Fox had just left the arena. Now that that was over with, he decided to just speak with the other fighters around 'til his next fight. But he also couldn't stop wondering about Emma's "mission". He decided to put it aside... for now.
Ricardo was about to face his next opponent, "Jax the Champion". Sounded like an interesting challenge. "Let's see what he's got," Ricardo said to himself.
Ricardo walked through the hall that led to the arena when suddenly he bumped into Emma in the hall. "Sorry about tha- hey! You kicked me in the balls!" Ricardo said.
Emma, in reply, said, "You caused me to lose and drop into the loser's bracket!"
"That's where you belong, sourpuss."
"Ugh! You are so childish. If I fight you again, I will be winning, got that?"
Ricardo took that as an insult. "You think I'd drop to loser's?"
"Of course, you're not skilled. You don't belong here." Emma struck Ricardo with a kick, knocking him back onto the floor. "You might as well just give up." Emma then proceeded to walk away.
"What's her problem?"
Ricardo entered the loud arena with LCFFT fans yelling in excitement. It was almost deafening. Across the field, Ricardo saw his opponent. A huge, armor-clad man with an even bigger mace. Ricardo was right, "This'll be difficult."
The fighters reached the middle of the arena and they met face to face. Hank the Announcer was getting prepared.
Hank announced.
The two fighters started chatting. Jax started first, "I hear you were the one who caught a bullet in their mouth."
"Whatzit to ya?" Ricardo responded.
Jax chuckled and began to swing his mace, "It's just that I need a worthy competitor for once."
"Then let me be the one who wins."
"We will see about that."
As Hank said, the arena shifted into the form of a desert and cacti sprung from the ground.
Instantaneously, Jax flung his mace towards Ricardo, who lept out of the way. This guy was fast, so Ricardo just had to be faster. Ricardo sprung forth at the huge man, but he slammed his metal pole of a mace down onto Ricardo.
Ricardo was knocked to the ground, crushed between the mace and the floor. In pain, he yelled. Jax laughed, "And I thought you would've been a challenge."
"I need... a weapon..." Ricardo said to himself.
Fox wanted to speak to his next opponent. He wanted to know who they were so he checked the schedule. As Fox stared at the board, he read "Xandria".
"Oh, no..." Fox muttered. Xandria was the grey-haired woman with the sword. The one who instantly decimated her opponent. Fox then went to find her, and sure enough, she was right in the large training room, hacking a training bag to shreds.
Fox approached her and said, "Hello, I'm Fox."
Xandria turned around with a dead look on her face. Dracula Siphon, it is him. Xandria told to Siphon.
I see, let him speak. Siphon replied.
"I wanted to know how you fight, seeing as how you are my next match," Fox said, "So, I challenge you to a friendly spar."
Everyone around started evacuating the training room. These were the two most capable fighters so far, and nobody wanted to... lose anything.
They think very straight. We should accept to learn his style as well. Xandria tells Siphon.
Go for it, Xandria. Siphon tells her.
The two fighters got into their stances and prepared to brawl. "3... 2... 1..." Fox started, "Fight!"
Fox conjures his gauntlets and Xandria draws Siphon, they then proceed to clash...
Ricardo gains enough strength to push the heavy ball and chain mace off of him. He runs to hide behind a cactus and strategize. "Ok, think. You have no weapon, but the enemy d-"
"Where are you, runt!?" Jax yells, interrupting Ricardo's train of thought.
"He has a weapon, but..." Ricardo said as he realized he's in a field of weapons. He grabbed a cactus from out of the ground, splinters digging into his hands, and used it as a huge bat. He charged at Jax, unmindful of the incoming attack.
Ricardo bashes Jax with it, sending him flying into a nearby cacti patch. Jax took his mace and sent the cacti flying in every direction. Ricardo hit the floor and got up just in time to see Jax covered in needles.
"I see you've found yourself a weapon."
"Yep."
"Does it not hurt you, noble warrior?"
"Oh, it hurts alright."
Jax flung his ball and chain at Ricardo and Ricardo jumped up onto it in midair. Cactus in hand, Ricardo runs across the mace and reaches Jax on the other end. Ricardo jumps high into the air and yells at the top of his lungs, "METEOR IMPROVISED WEAPON STRIKE!"
He slams the cactus on Jax's head, causing him to drop his weapon. Grabbing the ball and chain, Ricardo flung it around Jax, wrapping him in his own weapon. He lifted the hilt up, surprisingly lifting Jax with it, and Ricardo slammed Jax into the ground. Jax was unconscious.
There was only one thing Ricardo could think about in his shining moment: OW MY HANDS.
