Looking for a Beta for 106k Fantasy

[Brigid Barry]

Hey everyone. My second fantasy novel is done and as good as I can get it without a second set of eyes. While I'd appreciate commentary on SPaG, my bigger concern is pacing (making sure it doesn't drag anywhere) and that I have a cohesive story and general impressions.

It's very grounded, no complicated magic systems or deep political drama. The MC is pretty salty so there's some equally salty language. She does turn to alcohol as a coping strategy. There is intimacy but it's not graphic and aside from the f-bombs I'd call it PG-13. The MC is also bi with a strong preference for women. A few scenes of mild violence.

For a brief overview of the story and to see how I take criticism:

Query

Opening pages (since revised)

This was part of UnhingedPit but really conveys some of the tone of the story (and it's fun).

To throw a wrench in things, I have AI-related privacy concerns but Proton has its own version of Docs and there's another tool specifically to collaborate that's in Beta (but I haven't used it).

Feel free to ask any questions you may have of me or the MS here so everyone can see and if it might be a good fit I can start by sending a few paragraphs or a few chapters and go from there.

Thank you!

 

[Unimportant]

I'll take the first three chapters, if you're willing to have me! (Sadly my attention span even with excellent books doesn't seem to last into the second day, so I keep failing the people I beta for. I'm learning to just volunteer for a piece I can read/crit in a day and not promise anything more.)

 

[Brigid Barry]

Never a failure. Anything you point out can carry throughout.

 

[Woollybear]

I think the only thing I could offer, and only on the opening pages, is my sense of what a first page/first pages need to attract an agent, based on what these various agents seem to be saying on these panels I've been watching. The vast majority of excerpts I see (including my own and those of very good writing friends) usually fall afoul. The basic idea for a successful open is to introduce the character clearly, with an arrow of focused narrative, nothing extraneous brought in, no digressions into backstory and such. The first pages need to get the reader comfortable with the commitment of riding with this character.

So my advice would not be light touches here and there, but rather along the lines of removing sections to bring in later and lots of highlighting (typos, poor tagging, too much/improper description, etc) where you risk an agent deciding it's just not there yet. And this would be my advice on most excerpts and entirely based on what I'm hearing from these agents. John Doe says it irritates him when surnames are given on the opening pages--the other agents seem to agree. Like, I personally wouldn't even notice, but the agents evidently see so much of it, they see it all the time, and it's become a trigger, or a red flag, this is my understanding. Another example of tired writing like this is light slanting through a window to catch some physical feature of a person. They see light slanting through windows to describe characters too often. It's tired.

The advice I'm hearing might be wrong, and me providing it to you runs the risk of a game of telephone, which could be worse than no help at all. So it might be best to run fast and hard from this offer, but if you want that lens, those ideas, and feel you can take the ideas and throw aside whatever you disagree with... it would be good practice for me to apply what I'm hearing to your first 20 pages.

I believe from these panels that the first twenty pages need a narrative cohesion to really get the reader to feel confident about the writer.

The agents don't really give this kind of granular feedback on fulls, and so I couldn't begin to guess about any of the rest.

 

[Brigid Barry]

That would actually be really fantastic if you have the time, and much appreciated to have that kind of insight!