u/Evans_Adaptations

So I've been grinding on this opening chapter for a while and I think I'm too close to it. It's a psychological action thriller. Hyper-realistic violence, close third POV. Protagonist is Kirin, 35, bred by a shadow syndicate to kill, now secretly raising her 10-year-old kid in a shitty apartment while still taking jobs. She's not a femme fatale. She's tired, her shoulder's fucked, and she loves her son more than anything but has zero clue how to be soft about it. Chapter follows her through one night: walks the East, handles some trouble, drops the kid with his aunt, flies to Budapest for a hit, everything goes sideways. Trying to walk the line where the action is brutal and grounded but the actual engine is her trying to get back to her kid.

Stuff I'm worried about: does the voice hook early, does Kirin read like an actual human woman and not r/menwritingwomen material, does the Budapest sequence earn its length, and does the ending land. The opening hook is below. Full chapter linked if anyone's got time.

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Kirin kept her hood down. Raised hoods meant afraid, and afraid people got followed.

She could have walked this block blind, going solely off the smell of oil-drum smoke off the alley and scorch baked gutters. The dead bodega on the corner still had a working television, caged in chicken wire, welded too high to jack. Someone had shot the speaker out of it years ago, so it gave picture and nothing else.

Kirin clocked the subtitles: Fugitive manhunt continues… Ohio asteroid event…

Neither word was hers. Not her city, not her problem.

The homeless man under the screen set upon his milk crate as if it were a throne. He was tall, even while seated. The left side of his face was one fused sheet of burn scar, dragging his lip into a half-smile. The machete against his thigh rode loose in his grip. Loose meant he had no plans for it. Not for now at least. Either way his eyes stayed on the screen. Staring at it, not watching it. She clocked him and kept walking.

So I've been grinding on this opening chapter for a while and I think I'm too close to it. It's a psychological action thriller. Hyper-realistic violence, close third POV. Protagonist is Kirin, 35, bred by a shadow syndicate to kill, now secretly raising her 10-year-old kid in a shitty apartment while still taking jobs. She's not a femme fatale. She's tired, her shoulder's fucked, and she loves her son more than anything but has zero clue how to be soft about it. Chapter follows her through one night: walks the East, handles some trouble, drops the kid with his aunt, flies to Budapest for a hit, everything goes sideways. Trying to walk the line where the action is brutal and grounded but the actual engine is her trying to get back to her kid.

Stuff I'm worried about: does the voice hook early, does Kirin read like an actual human woman and not r/menwritingwomen material, does the Budapest sequence earn its length, and does the ending land. The opening hook is below. Full chapter linked if anyone's got time.

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Kirin kept her hood down. Raised hoods meant afraid, and afraid people got followed.

She could have walked this block blind, going solely off the smell of oil-drum smoke off the alley and scorch baked gutters. The dead bodega on the corner still had a working television, caged in chicken wire, welded too high to jack. Someone had shot the speaker out of it years ago, so it gave picture and nothing else.

Kirin clocked the subtitles: Fugitive manhunt continues… Ohio asteroid event…

Neither word was hers. Not her city, not her problem.

The homeless man under the screen set upon his milk crate as if it were a throne. He was tall, even while seated. The left side of his face was one fused sheet of burn scar, dragging his lip into a half-smile. The machete against his thigh rode loose in his grip. Loose meant he had no plans for it. Not for now at least. Either way his eyes stayed on the screen. Staring at it, not watching it. She clocked him and kept walking.

My dream as a writer has changed over the years.

When I first started, I had the typical dream of making it big. Most of us have been there. The childish dreams of movie adaptations, interviews, red carpets, writing full-time, etc. But the older I've gotten and the more I've learned about the industry, the more grounded my goals have become. Now, my mega dream is much simpler: I'd love to build a long-term career through traditional publishing. In a perfect world, I'd eventually have a great literary agent, maybe get lucky enough to have publishers compete for a book, and if a film or TV adaptation ever happened, that'd be amazing, but it's not the main thing I'm chasing.

What I'm really trying to figure out is this:

Is it realistically possible, over 10–20 years, for a traditionally published novelist to build enough of a catalog that writing meaningfully improves their financial life?

I'm not asking if it's probable. I know the odds are low.

I'm asking whether it's actually possible to get to a point where writing lets you cut back to part-time work, or at least takes you from constantly struggling financially to being comfortable? The reason I'm asking is because I recently read a comment from someone who knew an award-winning novelist whose book was adapted into a TV show, he got one season and he comes out with one novel every five years. And yet he still lived in the same town, worked the same job, and seemed to have a pretty ordinary life. That left me wondering whether even major success often doesn't change someone's financial situation much.

I'm not expecting to become rich. I just don't want to spend decades pouring everything into writing only to end up in exactly the same financial position I started in. Again, I'm not looking to be rich. I just don't want to have to struggle to buy food anymore. And if my writing can one day, make it to where I live in the same house in the same town. Working the same job, but the difference is I don't have to struggle to eat every week. to where I don't have to eat ramen noodles every day. Now that my friends, is a dream... But is there actually possible?

For those of you who've been traditionally published or know career novelists: what does the long-term financial reality actually look like?

Hey everyone! This one is short. It's just the opening two scenes of a novel I've been working on. Its a Contemporary noir with dark comedy elements. The story follows Diego Ramos, a teenager in a working-class Mexican-American neighborhood. He's dealing with family obligations, poverty, debt, and a few things he's trying to keep hidden from his father. The humor isn't really joke driven, no slapstick whatsoever. It's supposed to come from character voice and the absurd reality of their situation. Think gallows humor with dry observations and a seventeen-year-old who's been running a mental spreadsheet of his own bad decisions. But I also need the emotional weight to land too. The tension and stakes and all that stuff

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What I'm looking for;

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Does Diego's voice feel distinct and engaging? Or is it trying too hard?

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Do the dark comedy bits feel natural, or are there lines where you can tell I'm reaching for a laugh?

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Does the balance between funny and serious actually work, or does the humor undercut the tension?

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Are there places where the prose feels repetitive or self-indulgent? (I've done multiple passes and I know I have blind spots.)

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Conversely, are there places where you wanted more detail and didn't get it?

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Do the family dynamics feel real? Carlos (the father) especially.

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And the big one: Would you keep reading?

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I really just want honest reader reactions. Pacing, voice, emotional impact. All that jazz. And obviously whether the noir/dark-comedy blend is working or if it's a mess.

Or maybe it's not darkly funny at all.

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Thanks for reading this. Be brutal if you need to be. I'd rather know now.

Howdy everyone!!!

So, It's set in the slums of Mexico and follows Diego, a 17-year-old two days before his 18th birthday who's been quietly holding his family together while everything around him falls apart. His grandmother has dementia and his family owes a debt to organized crime. He's running a small drug side hustle just to cover her medication. He wants out, but he just doesn't know yet how bad it's about to get.

The humor comes from the gap between how catastrophic everything is and how Diego's brain processes it. Not slapstick, not absurdism. more like laughing at something and then immediately feeling bad about it. Think deadpan kind of. More situational you know?

It's my first comedy novel so I'm still finding my footing with tone. Specifically whether Diego's voice feels real and consistent. Also whether the dark humor is landing without tipping into something cheap. And also where you lose the thread, if you do. Would love readers who aren't afraid of difficult subject matter and can tell me when something isn't working!

Hi guys!!! So, I'm writing a dark comedy novel. The working title is Tacos and Taper Fades. Its set in the slums of Mexico and follows Diego, a 17 year old two days before his 18th birthday who's been holding his family together quietly while everything around him is falling apart. His grandmother has dementia, his family owes a debt to organized crime, and he's running a small side hustle to cover her medication. He wants out, but he doesn't know how bad it's about to get.

I'm going for humor that makes you laugh and then feel bad about it. No slapstick, no absurdism. The comedy comes from the gap between how serious everything is and how Diego's brain processes it. It's my first comedy novel and I'm still finding my footing with some things.

Chapter 1 is linked!!! If you could tell me if Diego's voice feels real, if the dark humor is landing without tipping into something cheap, and where it loses you if it does.

Thank you!!!

Hiya!!!

So I'm looking for a few readers for a literary fantasy I'm working on. Around 28k words right now, (estimated to end at around 40-50k) but only ten chapters in as of now. Not finished but also not my first draft. I concider this my secound stage polish. And I just want some honest eyes before I keep going.

Quick pitch: So, Emily is eleven and lives in a poor rural family, goes fishing with her grandfather and pulls a sealed bottle out of the river. Turns out it's the same bottle her late father spent days drunkenly tearing the house apart looking for. She opens it. There's a genie in it. Three wishes, the whole deal, except the wishes start costing things you can't take back, addiction runs in the family, and the bottle doesn't stay closed.

Tone wise I'm going for slow, dark, hyperreal. The supernatural is real but it's sitting underneath the story instead of on top if that makes sense???

Basically the book is really about grief, generational addiction, and what a kid does when she finally gets handed power in a house that never gave her any.

What I'm hoping you'll tell me:

1:Pacing. Is it building or dragging

2: Are the characters landing, especially the mom, grandma, and Emily.

3:Anywhere you stop believing it or check out

4:Anything obvious I'm missing

Also, I want to be straight up front. I'm not in a spot where I can do full swaps right now. I've done them before and I know how it works, I'm just in the trenches with this draft (current have another manuscript queried) and I can't do somebody's whole manuscript the time it deserves. What I can do is reading the first couple chapters of yours and giving real notes on those. Not trying to take and run, just being honest about where I'm at. Sorry if that sounds selfish...

If interested, drop a comment or DM. Google Docs is easiest but whatever works.

Thanks.

Is my Query acceptable?

Dear (),

Your dedication to championing debut novelists aligns perfectly with my career goals. I am thrilled to pitch S.H.U.G.A.R. HIGH, an upmarket horror novel complete at 125,000 words. The manuscript balances the visceral social critique of Agustina Bazterrica’s TENDER IS THE FLESH with the corporate apocalyptic dread of Ling Ma’s SEVERANCE.

Most apocalyptic stories follow the scrappy underdog who learns to fight. S.H.U.G.A.R. HIGH follows the daughter of the man who owns all of America's Safe Havens.

Harper Hale was raised on her father’s black card and his massive sugar empire. She has never gone without, and she has never looked at the machinery keeping her warm while the world starves fifteen feet from her door.

Three years into a viral apocalypse her father helped contain, Harper is exiled from her brick house to a perimeter tent, pruned as a liability the moment her father leaves the wall. When that wall falls in a single night, she faces a two-hundred-mile trek through an infected country to the Nevada Haven, surviving with no weapon, a group keeping her alive only as a keycard, and the dead refusing to stay quiet.

As Harper crosses the wasteland, survival horror gives way to something more political and intimate: a scientist who calculates the odds on her life out loud, a silent survivor carrying a folder that turns her family's fortune into a confession, a national policy of disappearance dressed as public health. The further Harper walks, the less the apocalypse resembles a collapse of civilization and the more it resembles its logical conclusion.

And the most dangerous voice in the book is the one only Harper can hear.

S.H.U.G.A.R. HIGH is my debut novel. I also have multiple completed manuscripts and am actively building a long-term career in speculative horror fiction.

Thank you for your time and consideration!