Sapphire's Review Store 2.0

Review by Sunshine: Fall or Fly

Title: Fall or Fly

Author: xxInAHeartbeatxx

Summary: [no score – will not be added to final score]

I decided not to score your summary, as you don't really have one. You've chosen a pretty popular choice on Wattpad; an excerpt of the story presented as the summary to reel readers in. It very clearly establishes that it's a romance story, which is great. However, if you are ever going to use an excerpt from your story in the summary, make sure that it's polished. This means that the grammar and punctuation are accurate. But more about that in the next section!

Grammar: 2/5

Overall, your grammar could definitely use some work. I'll break down the major things I saw throughout your chapters.

Firstly, dialogue tags and punctuation. 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:

"Thanks. I guess chivalry isn't dead." I say in a girly voice.

It should be:

"Thanks. I guess chivalry isn't dead," I say in a girly voice.

Another example:

"Children this is Katrina and Gareth" She opened one arm to introduce them.

Since that example does not have a verbal dialogue tag, it should be:

"Children, this is Katrina and Gareth." She opened one arm to introduce them.

You'll have noticed that I also added a comma after the word 'children'. Throughout your story, there was a lack of comma in the necessary places. I highly recommend that you read your story aloud to look out for where you pause for fluency; those pauses usually indicate that you need a form of punctuation. Also, watch out for run-on sentences. Here is an example:

Today was a special day and all the children were getting ready, the girls were fixing their dresses and the boys were complaining about their bowties.

That sentence is a run-on sentence, which is where you have two independent clauses in one sentence with a comma or nothing to separate them. In this case, since you've used a comma between "getting ready" and "the girls were fixing", you have a comma splice. To resolve this, either change the comma to a period, or revise the second clause so that it is no longer independent. These are the options:

Today was a special day and all the children were getting ready. The girls were fixing their dresses and the boys were complaining about their bowties.

(Alternately, you can change the period to a semicolon.) And here is another option:

Today was a special day and all the children were getting ready, the girls fixing their dresses and the boys complaining about their bowties.

Next, let's talk about tenses. You keep changing back and forth between past tense and present tense. For example:

I stared at the lousy, unnecessary, and over the top gesture that was meant to impress me. [stared, was = past tense]

"I guess it's a nice colour." I shrug. [shrug = present tense]

You need to make sure your tenses are consistent throughout your story. Also watch out for contractions; whenever you are using a contraction, make sure that there is an apostrophe to indicate it is a contraction. For example: