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Hello! Sorry for the delay, I had some personal things I was dealing with this month, but I was finally able to hunker down and read chapters 5 and 6 of the Spooky movie as @missmellifluous requested. Since they specifically wanted my opinion on the fight scenes, I will be focusing on that, but I will go over the chapters as a whole as well!
The fight between the cures and Imfitial was definitely written in a way that I could perfectly imagine what was going on- I would argue a bit too perfectly. Fight scenes I feel should not have a lot of details to them, they work better when most of the machinations of the actual combat is left up to the imagination of the reader. If you write too much and go into too much detail, instead of an exciting battle, it can come off as a bit of a slog to read, almost like a more intense version of intricately describing the architecture of a building. People can fill in the details of what’s going on themselves, and if you leave the actual words to be more raw, succinct, filled with vivid sensory imagery, it will help the reader immerse themselves more in the fight.
When it comes to the actual fighting, I would use shorter sentences, words that hold an impact like cracked or crunched or smashed or pierced. Say what it smells like, what it sounds like, what it feels like, even what it tastes like-maybe someone got blood or dirt in their mouths.
Fights are also more interesting when you can understand the characters who are fighting, get a feel for their personality and reasons for fighting. Instead of only focusing on the fight itself, I think it would be more interesting to the reader to focus on each cure’s specific way of approaching the fight, and what they’re thinking during it. You can use these times to put in some longer sentences to break up the smaller ones focused on fighting, and also give the reader a chance to breathe from the “i hit you you hit me”, while also letting them get more into the character’s mind as they’re fighting. Perhaps one of them is more focused on protecting the others than watching out for herself? I liked that Pumpkin just got extremely angry and started lobbing her attacks like baseballs, that was a good way to get into how she was feeling then and I would push that more and apply that same thing to the other girls.
I also wanted to say that I enjoyed the transformation sequence in the 6th chapter, usually those are filled with extraneous details that make it difficult to keep your attention, but by having the girls effectively help each other transform and highlighting their close relationship while doing it made it something that helped explain their characters instead of pointing out each individual sequin of their costume.
On the topic of extraneous details, I felt like you could pull back on the explanations of what Desi and Mor looked like. The details weren’t ridiculously precise or anything, but especially since they’re supposed to be creepy, I think the less details, the better. In that way they retain an air of mystery and the reader can use their imagination to fill in the gaps of their true appearance, and I think people’s imaginations are always going to be scarier than what’s actually there.
There were a couple of grammar mistakes, but I believe it was literally only two so it wasn’t a big deal. All in all an interesting couple of chapters, coming from someone who hasn’t finished Spooky or read the other chapters in the movie. I think with these things in mind it can be even better, and I definitely want to finish the story so I can figure out the story behind Cure Countess!
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