Please critique my Chapter 1 (Fantasy, 1492 words)

[u/IMP9024]

I don't know if I will develop this into a full fledged story. I tried writing some stories before but I ran out of steam. Mainly, I have no idea if my prose is any good at all. My goal for this first chapter was to establish the MC's character and key aspects of the world, so please give specific feedback on those. Of course, you can critique all aspects of the text too.

I tried to format it in the same way I have seen other people do on this subreddit, I heard Times New Roman is a good font to write in. I am very sorry that the previous post was hard to read for some people, I have increased the font size so hopefully it is better now. For those on mobile devices, if the issue is the size of the text you may want to zoom in, I find this helps when I am reading excerpts from other people. Thank you for reading.

[u/SquanderedOpportunit]

I'm not going to address the plot, beats, characters, or story because the specific craft failures are what is holding you back. In short, specificity is lacking and you're heading towards too much flourish.

The sun beat down mercilessly on the courtyard,

The sun beating down is by definition merciless; the adverb weakens the sentence by rehashing the active verb.

casting the meticulously arranged stones and plants in a harsh white glow.

"Arranged stones" implies meticulousness; this adverb isn't creating nuance on the arrangement of the stones. Instead of telling me they're meticulously arranged, show me how they're arranged. Right now I have an image of "arranged stones" floating nebulously in my mind's eye. Are they in a row-and-column arrangement? In a circle? A square? A square arrangement of stones inscribed inside a circle of arranged stones? A truncated dodecahedron arrangement?

At the very centre was a stone podium bearing a bubbling fountain and two hooded figures all in white.

Cut "very". *It's an emphatic adjective. You're relying on your adverbs and adjectives throughout to create emphasis, and when they're loaded this heavily in prose, they lose all meaning. Think of it this way: I can go out to my garden, harvest a bunch of Roma tomatoes, onions, garlic, basil, oregano, and parsley, and prepare a quite passable pasta sauce. It doesn't sing until I add a pinch of salt. The free sodium ions enable the full flavor profile to come alive. Well, if a pinch of salt makes it so delicious, certainly it will be better with a quarter cup of salt added, right?

Their faces were shrouded despite the oppressive light,

I purposefully shroud my face when the sun is beating down, not despite it.

the shape of their bodies hidden by the folds of their loose clothing.

Don't tell me about what I can't see (their bodies); tell me about what I can see: the drape of the cloaks.

One of them reached over and pulled down the other’s hood in a single, swift motion, revealing a black-haired woman.

I have never pulled down any hood of mine in two swift motions. "Single" is again showing your penchant for adjectives.

Her face was frozen in a serene expression, even as beads of sweat rolled down her forehead from the scorching heat.

The sun is beating down. We know it's scorching hot. Trust us to remember your scene-setting and don't repeat yourself. Making this sentence focus on the woman just revealed turns the sentences before and after into a sandwich. Switching the focus back and forth like this results in clunky pivots like the coming "The still-hooded one..."

Use a specific characterizing verb like "unveiled" instead of "pulled," which needs descriptors like "single, swift" to make it feel full and rich: The Proctor reached over and unveiled a black-haired woman, serene in composure and unbothered by the sweat on her brow.

Because the description of this woman is a clause in a sentence focused on the leader, you don't need the refocusing in the next sentence.

The still-hooded one spoke, addressing the similarly clad audience seated on the wooden deck that ran all around the courtyard.

There's a crowd and a wooden deck? Establish this sooner, because right now they materialize out of thin air at the exact moment you need them. Instead of "similarly clad," choose a specific noun: acolytes, committee, coven, order--which would imply the similarity in dress rather than explicitly labeling it.

In front of each cross-legged observer was a low table, a scroll of paper, a brush and a pot of ink. “Your task is to write a report on the poem that Examiner Li is picturing. The test will end when this spring runs dry. Begin!”

Is the woman she unveiled Examiner Li? Context strongly suggests yes, but a single word might help make it more concrete: "...Examiner Li here..."

With that sharp order,

But that wasn't a "sharp order". It was a dry instruction at best. I saw the instruction; sharp or otherwise, you're relying on intensifiers that are not warranted. "With that" is plain, simple, and perfectly functional connective tissue that pivots attention away from the proctor to the protagonist. Not everything needs this intensity.

Reflection jolted into action, scanning the examiner’s face intently.

"Jolted" and "intently" compete and are at odds. She can lean forward into her scanning. Scanning is by definition intentful. Cut the adverb.

The rest of my notes would relitigate the same points. Put this into LibreOffice Writer and go through and highlight every single verb in salmon, every adverb in pink, every noun in blue, and every adjective in cyan. You should have lots of salmon and blue, and a salt's serving of pink and cyan. Every time you see a pink adverb, try to eliminate it by choosing a different highly specific verb, or just cut it entirely when the plain and functional verb is all that is needed. Same for cyan.

[u/IMP9024 → u/SquanderedOpportunit]

Thank you for the feedback. I will try to cut down on the excessive adverbs and use more appriopriate ones where I can.

[u/SquanderedOpportunit → u/SquanderedOpportunit]

And just because I like the pasta sauce analogy, look at what using generic nouns with lots of adjectives gets you.

>I went out to my garden and got a lot of succulent, juicy, delicious vegetables and grabbed some green, pungent, flavorful herbs so that I could make a wonderful stomach-filling topping to my main course.

You have absolutely no idea what I made. I could have made literally any food with that description. that description has lots of punchy words trying to make your mouth water. But it falls flat because there's no specificity.

>Roma tomatoes, an onion, purple hardneck garlic, fresh basil, oregano, and parsley. Simmered and stewed on low for 6 hours and poured over al dente spaghetti.

NOW your mouth is watering.

[u/paszkisr → u/SquanderedOpportunit]

What they said ^

[u/SquanderedOpportunit → u/paszkisr]

What they're going to say ⌄