What is Reddit's opinion of Understanding Show, Don't Tell: (And Really Getting It) (Skill Builders Series Book 1)?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

There's a book that really helped lock in these concepts for me.

Understanding Show Don't Tell (And Really Getting It) by Janice Hardy.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Show-Dont-Tell-Builders-ebook/dp/B01M0BE4UP

If I were you I'd scrap all of that until the last page, then start the story there. Maybe add all that narration and info dump later, in bits and pieces. You want to hook the reader. Beginning in the present (after it all happened), then immediately jumping into a sort of "flashback" narration was jarring. (It works better in movies than it does in books.)

Most of this was telling me what I should know (info dump) instead of telling a story and showing me these things, filtering the story with the information as the reader needs to know.

Try starting the story with your main pov character doing an action. It doesn't have to be a physical action, but the character needs to be doing something that drives the story forward. If you come in at the end of a story, then go back into what had just happened, you are confusing the reader who you wanted to hook. You want to grab the reader in the first paragraph (with the first sentence), and begin the story with something that begs the writer to keep reading. Your first chapter should have a mini three-act structure that foreshadows the larger story as a whole.

Also, with Sci-fi, you open a sci-fi novel and it's immediately apparent you're reading sci-fi. (I always think Issac Asimov's books.) I didn't get that vibe. Middle District, Guild, none of that really lets a reader know where the story is set. It could be sci-fi or it could be fantasy.

This really helped with tense and pov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P87GYxwoQUE

And this really helped with Show not Tell. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M0BE4UP/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Even reading the free bit helped.

Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUJOtTAJHXk, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ZYSUEZV78 to help with first chapter structure and what to include.

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That all said, it's not bad, and I like your writing style. It's very smooth. The concept of the royal family interested me more than anything else. If I were to rewrite that chapter I would have begun inside the royal house fortress and began the problem there, perhaps set up the family's fall from grace, letting the mc get disillusioned.

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Also to negate everything I just said, if this is your first draft of the first chapter, the rest of the book not written yet, I'd say don't ask for feedback. Don't ask for help, don't read it, don't edit, don't polish, don't do anything but write the first draft. I have books I have written that I've never read once, that have never been read, because I finished the first draft then never went back.

Now I don't recommend not going back, but I do recommend finishing first before you get feedback, before you edit. Feedback has a habit of being helpful and also unhelpful. It can make you feel really good, it can also make you want to quit even before you get started, even the most well-meaning helpful criticism. Try and just write your novel. The first draft is supposed to be hot garbage. Then edit, then rewrite again and again, then get feedback. Okay? Be kind to yourself, don't set yourself up for failure by worrying about the first chapter until it's so dog-eared you want to scrap the whole idea.