Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: Ashes of Lost Love

Title: Ashes of Lost Love

Author: CelestiaLudenberg248

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

Summary: 4/5

Lots of great things happening here. I love the way you have set up this world in one paragraph, and then you enter in your protagonist, and show how all of that shatters. Furthermore, stakes are very clear – there is survival here, and I'm so genuinely excited to read this story. The rhetorical question at the end was a brilliant touch, though it did make me realise that there are some parts of the summary that aren't entirely cohesive.

You say there is a game in the rhetorical question, which makes sense because of the hot mess of fierce competition discussed. But what exactly is the competition? Why would she have rivals? What are they fighting over? Why are we suddenly talking about survival now? I just wish I knew these details so that it flowed better and felt more overall cohesive. 

Grammar: 2/5

This is probably where your story needs the most work, but that's not a bad thing – in fact, this is one of the easier things to tidy up. Let's go through what I found, though, shall we?

When you have punctuation, there needs to be a space between the punctuation and the following word. For example:

Even at twelve, girls were swooning over him.His turquoise eyes had a glint of mischief and arrogance in them.

It should be:

Even at twelve, girls were swooning over him. His turquoise eyes had a glint of mischief and arrogance in them.

Next, ellipsis. Whenever you use them, please restrict them to three dots only. I know it's tempting to use more to build suspense, but that's not a grammatically correct way to do it. For example:

"And as for where this passage leads to.............. it brings us to an exit from the castle."

The "........." should simply be "...". You should aim to use descriptive language to build suspense rather than overusing ellipsis.

Now, the biggest issue I found was related to dialogue. Whenever you have more than one character speaking, you need to ensure that there is a new paragraph for each new speaker. For example:

Alys was stupefied. "Underground? Are you sure that's safe? We could get lost and only be found years later, our yellowing bones half buried in the ground." Edwyn was unperturbed. "Don't exaggerate, I've been here heaps of times, we won't get lost."

It should look like:

Alys was stupefied. "Underground? Are you sure that's safe? We could get lost and only be found years later, our yellowing bones half buried in the ground."

Edwyn was unperturbed. "Don't exaggerate, I've been here heaps of times, we won't get lost."

Speaking of dialogue, let's talk about punctuating it. 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:

"Your concern is unneeded, I assure you." He said smoothly.

It should be:

"Your concern is unneeded, I assure you," he said smoothly.