SCRIPTURIENT REVIEWS | OPEN

❄ MYSTICAL WORDS | STARIS❄

Author: TheWordArtistBooks

Book title: Mystical Words

Reviewer: starisredy

i. Introduction and Disclaimer

- Hey there, 'The Word Artist'! I've read only one chapter in your book, "Mystical Words." Namely, 'The Secrets of Emmattagon.'

- Quick reminder that I will not touch up (only nudges, if necessary) on the basic technical aspects of your book (grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting). But I will touch everything else that falls under the flow of the writing. You can find this part in the third section of the review (iii. Writing Flow).

- Disclaimer: Everything I say here is my personal judgment based on my experiences. These are all my opinions on what I think will make your story better, but that does not mean you need to follow every suggestion I make. You can dismiss or heed any part of this according to what you think will improve your story. You are the author of this story and the only person to decide what is best for it.

ii. First Impression

- Your cover looks amazing. It feels very fantastical, and its color scheme is easily captivating. The background and the subject (the book) along with the purple swirl effects combined cleanly appears as one whole, and I like the seeping darkness from the corners, as it gives this a darker and mysterious vibe. The font family for the title works well, but the ones for the subtitle and the author's name are unreadable until you zoom into it. I will suggest something simpler for them, especially the author's name.

- The title is also very fantasy-ish, and it tells a reader right away that this must be some kind of collection. It's simple, effective, fitting, and paired with that cover, it pulls the audience in to check out what's in store in this mystical short story collection.

- As this is a collection, the requirements for the blurb differ from the usual. It should be informative (in a way that informs this is a collection of short stories or poetry) and concise. You'd simply want the readers to have a vague idea of what to expect, and you did that well here. Your first sentence speaks volumes in relation to the title, and it sparks intrigue. The following sentences then were informative and short—exactly what should be expected of a short story collection's blurb. No additional unnecessary information, and really just simple and direct enough.

iii. Writing Flow

- With your use of language, this one-shot is easy to read, and not at all confusing. The pacing of the events doesn't feel too slow, though sometimes a little fast, which makes perfect sense with the main structure, since writing an entry often gets you jumping from one important event of the day to the next. While there is some not quite necessary information in between here and there, it doesn't ruin the flow because that's how random we sometimes write in diaries.

- The transitions work well in between days because of the way the story is structured as diary entries, but while the transitions of events within an entry are decent and work just fine, I feel there could be more in how Emmatt changes from one event he's writing to the next. I believe it has something to do with his character voice (see 'Characterization').

- Now, for the structure of some paragraphs and sentences, I have quite a number of things to say, but like the one regarding Emmatt's character voice, they fit more into a different section (see 'Description'). But there is one thing that pulled me away from the story briefly: the paragraph when Emmatt declined the two other dragons' request to play a game with them. Though I get this is a diary, it is still jarring when dialogues from two different characters are in a single paragraph. For that, the only real solution is to separate them. Instead of: