Review my first chapter?

honestly i don't even know what to say.

what the fuck made you decide on a drunken midget millionaire? i tried to read it, but your sylistic eccentricities are very hit-and-miss, and i just can't get over the fact that it's about a drunk midget millionaire. you fucked up mayne.

>>7687713
Thanks for taking the time to read.

This project started as my ode to Bukowski before developing into something much different. But the formula is similar. You have the exploits of a no good drunk but beneath the surface is an exploration of nihilism, existentialism, the struggle of men to understand women, etc.

The first chapter is only about the life of a poor midget in the badlands. I ease the reader into the larger arc after several chapters of poverty & suffering. So of course judge the actual work in the chapter, not my one sentence description of a 72,000 word novel.

Just awful, frankly. Every single attempt at humor falls flat. Your characters are stock characters, reacting in predictable ways to predictable situations. You don't do much to build sympathy for Jean (like blue jean (ugh)), and so far it mostly reads as "lol a drunk midget." I can't offer advice, except to say you should scrap this idea and forget you ever had it. At the very least, read A Confederacy of Dunces or something first if you want to see a HI-larious one-ridiculous-blunder-after-another comedy done right.

Also, I really hope you didn't pay for that cover.

The first lines seems odd, specially this:
>blue jean (WTF IS THAT)
and
>[...]midget millionaire before he’d die. Till then he lived a life of squalor, barely got out alive. “You’ve got me, boys. Just watch the eyes!” First he had to stop struggling, acquiesce to punishment, that’s how he lived his life.

Explain this please:
>eyebrows so thick they grew other eyebrows


>like a little homeless Buddha
Not going to lie, I laughed.

As far as the chapter itself, I kind of liked, it seems crude, would try to read the second chapter.

>>7687759
Thanks for reading. Always nice to hear the positive ones.

I decided to do rhymes in the first chapter & during dream sequences, kind of linking the two together. I felt like it would help lighten the mood because the subject matter was pretty depressing.

>why repeat eyebrows

The idea was that his eyebrows are so thick they have their own eyebrows. I don't know. Like one of the typical Kazhakstanis in Borat or something.

File: blue jeans.jpg (414KB, 1920x1280px) Image search: [Google]

414KB, 1920x1280px

>>7687769
I don't like the "blue jean" part either but I don't want people to pronounce his name like the French Jean rather than the American Gene. That was the best I could come up with. If you have a better idea about how to clarify (other than changing the spelling of the name) I might use it.

it's not as edgy as i thought it might be from your description so that's a plus. i agree that some of your wordplay only serves to draw attention to itself instead of illustrating the story. i also agree about stock characterization--the bored cashier was particularly bland. the quote from 1876 didn't sound like it was from that era at all. overall, i'd rate it as fair.

>>7687775
Yes I realized the rhymes.
I liked it too (I'm the >>7687759 and >>7687769)
though I deleted the first post because I wanted to add comments on the "blue jean".

Still, if you publish the book spam here on /li/ i'll probably going to see and will search it.

Looking forward to it.