Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: Badass with a Past

Title: Badass with a Past

Author: HoneycoatedMellow

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

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

I've decided not to score this summary, since, rather than following a traditional summary, you have included excerpts from your story to give the reader a glimpse of what to expect, and you've followed this with a small hook that succinctly explains your story. Since it's not a traditional summary, that makes it hard to review.

I think the excerpts themselves are quite interesting choices – a bit of humour, followed by a bit of intense drama. I do think, however, they need a lot of published when it comes to punctuation.

Grammar: 1.5/5

Your grammar, I'd argue, is where you need the most work within your story. But that's not a bad thing – in fact, grammar is one of the easier things to fix, once you know all the rules! To make things a little easier, I've taken excerpts from your story and we'll go through the errors one by one.

"Help her" someone screamed dragging me out of the now ruined car. My five year old me not knowing what was happening just cried and asked for my mum. They are all dead said a man in white uniform. He looks like a doctor. I look around wandering why they were all screaming and crying.

First of all, 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:

"Help her" someone screamed...

It should be:

"Help her," someone screamed...

Next, commas. I suggest reading your whole story aloud, because there were so many instances where a gap was required for cohesion, but there was no punctuation to indicate this. Read the sentences aloud, and whenever you pause for the sentence to make sense, chances are that you need a punctuation mark of some sort.

Then, tenses. Your tenses keep switching back and forth between past and present tense, but they should be consistent. For example:

"Help her," someone screamed... [screamed = past tense]

He looks like a doctor. [looks = present tense]

And finally, watch out for words that are similar but different to other words. 'Wandering' means to walk around, whereas 'wondering' means to think about. Overall, I think it should look like:

"Help her," someone screamed, dragging me out of the now-ruined car. My five-year-old self, not knowing what was happening, just cried and asked for my mum.

"They are all dead," said a man in a white uniform. He looked like a doctor. I looked around, wondering why they were all screaming and crying.

Let's go through another example:

"Miss Russo this is Zya she was brought here five years ago she is now ten years of age I hope you would love her after getting to know her" Miss Diosa said to the woman. She smiled and looked at me "I am sure she is a sweetheart" She said still smiling "If it's okay with you I would love to take Zya out and get to know her" She told Miss Diosa

First of all, you're missing a full stop at the end of your paragraph. Additionally, when more than one character is speaking, you need to ensure that each new speaker is given a new paragraph. Furthermore, you have plenty of run-on sentences. It should look like:

"Miss Russo, this is Zya. She was brought here five years ago. She is now ten years of age. I hope you would love her after getting to know her," Miss Diosa said to the woman.

She smiled and looked at me. "I am sure she is a sweetheart. If it's okay with you, I would love to take Zya out and get to know her."

And finally, when you're writing a novel, keep a level of professionalism. Avoid shortening words into text-format. For example:

"Doctor Lauren pls check if she resists..."

Change 'pls' to 'please', please.

Characterisation: 2/5

I think Zya is definitely an interesting protagonist – a badass through and through, threatening Aiden to rip his balls off straight after she wakes up in an unfamiliar environment after being sedated. She also shows us moments of her being clever, like when she realises that the cupboard has clothes that perfectly fit her size. On top of that, the sassy Erin voice that she always has to shut down? That's a fun addition to her character.

However, I don't think I'm getting enough because the pace is moving too quickly. You should consider slowing it down. Let's go back to that scene where she's awoken in a stranger's house; give her time to be a bit scared, and show us the questions she would be asking herself. Then, develop the transition between her confusion to her fear to her anger, so that it actually contains an element of realism.

Also, there was a lot of telling and not enough showing. Even examples like:

I am a little shocked because children in the orphanage...

Show it to us. What does shock look like? Feel like?

I am scared and don't want to be...

Same with shock – what does it feel like to be scared? What questions would she be asking herself? What would she be thinking? How would her body be responding? By showing this too us, the story will be more immersive and engaging for your reader.

Writing Style: 2/5

I already spoke about showing instead of telling, and another thing I would love for you to do is develop the scene more, as well as the mood and tension. In the prologue, while she's escaping that ruined car – build it up. Make us feel what she would feel. Not just the fear, the raw throat, the injuries. But also give us the heat from the accident, or give us glimpses of what it looked like. Accidents could be anything – driving into a pole, the car being set on fire. Show it to us.

Same with all settings. Don't just show us a picture of it, but practise elaborating on those pictures so that you are adequately using simile, metaphor and personification to enrichen your writing and make it more unique to you.

Plot + Originality: 3/5

Okay, so I think there are some great moments of tension, counterbalanced with some very sweet mments – hearing the story about Nico dress up as Cinderella was incredibly cute. However, I think your story occasionally lacks focus and could be more streamlined and purposeful.

For example, in the first chapter, she wakes up, describes the outfit, goes to school, falls asleep in calss. We briefly meet Emma, too. Then she comes home, says goodnight to her mum after briefly mentioning her mother going to LA, and then she sleeps. Nothing happens that drives the plot forwards, no conflict or tension is added. So what is the hook? What will make us keep reading? You need to think about that.

Plot-wise, I'm excited to see what happens now that Leo has found her. I'm especially excited after that final unknown perspective at the end, where he wants to kill her and is angry at her for being alive. However, once again, slow it down. Milk out the tension by adding internal monologue so that even that unknown perspective is more threatening by being more intimidating.

OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/20

Overall, an interesting premise! I suggest working on your grammar and punctuation to polish it up and smoothen your writing. I hope this review helps!