I'm looking for a one time read through of a 21K Rough draft of the first part of my LitRPG novel. I'm just wanting to find someone who is familiar with the genre who wants to give a quick opinion of whether or not I'm hitting the right notes. Here's my quick pitch: "Chris prays for help in the middle of a shooting at his school only to find himself pulled into a game world. Winning means life. Losing means death for not just Chris, but all those he's trying to protect at home."
I'll be honest with you, and I don't want to be offensive. I will be blunt though; the premise of this is in horrible taste to me considering the climate of the past few weeks.
[I'm not arguing, just trying to understand.] So, the stakes shouldn't be that high in a LitRPG book? Are readers expecting LitRPG's to only be for light reading and entertainment? I'm treating it seriously with the hero trying to stop it from happening. He's acting just like so many other people have acted heroically in those situations. The scene opens with time already having stopped before anybody has been hurt yet.
Knowing the setting as opposed to just "the middle of a school shooting" and knowing that it isn't as bad as I pictured when I read your piece up there, I can put aside some bias of it, but not all of it. As I said, I will be blunt about an issue like this and how I feel about it. I will do my best to convey this in the most professional way that I can. As such, my feelings boil down to two main points, and both points deal with my profession. As a teacher, this is an issue close to my heart in many ways, and anyone, LitRPG or otherwise, that writes about it as the main setting without dealing with the wholly dangerous nature of the situation, mental and physical, feels like they are trying to get attention first and foremost. Without disclosing the age of the individual, it feels like things could be taken too lightly. If the protagonist is too young, the audience might not understand the stakes of the situation. If the protagonist is older, the audience might not connect the way you want them to because his response might be too outlandish. I've seen snippets of your writing around the forum, so I would really like to think that shock value isn't your purpose for writing the opening this way. To make an informed decision, there isn't enough information to determine the character's setting and mindset at the time of the story. I've seen how students react to this, and the first time always breaks my heart when we have to keep the drill as a real situation. The second reason is again very personal. We've spent all year teaching students how to respond to this exact situation using a program of proactive response using a variant of the A.L.I.C.E. program, and it relies on them trusting themselves and their teacher to do what needs to be done to protect themselves. The literal worst thing for everyone involved is having a student stop in the middle of an active shooter situation. Having them out of place and not listening to what's going on could be the difference between their death, the deaths of others, and everyone's survival. Again, there isn't enough information from the prompt to make me realize what is going on, so I may be a little harsh in that regard, but if one of my students were not responding, I'd have to assume they're shocked and forcibly move them to a safe location out of the halls or in my classroom. I want to say no one is a hero during a school shooting, but there are. To me, there are just a sick individuals, potential victims, and people trying to help. Heroes are the ones who survive or die as one of those three. When they do survive, we thank God for them. I hope all of this comes out sounding like it does in my head. Now, I don't disagree with only having light elements, but how it's presented to the reader can be just as important as the content. To me, this was presented in such a way that I assumed the worst because important information was missing. As I said before, I really doubt that this was your intent, and it's not anything against your writing. Using a more detailed blurb would have solved a lot of these issues and might sway someone to read your novel beyond that. I would love to discuss some of this further if it's included in your book. Being trained in the situation and having dealt with multiple drills and student types in such circumstances has given me useful, if unwanted, information on how people react to it. Unwanted as in never wanting to have to think about it, not as in unwanted as in I think I'd be better off without it. I think I've gotten everything out. If anything seems to harsh, I apologize, but this is my life, my job, and my career. If you're going to portray it, I want to make sure it is done right and proper. Edit: Removed a line.
Yeah, I wrote that "blurb" on the fly. I wasn't thinking very hard about it. Your response definitely shows I need to be more careful how I present it. I'm a high school teacher, but we don't do a lot of drills. Our big push is "Run, Hide, Fight." That's what informs my thinking about the situation. I admit I've run through what would happen about a billion times in my head for different scenarios. Would you like to take a look at my opening scene (908 words)? I'd be happy to share it and would certainly welcome the feedback!
