Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Sunshine: The Way You Hurt Me

Title: The Way You Hurt Me

Author: Flowerygirl07

Summary: 4/5

So, I like the way you introduce your story! You start by showing us the two protagonists, then you show how their paths cross, and then discuss the stakes. I like that your main conflict isn't them falling in love, but maintaining their love story despite the side-boyfriend and the thugs – that's quite awesome. Overall, structure wise, your summary is pretty fantastic.

I would suggest that you brush it up a bit in terms of grammar and punctuation. For example, you change tense within a single sentence:

She was falling apart with friends... [was = past tense]

... her sister is dying... [is = present tense]

You need to keep it relatively consistent, especially if you're referring to the same aspect of the narrative. Also, try to keep it professional. Write 'because' instead of 'cause', write 'boyfriend and girlfriend' instead of 'bf and bf', and in the following sentence:

Soon Cassie and Evan cross paths when Evan moves to Cassie's school.

It's redundant to say their names twice. It can just be:

Soon, when Evan moves to Cassie's school, their paths cross.

Or:

Their paths cross, though, when Evan moves to Cassie's school.

And, also:

And Cassie doesn't know about the thugs?

That wasn't a question. It doesn't need a question mark.

Once those are polished, you've got a great summary! 

Grammar: 2/5

Okay, so getting through your story wasn't too difficult, however, there are a lot of grammar and punctuation errors that need some work. But, don't worry – I'm here to help with some of these errors.

First of all, let's talk about dialogue. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she 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 exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"Stop! Please" I screamed.

You need to have punctuation before the closing inverted commas. In this case, since she's screaming, it should be:

"Stop! Please!" I screamed.

Since we are discussing dialogue, I'll also add that there was another rule you broke frequently. Whenever more than one character is speaking, each character should have their dialogue in a separate paragraph. For example:

"You're just a bloody monster!" I spat. He put one of his longer fingers on my lips. "You know that your not allowed to swear "he grinned.

So, as discussed before, there needs to be punctuation before the closing inverted commas (and no space between the final word and the inverted commas). Furthermore, since there is more than a single character speaking, their dialogue needs to be in separate paragraphs. It should be:

"You're just a bloody monster!" I spat.

He put one of his longer fingers on my lips. "You know that you're not allowed to swear." He grinned.