Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Sunshine: Crazy with Trouble

Title: Crazy with Trouble

Author: Ink_Paper09

Summary: 4/5

You've got a pretty good summary on your hands! I like how you introduce one side of the story before moving into the other side of the same narrative. You smoothly include the characters, the setting, the conflict and use rhetorical question to highlight the stakes. Well done!

Just a few very minor things:

And why not, when she's a bit of a troublemaker herself.

Since that's a question, you need a question mark.

However, can he let himself be found by her?

I get that you're using a metaphor – however, when you're using a metaphor like that, there needs to be enough context for it to make sense. In the paragraph about Jace, there isn't any reference to him being 'lost' in any way (I know 'lost' is more symbolic than literal in this sense). If you want to use a metaphor about being 'found' though, the fact that this character feels 'lost' needs to be alluded to in a more impactful way – otherwise, it doesn't actually really wrap up the summary in a cohesive way. 

Grammar: 2.5/5

So, there weren't a broad range of errors in your story, but the errors that I did find were pretty consistent. Additionally, the errors that I did find were quite major.

For example, tense. A consistent tense is pivotal to a story, as conflicting tenses can be jarring to a reader. In your story, you kept fluctuating from past tense to present tense, and it became quite disconcerting to read. For example:

"Hell yes!" I shout. [shout = present tense]

"Alright," she laughed. [laughed = past tense]

Sometimes, you even changed tense in a single sentence. For example:

I steal a cookie when her back was turned.

If we break that up:

I steal a cookie... [steal = present tense]

...when her back was turned. [was = past tense]

Next, we'll talk about dialogue and punctuation. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'they exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and an exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"He could wake up one day and say 'Boy, I sure do wanna talk today'", Liv laughs at my statement and shakes her head.

Since Liv isn't even the one talking (that's Leila, if I remember correctly), it should be:

"He could wake up one day and say 'Boy, I sure do wanna talk today.'"

Liv laughs at my statement and shakes her head.

I'll talk more about why I separated the two lines in the writing style section. For now, let's move onto words that sound the same but are not actually the same. For example:

"You really shouldn't drink so many drinks when your underage."

Your is like saying, this is your house. Since you meant, when you are underage, you should be using the contraction. It should be: