Heya, Eros. I promised you a portfolio review, then got busy with work and stuff, and now I'm in a review competition so I'll be hitting this now. So, anyway, on to the review.

One thing I despise about reading literary works is the way the dialogue is. One is I would suggest a rating bump for the usage of weed, but anyway.

This entire chapter focuses on dialogue, and that's not necessarily a good thing. I would suggest implementing other ways of communication, and using other methods to describe things. What I mean by this is looking around the room, describing the room, describing the people, and using other ways to get your point across while giving the reader much more detail than just through the characters words. We don't get character development through just words. Honestly words can usually go against what a persons personality is, so that's why anything like body language, faces, clothing, and actions are needed to accurately portray what a character is actually like. And I mean something more than just eating and smoking weed. Anyway, onward.

Another thing I found is your fond of ellipses, stuttering, and exclamation points, in which I'd rather see something more, as using both methods of pause can ultimately become redundant over time.

There's not much on the story here for me to actually comment, so i'll wait on that. This is up to you to change and completely up to you, you don't even have to listen to me in any sense, and it's completely your choice.

I hope this help, and have a great day.


Keep on keeping on,
Sincerely, Casanova

Hello Eros! This is zaminami with a review as requested! Sorry it took so long. I was waiting for RevMo lol

So first of all, through reading this, I noticed that you have a lot of grammar issues. However, Weirdo got most of them specifically. I just wanted to help you here:

1. When you stop in the middle of dialogue to insert an action, you don’t do it in the dialogue itself. Here is a good article talking about the mechanics of dialogue.
   
2. Whenever you have a new piece of dialogue, you start it with a new paragraph except for a few special cases. I would recommend browsing that site that I put above—it’s really really good for dialogue help. It’s probably the best site that I’ve seen in a while for writing. Therefore, instead of saying:
   
   

   ”Yeah, dude! It’s scorching the ground—” said Darwin but Lamarch interrupted, “...and my skin.”

   
   
   
   (And I’ll correct the other grammar while I’m at it)
   
   

   ”Yeah dude! It’s scorching the ground!” Darwin started. He was about to say something else, but Lamarch interrupted him.
   
   “And my skin.”

   
   
   ^ Like that. Of course, it’ll be in your own writing style, but you get the idea.
   
3. You have many tense changes. I dole out this advice a lot, but I would recommend reading it out loud to yourself. This’ll make sure that you can pick out the tense changes easily and then fix them.
   
4. There are so many comma splices. Use semicolons instead. Look at the link below to catch them all!
   
   
   
5. You have a lot of typos. Again, read out loud to find them. Weirdo got most of them below, but I want to make sure that you get them all! I also think that “i-phone” could be a typo (it’s spelled “iPhone”), but I’m not sure.
   
6. You know what? I think that you could use this website. It is probably the best thing to find some typos and even tense changes. I am beginning to get too lazy to point out all of your mistakes (but this is a first draft, so don’t get all caught up in that; also, let’s not forget that I’m the master of laziness lol).
   
7. One more: when you’re writing time, you write it like: “9:00” and not “9”. I know what you meant, but it could be confusing.

”Yeah dude! It’s practically scorching the ground!” Darwin started. He was about to say something else, but Lamarch interrupted him, earning a playfully annoyed glance from his best friend.

“And my skin,” Lamarch said, shaking his head.

This is Weirdo, here for a review. Please know that nothing in this review is meant to offend you or your story. This is just my opinion, you and other readers and reviewers could disagree. I will try not to repeat anything said by other reviewers. That being said, let us get into this review.

Grammar/Typos/Word check/Spell check/Sentence formation

"Yeah, dude! It's scorching the ground---"said Darwin but Lamarch interrupted, "...and my skin."

"Yeah, dude! It's scorching the ground---" Darwin started, but was interrupted.
"And my skin," said Lamarch.

"Guys, stop fighting now" Lamarch forwned, "Is this how we will waste our precious holidays?"

"I got a-----"he continued but soon was interrupted.

Lamarch guessed, "New i-phone," broadening his chest in confidence. His voice was sweet, of course it has to be sweet to be a great singer. His way of playing guitar was as beautiful as his singing.

"So we'll meet here in the parking and we'll go together at my room here, 7:30 tonight." declared Richie.

Richie opened the door of his house. Pale yellow light flashed up on their faces as they stepped in. Gothy was about to switch the lights on, when everyone yelled at him, asking him not to spoil the mood by doing so.

"Plee don' get ttoned", Gothy's mouth was full of chips,"Od inttead of cawing the ppirit, we'll haddoo get yo' high down."

"Maybe" Gothy whispered.

Hey,

A recap to make sure I'm getting the details straight: Three teens, sorry four teens decide to play with a Ouijia Board (this will end well).

I tend to go with a line by line review so these are the quotes that stood out to me while I was reading:

"mocked lightly."----Consider rephrasing

"Afterall their dead, boring holidays were going to get alive with the thrill."----I’ve read this sentence over and over again and it’s still not quite making sense. I think its that the narrator seems to be predicting their future? At first it was the holidays part, but I gather you just mean the summer holidays like they say in the UK. Maybe it’s the phrase “get alive with the thrill?”

