Book: Only You

Editor: writesthetic

Client: freethoughts02

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All right, so first things first, the most glaring issue I noticed in your writing was that you often used "by" after speech. For example, your first sentence was "Aaaahhhh" I scream by covering my ears. Here used "scream by covering my ears", which gives the impression that the character is covering their ears, causing them to scream. If you want to say that your character did something, then you could put in something like "Aaaahhhh," I scream, covering my ears. See the difference here? In your sentence, it makes it seem like they are screaming by covering their ears, but in my example, it shows that they're screaming and covering their ears. You could also use "and" or "while" in the place of "by".

Another issue I noticed that hugely effected the reading was that you often switched the tenses. For example, one sentence would say "she said" and another would say "he replies". I especially noticed that your first sentence was in present tense while the next couple of lines after that were in past tense ("Shhh, it's ok, it's ok... I'm sorry that you witnessed it," He spoke gently., "Y- y-you k-killed him Y-you killed him?... Why?" I stammered.).

So those were the main too things that bugged me. However, often you'd also put a full stop at the end of dialogue, then you'd go on to say "she said" or "he replied". When you write things like this, where the phrase after is connected to the dialogue, you always want to have a comma after the dialogue, instead of no punctuation of a full stop (period). Example: "Shh it's ok it's ok everything is ok hm" He says sweetly by stroking my hair. Here you don't have any punctuation after the dialogue. A correct way to write it would be "Shh it's ok it's ok everything is ok hm," he says sweetly, stroking my hair. So as you can see, I've added a comma after the dialogue. I've also changed the "He" to a lowercase "he", as it is still part of the same sentence.

Finally, make sure that you're not missing punctuation, period. I noticed in a lot of places you could tell that it should've been two sentences, yet there was no period in between, or a break was needed, but there was no comma, semicolon, or other marker of that. (I couldn't help but let out a slight squeal he acknowledged it and withdrew his hand., Whenever I think about those days shiver passes through my body those four days were dreadful nightmares for me.).

In the future, I'd recommend that you read through your own writing afterwards, so you can see when things don't match up and fix them yourself. Reading your stories out loud is another good way to find mistakes quickly, as if you're missing parts, then things will sound off. Good luck!