@doctorwho910 Dark Secrets
Hey Mary, welcome to Episode 
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The first thing I notice is that you’re missing a cover. Personally, I don’t mind if a story doesn’t have a cover, I’ll still give it a try. But I know there’s a lot of people who dismiss stories entirely without one so that’s why I’d suggest adding one.
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When young Cassie hugs her dad, they’re both at the wrong layer. Move Cassie forward:
@YOUNGCASSIE moves to layer 1 AND DAD moves to layer 0 -
So she says there’s a fire and flames are surrounding the house, but then there isn’t any flames. I’d suggest either getting familiar with overlays so you can spot place some flames into the scene or find someone who’s able to edit that background to make it look like it’s on fire and then you can upload that one to you use instead.
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Since your story is a little heavy on the narration, make sure to keep your characters looking busy. While they’re in the kitchen, you could maybe have one of them doing a talking animation and the other two listening or giggling or something while the narration is going.
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When Cassie walks to the sink, it takes her 0.2 seconds. Try adding in time (@CASSIE walks to spot XYZ in 2) so that she moves more naturally.
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Also make sure to move her back a layer.
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Hollie is so me lol
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You ended with an author’s note, which I can’t say I’m happy about because I hate all author notes, but can appreciate that you put it at the end instead of the beginning.
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Beginning of episode 2 now and Hollie is still totally ME!
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Add in the time it takes them to walk to Georgia - it will help make it a little more natural looking
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A little trick I like to use in scenes with 3+ characters is to zoom on each character when they’re talking so that you can’t see the others This is because when looking at the whole scene, sometimes characters that aren’t talking look awkwardly frozen, which was happening in the scene before class starts, especially David.
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I’d also suggest having Maddison enter in zone 2 and walk to where they’re standing. Example:
@cut to zone 2
@ MADDISON enters from left to upscreen left THEN MADDISON is wave_extreme
@follow MADDISON to screen left in zone 3
Doing this will make her entrance feel more natural. -
The random “where’s the office” scene makes me feel like Blake and the chick that didn’t speak are important to the story. Just make sure that chick exits the scene at the same time as him otherwise she’s just standing idle for a couple of seconds.
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Ruler Roderick, wtf!!! Alright, now you’ve got my attention.
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Lol at Adairia and her flirting
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Ryder has me confused AF (is there a reason why you had it like: RYDER: inside the speech bubble instead of actually having a Ryder speech bubble?)
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Blair now…? Hmm… I’m starting to think up some theories.
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After the appearance of Blair, Blake is doing a talk_think animation but his bubbles are thought bubbles, so you might want to change it to just the think animation so his lips don’t move.
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Second self? This really interests me, and I’m excited to see how you explore it, but I’m not sure if the speech bubbles are the best way to convey this idea or them talking to themselves. (I’ll expand on this point at the end)
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There was a bit of a glitch/delay when bumping into Blake. I’m not sure what you’re coding is like, but basically Cassie started falling and then she was idle for a second and then she was on the ground.
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There was something really great about how you ended episode 4. Like, it was simple, but I feel like it’s perfectly set the tone for the story.
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I find episode 5 a strange place to offer CC tbh. Was there a reason you didn’t include it in episode 1?
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I loved that you showed Blair by changing the eye colour. And I noticed the speechbubble changed to show Blair’s name too.
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I was not expecting him to be a vampire or a wolf! (Is that weird? People always say that it’s cliche in episode stories, but I’ve actually not come across many lol)
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Wait, what? Why is Cassie getting bashed?
So I admit, I did find this a bit confusing to follow at times. In saying that though, I really like the idea you have… I like the shadow/second self concept, but like I mentioned earlier, I’m not sold on showing it by writing their name in the speechbubbles… You mentioned you were new to Episode so that’s why (I hope you don’t mind), I’ve come up with a few suggestions that might help you add something extra that will not only be an alternative for the second self idea, but could also take your story up an extra level.
- The first suggestion, which you sort of already did at one part - change the speechbubble for when Ryder and Blair are talking to actually be a Ryder or Blair speech bubble. You would need to place the characters off screen and spot direct the speech bubble for this (which might sound like a lot of work, but once you get the hang of it, it will be easy peasy)
- Text effects maybe? Change the colour of Ryder/Blair’s font so the reader learns to associate that colour with the second self personas.
- Faded characters… For this one, you’d need to upload a background as an overlay and change the opacity slightly, change a couple of layers, etc. but I do think it would be a good way to show, especially for Cassie, that her second self has always been there and she just couldn’t see it.
These are only suggestions, so of course you don’t have to do them, but in case you want to, here’s some guides that might help you learn how to incorporate them: 💭 HOW TO: Spot direct Speech Bubble || Reader Messages / Text Effects Guide Updates || How to "FADE" Characters
Just a last final note, I noticed a couple of times you missed capital letters where there should have been ones, or you added capital letters in the middle of sentences, so make sure to have a quick proof read (or ask someone else on forums if they’ll check for any pesky grammar mistakes - that’s what I do).