"They made up the plan and decided to meet at Richie's apartment."----Why didn’t we just start at Richie’s apartment with the Waluigi Board? Don't get me wrong, it's fine if you want to set up the process of obtaining the board and who the characters are, but in this scene you're basically just saying "Hey guys I have a Ouija Board" and a lot of your character details are in the next scene anyway.

"the dog of Richie's neighbour was"----Weird way of saying Richie’s neighbor’s dog.

"He touched his hair, habitually. He loved his soft and straight hair... I swear, he looked the most handsome boy in the pale light of the candles."----This is an odd place to put character description like this. You’re leading into a conversation about the Ouija Board and by doing this deep dive into Richie’s hair love, you distract from what you really want to be focusing on which is this Ouija Board and the foreshadowing of “do not insult the board or the spirit.” Besides, unless the character detail is relevant to the story or action going on, it’s not really important for the audience to know. This might fit better in the opening section where they’re all just talking, I was having trouble telling each name apart there so adding character details like this would be helpful in getting attached to each of them.

I notice that you don't use dialogue tags before the dialogue. Is there any particular reason for that. You change up the dialogue tags a lot, making them a little more descriptive and dynamic such as "mocked lightly," "Replied with humor," "frowned," "stated with confidence," but you always phrase your sentences in the same order: "dialogue" dialogue tag. You should look for the places where an action would logically come before the dialogue and directly influences how the reader will read the dialogue. For instance, instead of saying "'Do spirits really exist?' Lamarch asked as he took a potato chip in his fingers." (I'm assuming you're mentioning the potato chips to suggest that lamarch isn't all that respectful in the spirit board, he's disinterested, skeptical) If you say "Lamarch reached for the potato chip bag, 'Do spirits really exist?'" This way the audience is going to focus in on the action instead of the question, emphasizing the fact that this isn't a reverent group of players. You may also split dialogue up with your dialogue tags to help integrate character movement in the conversation. For instance, one of the reasons the character detail about Richie and his hair (mentioned above) doesn't work for me so much is because the way it is written now ("Don't make any unnecessary noise. Be calm and do not insult the board or the spirit." He touched his hair, habitually. ) sounds as though Richie is saying this warning and then when he's done touches his hair whereas you probably intended for it to read as though he's doing this while speaking. If you phrase it like this "'Don't make any unnecessary noise.' He touched his hair, 'Be calm and do not insult the board or the spirit.'" In this phrasing the reader will be more likely to place the action correctly in the dialogue and to associate his quirk of touching his hair with the things he's saying (so if this is a nervous habit or a way of showing that he feels in charge, the audience could glean that from the repetition of him touching his hair connected to similar dialogue).

By varying the ways you phrase sentences you'll also cut back on the stuff that's repetitive, like as. Because you place the dialogue first in every sentence you have to show that an action is happening as someone is speaking, so you use as a lot. "said Richie as he threw the cricket bat down," "Lamarch asked as he took a potato chip in his fingers," "Richie said as he shook his head," "Gothy said as he munched on the potato chips." You're also more likely to use more adverbs, which is fine (adverbs are part of language and therefore useful tools that can and should be used), but the problem with adverbs is they tend to all end in -ly, which is a very strong sound that readers will definitely remember hearing and notice the repetition of the sound. (I was going to list examples of how often you use adverbs, but I noticed another thing you tend to do which is connected to the repetition of adverbs) You use "with" a lot. Because you're always characterizing how your characters are stating things in the dialogue tags, you feel the need to vary your word choice (avoiding said) and to use either adverbs or "with something" (again I'd do examples but this paragraph is going on forever). Using the "with something" often has the consequence of having the reader reread the sentence with the adjective applied. I was doing this throughout the piece. Consider this: "'Passes for the Football match!?' Darwin exclaimed with excitement." By re reading the sentence I was momentarily drawn out of the conversation. Now this is a conversation that is happening rapidly with everyone contributing a new joke answer, but by pausing to describe how it was said, the pace slows down drastically. And even though I know, logically, this conversation is happening rapidly, it reads like a normal paced conversation. Reworked you might go with something like "then Darwin, 'Passes for Football match!?" We know by the punctation this is excited and by just going in and saying this is Darwin's turn we know it's Darwin and we know that the characters are sort of taking turns.

I didn't think I'd take this long to explain my thoughts on dialogue tags, my apologizes.

I also wanted to talk about characters, to be honest only two stood out to me: the host Richie (mainly because of the hair thing, I don't think I'd be able to put a name to his character without it so good job on that) and Gothy (because he's the different guest). I would encourage you to spend more time letting us get to know the characters before you jump into plot stuff. Like I said earlier you put some of the character details in pretty late when the focus should be on the Ouija board. I'm interested in seeing what each of these characters has to bring to the table. Why does the game interest them? Are they into other spooky stuff? Why are they kind of burn-outs? Are any of them closer to one friend than the others? Do they live alone? What's their relationship to people outside the group? Do they all have the same manner of speaking? Is one more likely to crack jokes than the others? They're playfully mean to each other, but why do they like each other?

Sorry this got long, when I get on a topic I tend to want to be as specific as possible so you know what to look out for and why I feel it's important, so don't feel like I think you're dumb because I'm explaining things that seem really obvious like "you can split dialogue into two sections." Like yeah, no shit. I more so want to explain why you might do it and what it actually does. I don't know if it helps, but good luck on the rest of your story.