Hades and Persephone (T)

Start from the beginning
                                    

0 7 / 1 5


i

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

i. PUNCTUATION

Commas help to separate thoughts in your writing, and they make things smoother and easier to understand. Usually, the easiest way to describe a comma is just a 'breath' in the writing or a slight pause. You don't use a lot of commas, which is how your story ends up feeling a little rushed and hurried. Look at this:

'Not believing her luck her eyes lit up with joy which crushed the remaining light in his heart.'

Here, you've got a few thoughts. One, 'not believing her luck'. Then, you've got 'her eyes lit up with joy', then the sort of transition to how that makes him feel. You definitely need a comma to separate those two clauses in the beginning, and I'd recommend using a dash for the rest, like this:

'Not believing her luck, her eyes lit up with joy—which crushed the remaining light in his heart.'

As I said before, you don't use a lot of commas, and there are tons of places where you should. I'd recommend going through and trying to separate clauses like the ones above with commas.


ii. DIALOGUE

Your dialogue tags are misplaced and have the wrong punctuation. Read these five rules, refer back to them when you need, and you should have all the info you need to fix this problem!

1. Definitions: There are two ways to indicate which character is talking. There are dialogue tags and there are action tags. To understand dialogue, it's important to know the difference. Dialogue tags are anything that indicates who is talking by describing or detailing how they are speaking (he screamed, she whispered, I asked). Action tags also indicate who is talking, but they only use actions to do so (he grinned, she raised an eyebrow, I blinked). Some verbs can be used as both, such as 'he groaned.' If you want to say he said something in a groan, it's a dialogue tag. If you want to say he said something and then he groaned, it's an action tag.

2. Dialogue tag preceding or following a spoken sentence: In this case, the beginning of the spoken sentence is always capitalized and if your dialogue tag is after, then you end the spoken sentence with a comma and begin the dialogue tag with a lowercase. If the dialogue tag comes before, then you place a comma after the dialogue tag and begin the spoken sentence with a capital.

            Examples:

          "Hello," he said.     OR      He said, "Hello."

3. Dialogue tag in the middle of two spoken sentences: In this case, you have two options. You can a) pick a sentence and attach the dialogue tag to that using the above rules, or b) make it all one sentence, therefore ending the dialogue tag with a comma and beginning the spoke sentence with a lowercase.

Dreamland Review ArchiveWhere stories live. Discover now