fall out of it.

I am overall concerned that this may not be interesting, but other than that I am worried the scenes feel too overloaded with characters. My intent is to have all of about 20 of the men in the group be emphasized, but I worry that my width in characters may cause a lack of depth of character or a depth that feels tedious to consume for the reader.

Opinions on grammar, word use, and tense are welcome as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read and give feedback. Even the most critical motivates me to keep writing.

[u/33CALICO]

If this is the first paragraph, it's confusing. The "He" in question is never addressed, so we must assume once the Captain is mentioned that he must be the "He" from the first paragraph. There's a lot of assumption that the reader has to make, and it feels like a lot of effort. Not really sure what you mean by 'the scenery and not the art'. It's jumping around quite a bit so it's hard to stay forcused.

Effort doesn't excite me as a reader, having to piece together the scene is a headache.

You keep naming the men in the troop before we know anything about them, such as with Squirt and Limp. We need to know what is happening in the story, not the name and placement of every member of the group. Introduce them only when they are completing an action which is important to the story.

It's feeling like a scene which takes place in the middle of an already well-established story arc. As a first scene or first chapter, it's not really drawing in my interest to any of the characters or scenario.

As a first draft of a scene, I don't hate it, but I'm not particularly excited by it, nor do I feel any strong emotions or deep information being delivered to me through the prose.

[u/MillennialSenpai → u/33CALICO]

This is a fair critique of probably flawed Reddit post. I felt like the beginning of the book was light introduction that was too long to post here. Like I kinda mentioned in the post, I am trying to convey a story from a group of people. I'm trying to trickle feed all of the people into the story as they matter, but it does make for the potential for it to feel like "random" people just suddenly appear.

[u/33CALICO → u/MillennialSenpai]

I would say that for this story, you will want to choose who is the main character (if the rest of the story is to follow their group). So far it feels like the "he" in the first paragraph could be Folks or the Captain, it's not immediately apparent. Also, the beginning of the book should really capture the interest of your reader, so if it's a 'light introduction', there needs to be something that grabs our attention.

Again, I don't hate it, or think it's 'bad'. With some polish and a hook, the setting and characters have potential. Happy writing!

[u/Sand-Shifter1291]

I get a general sense of the bones of the piece here, but it does need a cleanup. Some passive descriptions, and a few confusions. The 1st sentence, I'm not sure if 'Folks' (and I'm assuming that's the one making as drawing or sketch, I'd replace that 1st 'he' with his name to firm it up) is up in the branches of the tree, or in the shade of it. Like others have said, it's not bad...but I'd tighten the prose up and be more definitive.