Cassandra:
Apparently I can’t copy and paste with iCloud. NOOOOOOOOOO!
But anyway, it looks really good so far! (And so far because I’m doing this as I’m reading it) First thing I see though, is surprise and reaction. Surprises by nature are extremely sudden and as a result, require pretty immediate response to the likely detrimental thing. For the sake of argument, let’s call them “OH SNAP” moments.
For example, because of the Super Bowl lately work at Penara Bread was really slow, so my manager had his playlist going on in the back of the store. Thing was, he was in the front of the store, so it was cranked up pretty loud to compensate. Normally, that wouldn’t be that bad, but he forgot what playlist it was and as a dad and his little boy walked up to my counter, Eminem starts busting out The Real Slim Shady. Suddenly uncomfortable, I turn to my coworker and mention “This is a fun song to play right now,” and apparently overhearing this, Devin turns from the lobby to the front counter and his eyes pop as soon as he sees the customers. His face pales immediately and the man outright books it to the back and tears the speaker plug out of it’s socket on the wall.
Point is, once you hit that “OH SNAP” you act on it instantly, and people can usually tell you have it. Venox didn’t quite seem to have it, like the steps weren’t quite right. It almost seemed as though it occurred like this:
Wyvern frowns.
Wyvern is thrown off by gunshots.
Wyvern turns and sees it’s his friends.
Venox shrieks and moves.
Now common sense does say that Venox moved as they fired, but that delay still makes him seem a bit sluggish, or that it’s quite not as big a deal as it could’ve been.
Wyvern in turn also felt to feel the laser breath wasn’t too big an issue. Here it seems like he doesn’t move until long after the attack. I suppose it’d be like someone’s throwing a punch your face. You’d either be able to observe the decorative ring as it flies and blasts you in the eye, or you could duck and then take note of the fancy finger wear that almost blackened your eye.
Something small I’m noticing is to watch out for the word shrieking. It feels like you’re using it to the point of overuse and it wouldn’t hurt to mix it up a little bit. A quick check in the thesaurus shows scream, screech, squeal, squawk, roar, howl, shout, yelp and holler would work in most cases as well. Additionally, you may want to veer from having a character scream too constantly, if you’ve watched the Indiana Jones movies, the lady in Temple of Doom is a good example of how that can be seen. By all means show pain and anger and all that, but shriek and scream can drag you into some dangerous territory if you’re not careful.
I think my last main thing is that you may want to stray from having the narrator exclaim things. I may have worded that a little odd, but I mean like “Wow. That battle had been hard!” A lot of times this can be seen as swapping between first and third person, but it also feels a bit like spoon feeding. If there’s something that sorta highlights why that’s the case, you may want to take that route instead. Like, if he flexed his knee and it was still sore, or if he was remembering something specific in the battle.
All in all though, I enjoyed this very much, great work!
Vern
the moving wreckage that was Sal’s car came to a halt.
First and foremost, respect for that right there!
In my eyes at least, it looked like you did a whole lot right! Now, this might just be because I have an obsession with the underdog, but the main drawback to your story was that it didn’t feel very climatic. And again, I think you did really well with the setting characters and all that, but it just seems like Venox was establish as well, pathetic, too early and too heavily to ever be considered a real threat after that, and similarly, Wyvern is immediately established as pretty much incredible. You really don’t want your reader to question why they’re still fighting, and if your guy’s the one who’s expected to dominate you need to work on finding a way to keep your reader rooting for him.
Maybe go into his mindset a little, why is he fighting, besides just being attacked? What’s the purpose of all this? Purpose is especially important here, because even when it ended, it still felt as though the fight never mattered.
I suppose my main feedback is watch for your battle getting to bias and to make it matter.
All in all though, it was still quite enjoyable!
So, is it safe to assume the two of you agreed on the battle scenario a little bit? Anyway, the two of you did really well! Great debut for both gladiators, although Wyvern edged it out just a little bit for me!