Rebel Town Reviews [OPEN]

Live or Let Go (Chapters 1-5) - @Electricbluriots

Live or Let Go (Chapters 1 - 5) by Electricbluriots

Reviewed by AmyMarieZ

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Overview: Live or Let Go is a thrilling mystery story about Tryna Wilkinson, a high school student whose life gets turned upside down when she is framed for the murder of Parker Carter, a high schooler in the neighboring town. With the help of her closest friends and crush/emerging love interest Aaron Maloley, Tryna works to clear her name and hopefully get to the bottom of what's really going on in town.

Structure: The first five chapters of the story are written in the POV of main character Tryna. However, looking ahead,I see that the POV switches to Aaron for a few chapters. Because the story is currently being edited, the first few chapters are written in third person past tense, while the later chapters switch to first person present tense. I like the effect of the first person present tense writing because I feel a stronger connection to Tryna through this POV. However, I think third person may work better for this type of mystery story to allow more smooth transitions between different characters' view points, letting the reader get a wider view on the events of the story. It allows a bit more flexibility with the storytelling.

Grammar: The author informed me before I began reading that the story is currently under revision, so I will be brief with this section, since I believe the majority of the grammatical errors are a result of the revision process and will be caught. (For example, tense shifts and switching between third and first person narration.)

The one recurring grammatical error I noticed that I wanted to point out was punctuation around dialog tags. A dialog tag is anything that comes before or after dialog and indicates speaking, for example "he said" or "I asked." When a dialog tag follows a piece of dialog, the dialog should end in a comma, and then the first word of the tag should be lowercase (unless it is a proper noun.) If the dialog ends in an exclamation point or question mark, a comma is not used, but the first word of the tag should still be lowercase. For example, in chapter one:

"Tryna, you should have seen your face!" She exclaimed, clapping her hands as she got out of the car.

Should be punctuated:

"Tryna, you should have seen your face!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands as she got out of the car.

Another example from chapter one:

"Lame. You almost killed me." Tryna said.

Should be punctuated:

"Lame. You almost killed me," Tryna said.

An alternative to using dialog tags is using action beats to indicate the speaker. When an action beat is used, the dialog should end in a period and then the first word of the next sentence should be capitalized. For example (this was punctuated correctly in chapter one):

"You just had one a week back!" Mahogany rolled her eyes.

I noticed that dialog tags were used very frequently throughout the chapters. Using a few more action beats in place of tags might be a way to increase the variety within the story and develop the scenes a bit more actively.

Pace: The pace of individual scenes in Live or Let Go was very well done. The balance between character actions, setting description, and character thoughts developed scenes that were easy to picture and that read at a real-time pace.