Intro:

Beyond Midgard is a fantasy story written by sailorofnaglfar. It features a complex narrative that takes from mythology to craft a story. It's a unique read with a lot of different things going on to keep the reader engaged.

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Detailed Feedback

What Worked:

I like the details you put into Ashild and her daily routine. Typically I tell authors to get to the point as soon as they can in the first chapter, but I like how you spent some time with Ashild instead of throwing all the mythological stuff at us first thing.

Along with that, I like how you take time at the beginning to establish the world. Not only does this act as a contrast to the world we're about to see, it also grounds us in the reality Ashild is living in.

The setting of the story feels specific and intentionally chosen. Too many times I see books where the location doesn't matter, but you don't have this issue. Like I said before, the setting feels realistic, and I like how you took time to flesh it out. The worldbuilding is solid throughout, but especially in the first chapter where we're introduced to the "normal" world, then more of the mythological stuff as time goes on.

In general, I think the first chapter is pretty solid and I don't have any creative suggestions for it. It does a great job introducing the main character and the world she's going to get thrusted into. It provides good contrast between her world and what awaits her, and the characterization is solid too.

Let me expand on the first point since I wasn't very specific: I like the details you chose to use to describe the world, characters, and events. For example, from the first chapter, I like how you specifically said Lost Horizon by James Hilton instead of not being specific. The more specific the details, the easier it is for readers to remember what's going on while also painting a clear picture about the content the reader is consuming.

I can tell you put a lot of love into this story. It feels very passionate based on the chapter length and how you keep the same quality standard throughout the word count. Based on the read time of each chapter, I'm willing to guess you have around 5-7k words per chapter. It takes countless hours to write, edit, and brainstorm ideas for just one chapter, let alone a chapter of that length, so I appreciate the time and effort you put in to create this narrative.

As someone who used to write really long chapters, I can personally attest to how difficult it is to consistently write that much. You're doing a great job and I hope you continue the story at some point, as long as it isn't a detriment to your mental health, of course.

Now I should probably talk about the plot. I like the plot. There is a lot going on, like I mentioned in the intro, but it works since the chapters flesh out the details. The things I have to say about the plot I pretty much covered already. I like the way you pace things and give every event time to breathe before moving on to the next.

Even when things are moving fast and the reader is trying to figure out what's going on, I think it's effective at putting us in Ashild's shoes and making us feel closer to her.

I know this is based on mythology, but I appreciate the names being so unique. I don't know much about mythology so I have no idea which names are original, from other sources, or a mix of both, but the unique names help separate the characters.

There are only three chapters out, so it's a little too early for me to comment deeply on the characters, themes, and plot, but I think there is enough for me to tell you the worldbuilding is solid, the plot is moving well so far, the characters are distinct, and the details do a good job at painting a clear picture.

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What Didn't Work:

Most of my main suggestions are grammatical, so let's start with some general stuff then move into the more grammatical suggestions.

There are some awkward sentences here and there. For example, right at the beginning of the story, "Comfort came when night descended down..." It's not a bad sentence by any means, just a bit awkward since "descended" and "down" are used back to back despite meaning the same thing.

Also at the beginning, these two lines:

"In a few hours it was going to be her birthday. A young woman's eyes linger upon a photograph."

I don't see the correlation between those two lines even though they're right next to each other. It feels like these lines should be in separate paragraphs, not together. I understand the paragraph is giving background to her birthday, but starting it with that then transitioning into looking at a photograph felt a bit jarring to me.

The sentence structure can feel repetitive at times. You use "as" very often. It's not a bad word to use, it just appears quite often throughout the text. I'd recommend a bit more variety in the sentence structure.

I would recommend using less adverbs. Like "as," you use adverbs quite often. Adverbs are telling over showing, so I would recommend limiting how many you use. I'd suggest putting the text into Google Docs or Word and using Find & Replace. Look up 'ly' and delete the words you feel are unnecessary.

I would recommend being more specific with your word choice. By that I mean, there is some repetitive wording in the text. "Eventually" is used a lot, and I listed some other examples before, like with the "as" and adverb points. "Multicolored" is another one. I'd suggest being more specific with the colors instead of using an umbrella term.

