Review by Painite: The Guardians

Start from the beginning
                                    

Okay, I'll show you something: 

"Asagai muttered another curse as his foot got stuck in another overgrown root, having grown particularly tired of the repetitive, never-ending scene of trees and roots and elves — not to forget the faeries swarming around his hair like pesky locusts." 

To make that stupidly long paragraph short, Asagai was annoyed/frustrated out of his wits already, just from the usage of pesky locusts. Also, you can tell that he's not really a goody guy, since he just cursed. And yet, we actually got the gist of it even though there was no "his blood boiled a thousand degrees Celsius," thingy. I didn't think it was the best example, though it was the shortest I could find.


Grammar: 2/5

The flow of your grammar is pretty neat, so I don't have many qualms here! The pace was nice and comfortable, and I'd like to point out that you did a great job at your manner of switching their POVs. It wasn't the choking kind that makes no sense sometimes, such as adding in too much. 

I'd like to point out that there are also things you need to work on in this department. First up, your tenses. They jump back and forth from past to present. 

'"Ow!" I groaned. I glance up at my attacker...' 

Groaned = past tense

Glance = present tense

This happened quite often in your story, and I must say that it's pretty disconcerting and can mess up your story's mojo. So, I suggest that you look at both tenses carefully and choose what you prefer the most, or use the one most beneficial to the story's flow. 

Then there's your misplaced commas. I found a lot of them scattered around and it felt a tad choppy. 

'My mouth went slack, as I took in his features. '

'The guy walks up to Mr. Jenson, and hands him the pink detention slip...' 

'The freshman caught me staring, and grinned at me.'

I believe I already explained this type in the summary corner? 

I was thinking that perhaps you were afraid of encountering a run-on sentence, so I've got a few tips. Let's start mending the first one, shall we? 

'My mouth went slack as I took in his features.' 

'My mouth went slack when I took in his features.'

No comma works perfectly fine, don't you think? Or... if you really want to place one on this sentence, just invert the words around. 

'As/When I took in his features, my mouth went slack.' 

As for the others, they can function likewise. Next: 

'"What is it Atlas?" I ask annoyed.' 

'"Um... Atlas?" I ask uncertainty.

On this part, I suggest that you add some commas if you want to tag a following action after the verbal tag. On the first example, I'll also advice you to add a comma before Atlas's name. You should always do so when making your characters tag the other's name. To determine whether you should use a comma or not, read your work aloud. It's really embarrassing, I know, but it's really effective! You can't trust your mind reading for you — it might have gotten used to your style of writing, therefore unable to detect inconsistencies like misplaced commas, unlike the mouth. 

Also, on the second example, I believe the proper word is "uncertainly"? 

This is what we're going to discuss next. The other element I found in your work is that you have a lot of words/phrases that don't make sense/doesn't sound right sometimes. 

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