Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: What Lies Beyond You

Title: What Lies Beyond You

Author: i-freaking-lo_ove-me

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

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

I decided not to score the summary as it's not really a traditional summary. Rather, it's very succinct – but I do love that you've immediately introduced the protagonist, the conflict, and hinted at how dangerous this conflict could be with it being potentially her worst mistake. My guess is you weren't intending to do a traditional summary that fleshes out that little structure you have there, so I figured you probably didn't want it scored.

Either way, well done at introducing the key elements in such a cohesive and intriguing way!

Grammar: 3/5

There were a few grammatical issues that were consistent throughout your story, but nothing too glaring. With a bit of polishing, I'm sure it'll be very clean; nonetheless, here are some examples.

I received a text from mum which I opened immediately.

This one is a tricky one, but basically, you need to capitalise 'mum'. Basically, when you're saying mum or dad as if it's a proper noun, it should be Mum or Dad. However, if you're saying 'my mum' or 'my dad', then there's no need to capitalise. In the example above, it should be:

I received a text from Mum which I opened immediately."

Next, let's talk about 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:

"I'll come to your house tomorrow, and Sunday." I told him.

It should be:

"I'll come to your house tomorrow, and Sunday," I told him.

Another example:

"See you tomorrow," I waved back.

Waving back is now how the words would be said, so it should be:

"See you tomorrow." I waved back.

Speaking of dialogue, if you have one character speaking a lot over multiple paragraphs, be careful with how you punctuate it. You need the opening inverted commas at the beginning of all the paragraphs, but only need the closing inverted commas at the very end. For example, you wrote:

"I know I was in the wrong by leaving you all alone every time, but honey, I had to provide for you. I had to work to provide food and money, but you didn't look at things from my perspective, you thought I wanted nothing to do with you and that's not true.

You were closer with your dad when he was alive than you were with me, but I swear on my life that I didn't love you any less. Every day when I saw your voicemails and texts, I knew I had one person who I could count on and that person is you. I love you, honey, and you come first in my life..."

It should actually be:

"I know I was in the wrong by leaving you all alone every time, but honey, I had to provide for you. I had to work to provide food and money, but you didn't look at things from my perspective, you thought I wanted nothing to do with you and that's not true.