This is just a small suggestion, but I'd recommend putting thoughts in italics instead of quotes. By putting them in quotes, it makes the thoughts look like standard dialogue, which can be confusing for readers.

This is another small suggestion, but there are many times where you will have a long paragraph, then put dialogue at the very end of it. I'd suggest separating the dialogue from the long, descriptive paragraphs. It gives the dialogue more emphasis, and it's also easier to read.

Let's move into some grammatical things.

Dialogue tags are formatted incorrectly. If you are using a dialogue tag (he said, she said, she asked, etc.), it needs to be lowercase, and the dialogue cannot end in a period.

For example, from the story:

"I won't keep you any further, and if you need me I'm just one call away." She said...

It should be:

"I won't keep you any longer, and if you need me, I'm just one call away," she said...

I changed "further" to "longer" simply because it flows better, in my opinion. I'll talk about the comma errors later, but I added a comma as well.

No matter if the dialogue ends with a question mark, exclamation mark, comma, etc., the dialogue tag needs to be lowercase unless it is a proper noun. Even if the dialogue is "Are you okay?", the tag needs to be lowercase. So it would look like this:

"Are you okay?" she asked.

There are some comma splices. For example, "...she mumbled, before tossing the hat onto her bed..."

The comma before, well, "before" isn't needed.

On the opposite side, there are times where there should have been commas but there weren't any. For example, "One minute she had been fighting for her life...or rather cowering behind someone who was fighting for her life and the next minute she was at school."

The punctuation in this sentence is a bit confusing because of the random use of the ellipse (...). It doesn't really work there. An alternative would be:

"One minute, she had been fighting for her life, or rather cowering behind someone fighting for her life, and the next minute, she was at school."

The sentence has stronger punctuation this way. My grammar checker is telling me you need commas after "minute" both times, but I personally think it's fine if you just stick with the two I added in the middle of the sentence. Either alternative flows well, but at the very least, I would recommend switching out the ellipse for a comma and adding the second comma after "her life" and before "and" to make the sentence flow.

Your grammar is overall good, it's mainly those three things with the dialogue and punctuation. I'd suggest reading sentences out loud to see if they need punctuation. However, you have long chapters, so instead of drying out your throat by reading them, try using TTS and have the software read it for you. Or read them out loud if you're more comfortable with that, whatever works for you.

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Side Note:

This is a side note, so not a suggestion or criticism in any way.

I was a bit surprised to click on your book and see the read time was over an hour despite having only three chapters. I myself have written obnoxiously long chapters (like, 22k-word long chapters), so I'm in no way making this side note to tell you not to do that. Hell, my second-most popular story has like a 70+ hour read time, so it'd be hypocritical for me to tell you not to write long chaps.

However, I have changed my chapter lengths to fit within 1-3k words at most because of the algorithm, with 1.5-2k words being the sweet spot. The Wattpad algorithm favors stories with shorter chapters because they're easier to read and don't require as much dedication from the readers.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with writing long chapters; like I said, I've done it before. It's Wattpad, write whatever and however you want, that's the whole point of this site! Be creative and experiment. 

I'm only making this side note as something to keep in mind depending on your goals on Wattpad. If you're looking for more engaged readers, shortening your chapters may be something you want to keep in mind for the future. I think it takes a lot of passion and patience to pull off long chapters, and I commend you for doing so.

Again, I'm not telling you to shorten your chapters, I just thought I'd say that since, as far as I can tell based on your profile, this is your first Wattpad story. I don't mean to assume or anything, I just wanted to throw that out there if you're interested, but please do ignore everything I said if that doesn't interest you.

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Summary:

- Interesting details

- Lots of specificity that makes the story feel clear and easy to picture

- Interesting characterization

- Good intro to show who Ashild is

- Solid pacing

- Solid worldbuilding

- Some awkward sentences and phrases

- Some redundancy

- Grammatical errors such as dialogue tags and commas

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Overall:

Beyond Midgard is an intriguing story that has a lot going on and features long chapters. If you're someone who enjoys a longer read, especially one with mythology in it, then you will like this story and I recommend it to you.

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Thank you for submitting your story. I like this genre but don't get a chance to read it too often, so I'm very happy I got a chance to read something so different. It was a good story, and I hope you do more with it in the future.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need any further reviews!