The rhythm and suspense in this is very good. I like how you took the struggle for english with Antoni but didn't make it impossible to read, giving the reader just enough of the impression of a difficulty in communication.
Her approach was from the east, which brought her first to the broad side of a large church. She had learned to be careful with taking her backpack off after pulling a muscle in her lower back on the first night of her trip after flinging the heavy burden off, effectively sacrificing relief for agony, so she slowly slid it off her back and held it under her arm.
This is a bit awkward because you switch from church to backpack and back to the church in this paragraph. I'd recommend choosing one of two options, you could either add more transition between the approach and taking off her backpack or you could remove that sentence entirely.
A group of people she hadn't seen on her approach to the town approached her from the other side of the plaza, smiling and laughing, greeting her in a peculiar and heavily-accented dialect of Catalan she found nearly impenetrable. approach and approached in the same sentence sounds awkward you can use similar words in a sentence, but they shouldn't sound too choppy if you read them aloud. play around a bit with rearranging the sentence with different words. Maybe: "She saw group of people she hadn't seen before, smiling and laughing,..."
They were a tatterdemalion lot, however cheerful. They all looked as if they'd just been taken out of a centuries-old toybox. This can be combined nicely into one sentence with a bit of rearrangement. Perhaps: "They were a cheerful tatterdemalion lot and looked as if they'd just been taken out of a centuries-old toybox."
The boy's words were grave and terrifically frightened. I don't recommend using adverbs in creative writing because they tend to emphasize themselves as crutches, making things sound awkward and redundant. If you remove terrifically in this sentence, it's easier to understand the meaning of the sentence and still keeps the creepy suspenseful mood.
Her approach was from the east, which brought her first to the broad side of a large church. She had learned to be careful with taking her backpack off after pulling a muscle in her lower back on the first night of her trip after flinging the heavy burden off, effectively sacrificing relief for agony, so she slowly slid it off her back and held it under her arm.
This is a bit awkward because you switch from church to backpack and back to the church in this paragraph. I'd recommend choosing one of two options, you could either add more transition between the approach and taking off her backpack or you could remove that sentence entirely.
A group of people she hadn't seen on her approach to the town approached her from the other side of the plaza, smiling and laughing, greeting her in a peculiar and heavily-accented dialect of Catalan she found nearly impenetrable.
approach and approached in the same sentence sounds awkward you can use similar words in a sentence, but they shouldn't sound too choppy if you read them aloud. play around a bit with rearranging the sentence with different words. Maybe: "She saw group of people she hadn't seen before, smiling and laughing,..."
They were a tatterdemalion lot, however cheerful. They all looked as if they'd just been taken out of a centuries-old toybox.
This can be combined nicely into one sentence with a bit of rearrangement.
Perhaps: "They were a cheerful tatterdemalion lot and looked as if they'd just been taken out of a centuries-old toybox."
The boy's words were grave and terrifically frightened.
I don't recommend using adverbs in creative writing because they tend to emphasize themselves as crutches, making things sound awkward and redundant. If you remove terrifically in this sentence, it's easier to understand the meaning of the sentence and still keeps the creepy suspenseful mood.
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