How Not to Use Magic

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Perhaps, deep down, Pat always knew it had been a bad idea. Truly, what had he been thinking that night. Did Patrick Alixa really think that a party hosted by those... monsters would go well?

Of course he didn't, he wasn't a fool. Despite what the Ferins may believe, Humans knew all too well the dangers of this world. But while he wasn't a fool, hewaslonely. Patrick had just wanted a friend, going to a new school was scary, especially to one who'd never been to one before.

But, in the end...

Patrick had made three mistakes that damned night. Well, more then three, but three major ones.

The first was showing up in the first place, Patrick hadn't belonged there, not in the slightest. He knew it, everyone knew it.

The other two were much more deadly, and proved truly foolish. But then again, how could he have known, he was just a stupid, weak human... right?

(1 Chapter Every whenever I get them done)

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2021
Author: AnxiousReader

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 3.8/ 5.0
Followers: 12
Views: 4,510

Chapters(14 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(4)

CookieCrumbleRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Love it, love it, love it!
How Not to Use Magic was the definition how voices made a story. The back and forth between the leads and their inner demons, the spotlight syndrome-esque anxiety, and how teens who as always thought the world revolve around them, it just, well, decadent and enjoyable like a good ganache.
Now, of course the story had bad sides. The grammar had tense shifting (lots of it) like the use of 'is, they're, that's' instead the correct 'they were, they was; some misuse of possessive (it's instead of its); and so on. But then again, it only need CTRL+F editing, nothing major for me (but again this was IMHO). For formatting it also a bit awkward with double space between paragraph, if this not intentional, then the author most likely copied their story after writing it from another word processor such as google doc. This is easily fixable by checking the new 'clean paste button'.
Moving on, the worldbuilding was splendiferous, it incorporated everything I want in a story; people that didn't talk like the story was meant to read by a reader. People that just went on with their lives. Although that index chapter felt a bit of betrayal (but hey, not everyone as masochistic as me ; I understand need to cater to lowest common denominators sometimes).
Characters were fun. Their dialogues were tight, packed with humor, and beautiful wit. The use of masks (and the moment when it crumbles); the self destruction and the fakeness of all, wow. Love it. My only complain was on the second chapter with Pat/Nick. It needed more identifier, something invisible like, the scrawnier of the two, the black-haired one, the human out of two of them, etc, just so the reader could follow the POV switch easier.
For story, so far it was well, nonexistent, there was the world version of truth or dare, but that was not something I'd consider to be a big bad plot. Didn't matter though, the style, the characters, and the worldbuilding made it up enough.
In conclusion, what the hel
BullerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
With how much spacing there is for every line, I must say that it wasn't hard at all to know where I got to. Almost every sentence was met with a double space to separate it from the next line,
However... is this a good thing? Yes and no. Like I said before, it helped know where I got to when reading. It made it easy for the eyes. However, looking at it another way would show that it was also slightly annoying, the paragraph length being the same nearly every time. The clear lack of variety made it hard to really get into. Slight alteration needed but I can't understate how well the story would gain from it
4.5/5 for now
AcusiontRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Overall, the story has a good premise going for it, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. Throughout, I had two main criticisms, one of which is more of a personal preference.
First, the personal preference: The paragraphs are rather spread out. That is to say, there aren't a lot of paragraphs longer than a sentence or too, which makes it seem longer than it really is. Some people prefer it this way, some point don't. Personally, I like longer paragraphs.
Second is that there needs to be some editing and refinement. There's some uses of first person (I, me outside of thoughts) in what is, from what I can tell, supposed to be a third person story. There's also frequent grammar errors of misplaced commas, senetences not structured properly, etc. It alse sometimes loses itself in the internal narration to the point that someone says something, there's ten sentences about the MC's thoughts on it, then someone else says something that is supposed to be immediately after but feels like its lagging behind by a minute.
Those two points being said, the story isn't bad. It just needs some more editing (or I'm just being overly critical, which is entirely possible).
Dylan KingRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
So far, How Not to Use Magic has been a teen-drama about a new student atending a party held by someone from his new school. He meets Nick and flirting ensues.
The author has a decent-to-good grasp of writing comedic lines, and even though this kind of story normally isn't to my taste, he managed to get a chuckle or two out of me regardless.
Where the writing begins to fall apart, is in the grammar. Scenes are confusing and difficult to keep track of because the Author switches between perspectives and tenses regularly, and uses words out of context. There are other problems with pacing, promises and tone, but ultimately this story needs a good grammatical re-draft before those can be considered.
Once some of these issues have been ironed out, this could be a solid story for those that enjoy this genre.