Next time, Emma enters her first Loser's Bracket fight and Fox fights Xandria in a friendly spar. Will Emma prevail? Will Fox and Xandria destroy the training room? Will Ricardo's hands still be in pain? Found out next chapter.
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140,722 Literary Works • 673,680 Reviews
Yes! And that ominous "for now" at the beginning!
Hey, I'm back for another review. I haven't been on for a while, otherwise I would have read this chapter earlier.
I like the character development here. You know, from my previous review, that I feel like Emma's anger is way over-the-top, but now I'm beginning to think there might be a reason for it? Don't give away any spoilers though. I'm not ready for that. Fox is the same as usual- friendly and mysterious. Xandria is a menace and now I'm really worried about her fight with Fox. Fox is my favorite character. You better not kill him. But it's okay if you do. I'll get over it. Eventually.
Ricardo's fight was crazy. I'm glad that you showed that he does have weaknesses. I was beginning to think he was a robot or something after that bullet-caught-in-the-mouth thing. There are some places where things could be improved.
"The two fighters started chatting. Jax started first," This part is not really necessary. It's kind of repetitive. If they start talking, we obviously know that they're talking, and if they don't talk, that is equally obvious. If you really want to say that they started chatting, then you might just want to add a little break or description. Something else should help fill the sentence so it isn't meaningless. One possibility is something like "Circling each other and looking for weakness, the two fighters began to make small talk. "I hear you were the one who caught a bullet in their mouth," Jax said."
It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but I think the story could use more detail.
That's pretty much it. I've gotta say, on its own, I really love the phrase "complete with cacti and vultures!" It's just funny. I feel like your announcers have the most character so far. Yeah, so, great job!
Hello!
I haven’t read any of your other chapters, but I will do my best to give you a great review! Since scribbleinks already did a great job giving specific critiques, I’ll try and give you some more general concepts that will hopefully affect other future chapters as well.
First off, I like the concept! However, as my creative writing professor puts it, “battle scenes are one of the hardest to write” - because they either go too fast, or too slow. I think yours’ for the most part is okay in pace, however you do a lot of telling rather than showing. I think your narrative voice could benefit from a lot more concrete language: things we can see, hear, taste, feel, touch. For example, what did Ricardo feel at first? The smooth sharp edge of his sword, slick with blood? Did that blood then stick to his fingers? Did he taste metal when he fell to the ground an bit his lip? Just some ideas to get you started.
I feel you are trying to write from multiple POV’s (Ricardo and Fox). While I love that idea, it just makes it more confusing to me while reading since you switch back and forth so fast. If changing it to just Ricardo’s POV is going to wreck the whole plot line, there ARE ways to make it work. Some suggestions if you want to continue this set-up are 1) don’t switch back after every 3-4 paragraphs. Give us time to digest what happened to each character. 2) Make sure you don’t end abruptly; the first switch from Ricardo to Fox is like this because we’re left in the action (him needing a weapon) and then thrown right back in when you return to his POV. Suspense is fine, but not jerky suspense. 3) This is just personal preference, but make sure your character’s aren’t doing extremely similar things at the switches. If you wouldn’t of had then line break, I’d be confused because both Ricardo and Fox were fighting. 4) make sure your characters are each unique - otherwise it’d be easy to mix them up when switching POV’s.
I don’t know why, but I laughed out loud here! And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, depending on what you want to portray this novel as. This was probably explained in previous chapters, but are all these battles life-threatening? Like, why are they fighting in the first place? Is it just for fun? I think if it’s for fun, spots of humor like the above sentence are great to add in.
This too! And the italicization and all caps really makes it hilarious! However, if these battles are life threatening in the sense that they were forced into this (like a Hunger Games sort of deal), I’d reccomend changing up the dialogue and places like these so the tone’s a bit darker.
I don’t think the bit at the end in bold is needed at all. If we’re intrigued by your chapter, we’ll continue to the next one. Your actual story should be suspenseful enough to keep up reading rather than letting us know what lies ahead in that blunt way. Foreshadowing is fine, but the boldened part is just flat out letting the reader’s know like a television series.
That’s all from me! I like the concept of this, and battle scenes are hard to write! Work on a more concrete voice, consistent POV’s, and consistent tone throughout. Nice job, and keep writing!
-Snazzy
Hey FantasyWriter76! Happy RevMo! I hope you don't mind if I hop in for a review today
I haven't read anything prior to this in this story, so I apologise if that in some way colours my review. Nevertheless, I shall still attempt to provide helpful suggestions along the way!
I know this is the beginning of a chapter and not the story itself, but it still doesn't feel much like an entrance. It's only one paragraph long, and if it's there to put in another character's point of view (because this is multiple narrators, yes?), I'd get rid of it. It's too short to be of any value to the story, and it doesn't give us enough information for it to be necessary.
