Sapphire's Review Store 4.0

Review by Sunshine: Shards of Moonlight

Title: Shards of Moonlight

Author: Soso_sophie7

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

Summary: [no score – will not add it to the final score]

It just introduces the fact that it's a series of short stories, which is perfect! It's hard to do a summary for a series of short stories, but what you have here is good.

Grammar: 2/5

Overall, your grammar definitely needs some work, but that's okay – that's the easiest thing to fix, so let's go through some examples.

First of all, let's talk about dialogue and punctuation. When 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:

"I am pretty close right now. My heart cannot take this anymore", I whispered.

The comma needs to come before the closing inverted commas. It should be:

"I am pretty close right now. My heart cannot take this anymore," I whispered.

Additionally, if you've got multiple people speaking, it needs to be broken up into paragraphs. For example:

"Hey, hey, shh. What's wrong?" Jay sat down in the middle of the fusion of a stuffed rabbit and a destroyed castle of toy blocked. "There, there were 11 spi-spiders! At least! I-I-I am sure of it!", he mumbled into his brother's sweater.

It should be:

"Hey, hey, shh. What's wrong?" Jay sat down in the middle of the fusion of a stuffed rabbit and a destroyed castle of toy blocks.

"There, there were eleven spi-spiders! At least! I-I-I am sure of it!" he mumbled into his brother's sweather.

Plot + Writing: 2/5

I've lumped writing and plot together for a reason – it's because I found the stories, in general, were impacted a lot about the writing. Because, in all honesty, the writing felt so rushed and unfleshed-out that there was no clear beginning, middle, and end, and there was no real sense of structure or cohesion between each story. Let's go through some of them – I've picked out the ones from the start, as well as some other random ones throughout the collection:

To Protect Tommy E. Maine

What a dramatic beginning, only to see a kid just being very worried and being sure he saw eleven spiders. I love the brotherly love and care that's gone into it – seeing someone want to reach out and help his brother, discussing the notion of growing up, and it's almost like comparing those bigger issues – their parents fighting – to more trivial things, like the spiders and fear and want to protect. I like that!

I think it could be a little less rushed. Part of it itself is the grammar (which will be spoken about later), which clumps all the dialogue together and makes it awkward to read. But I wish there was more dialogue between the brothers, so that there is a more realistic transition to him shaking and then finally grinning and feeling more confident. I think a bit more impact could be added through the pinky-promise, so slow it down and don't rush it!

Cheers to a New Year

Same issue as before – the dialogue is all clumped together in one paragraph, thus making it incorrect in formatting, but also making it seem so rushed. Show us more! What does his menacing face look like? How does it feel to be the person being screamed at? When they are thrown to the floor, what does the pain feel like? Could we have more context to understand? It feels like we've been thrown into the deep end with little to latch onto.

I liked the turkey burning symbolism! A meal ruined due to someone else's ill behaviour.

The Romance

I love the monologue about despising romance! That was so relatable, and it literally felt like I was reading into someone's heart and mind. And I like the way it tied up at the end – how she relates that to her own feeling.

The Outsider of Time

I've picked up here because the writing has changed a bit! It felt like a very philosophical start, too. I was really intrigued by it – the way it was described what was needed, how time passes differently, the concept of time travellers. It was very different in concept, it felt like a guide, and it tackles important issues that I see some stories not discuss as well as you did – like the concept of balance of life and changing the course of history. Love the use of rhetorical question!

Even though it still didn't lead to a narrative, with clear growth and plot, I actually quite liked it because it felt like a monologue. Probably my favourite so far of the lost, even if it was stylistically completely different.

The Blow-riage

Once again, I LOVE the beginning. The 'You cheated on me' is so powerful and strong, but like the stories near the start, it loses cohesion because of how minimal is described. Set the scene! Introduce the character, show us a taste of everything. Show us that satisfaction as that mission is accomplished.

Perhaps even stretch it out into a longer story by introducing the whole planning process, and seeing it all unravel in a slow, dramatic, surprising manner.

How Leather Links to a Murder

(A doorbell chimes, not chirmes.)

I like this one a lot more in that you've slowed down the pace a lot! You've used some beautiful writing here – I loved seeing the colours used to describe laughter; sunflowers, daisies, stunning violets. That was really nice imagery, and the way you employed it was really effective! I pulled this story out because it was such a good example of well-written literary devices.

So, overall, I've found a very consistent pattern of just a lot of rushing throughout your chapters! I seriously suggest slowing it all down.