Watch out for repetitions like this (you wrote "hall" twice in the same sentence). We already know Ricardo's in the hall, you don't need to say where he bumps into Emma.
Also here? Don't tell us that he took it as an insult. Show us that he frowns or scowl or scrunches his nose up. Saying blatantly he took it as an insult tells us nothing exciting.
Who is he asking?
So far, you have a very unstable balance between dialogue and...anything else. Show us what's going on around your characters- what are they seeing? What are they smelling? Hearing? Tasting? Feeling? Not only do I have no clear image of what's going on that fuzzy blobs of Ricardo and Emma arguing, I don't know how they're feeling. Emma doesn't feel hostile until she kicks Ricardo. Ricardo has no emotions until he "feels insulted". If she's mad, have her flare her nostrils, grit her teeth, clench her fists. If it's from Ricardo's perspective, maybe he's feeling pumped for the next challenge. Is he feeling confident? Walking with his shoulders straightened or chin high? Body language is your friend! You obviously don't want to go over the top, but there's hardly anything besides dialogue right now.
Again, who's he talking to? I mean, there are cases where I understand characters talking to themselves, but this feels unnecessary. And how can he be right? The only thing he thought about the challenge was that it would be interesting. If he's going to say or think that it's difficult don't put that after you said "he was right".
I'm also...not sure I understand why you have the announcers voice in a bigger font size and bolded. Normally, bolded text isn't even used as formatting at all (I've never seen it but I'm sure you could find something), so why so big? The only purpose it's serving right now is to be obnoxious and distracting. I wouldn't even put it in all caps, I would just say he's shouting or his voice echoes over a loud speaker. Also, the dialogue tag (he announced) should be on the same line as his dialogue. There's no instance where a dialogue tag would be separated from the dialogue.
Don't tell us this. The only way you need to express this is by having them start a conversation. Which, also brings me to my next point. Why are they having a conversation right now? They're about to be fighting each other, not meeting for tea and biscuits.
Why would he ask to Jax to let him win? That speaks lengths of dishonour and cheating to me- I don't know if that's what you're going for, but it sounds like Ricardo is willing to go into underhanded methods to win. Maybe that's what you're going for! I just wanted to bring it up.
There should only be one exclamation mark. The other two are unnecessary. There's no instance where you need more than on exclamation mark.
Why would it change after he calls for them to start fighting? And again, don't tell us "oh look he said this it's happening", what does it look like? (I think it would work a lot better if Ricardo has taken in the desert arena as he walked in versus having it suddenly pop up)
Wait, why didn't he bring a weapon? Is he wearing armor? If he's going to be fighting, why didn't he prepare? He seemed more sure of himself before, but now that he's been taken out by Emma and Jax, he doesn't seem so tough. Also, does he fall unconscious? Why does it cut the scene right there? I don't know if you were trying to make it more of a...cinematic style? But it doesn't work. The sections so far have been far too short to stand on their own. I would either blend them together or cut them for longer scenes. (I do this all the time though too lol)
Wait, where was he? Where did he go to find her? This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Don't just say "well this character did this", show us how they did it and what they were doing and how they were interacting as they did so.
What? Wait, is she communicating with him...telepathically? With another form of communication? I don't know if Fox can hear this or not, but if he can't, why can we? Isn't it in Fox's point of view? We should only be able to hear/experience as much as he does, unless it's an omnipresent narrator.
I also don't understand what/who Siphon is? Maybe it's just because I don't have any prior context, but perhaps there's a way you could better explain this? Unless, of course, it already happened in a previous chapter, in which case, ignore me
Surely he didn't miss Ricardo hiding? He can't have run that far and I can't imagine there's so many cacti as to hide his location. But uh, that's where the description of their surroundings and how far he went could have helped a bunch here.
He...what? That's...not possible? Uh, flails are incredibly heavy? There shouldn't be one that's big/heavy enough for a person to stand on mid-swing and not have it crash to the ground? I don't know how much your bending the laws of physics though so I guess take that as you will. Or how big Jax really is (is he a different species? Like a giant? or orge? something? I just, don't understand how it's possible Ricardo can be running on his weapon. Also, if it's a ball and chain, how can he run on the chain if it's not anchored).
Okay so! I think the two biggest problems for me was the lack of balance between dialogue and, well, everything else, and then having the point of view/scene jump around so many times in such a little amount of story. There seems to be too many point of views at once, and that won't do anything to benefit your story.
Still! I like the actual storyline, it seems interesting enough. I, unfortunately, can't say too much about it since this is the first chapter I'm coming into, but really it was mostly technical things that were bothering me.
I hope to see you continue expanding on this idea and writing in general! If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know! Keep it up
I hope you're having a fantastic day!