Hi Amethyst Angel🍂🧡  ,
I am Shaye and I am reviewing your piece "Whose Side Are You On?"  today in affiliation with "CLOSED - Review a Newbie" and "Invalid Item" .
Hey, and welcome to Writing.Com! Discovered this over at "Gangsta's Paradise Contest" and since I'm a sucker for the genre, I thought I'd give the entries a read. I've got to say, listing Imagine Dragons at the start is some immediate bonus points from me too!
I've got to say, the first thing that stuck out to me about this piece is the strength of the character's voice. I love first person point of view, especially when it really feels like the main character is talking, and you've really captured that aspect. It did feel like Damien was the one telling the story.
The bad guys did have me laughing a little bit with their character names, I'm sure that was a deliberate choice on your part - Biggs and Jiggs? 
The plot itself is great - I really enjoyed the story of Damien out for revenge and James being too cowardly to do anything himself. However, it felt a little rushed. Like you had a lot of story to tell and ideas in your head for what was going to happen and how it was going to go. Honestly, you've got enough here to probably make this novella length and not bore me! Instead of rushing through how Biggs car crashed into the side of Damien's and that whole car chase scene and "the next few hours were a blur of action", consider how you could actually describe that action, go into the nitty gritty detail that makes these sorts of stories thrilling and fun. Or, before the whole showdown, when you've got "I prepared myself", go into detail here. How did he prepare himself? You could have a fun scene when he arms up, because those are always enjoyable.
Also, try and find an opportunity to describe Damien a little more from a physical perspective. I like how you wove in the whole stumpy thing and how he wasn't actually short, but I'm not sure what else I know about him. Being able to picture him as the main character would be great.
A few specific points:
They knew how to deal with him, but good - I didn't quite understand what this sentence was saying. I understand "they knew how to deal with him" - the additional "but good" didn't quite make sense to me though. Did you mean not good? Or real good?
Just when I was getting within reach of my goal, he must needs go and stick his neck out. - Again, not sure if this is just you really getting into the character's voice, but I couldn't translate this one into something I could understand! He had to go and stick his neck out?
A little grammar comment - Things like "Fine with me." I replied would have a comma instead of a full stop between the speech and the speech tag, so it would read "Fine with me," I replied.
If I hadn't made myself a member of this gang - - I think this is an incomplete sentence?
Overall, I did enjoy this! I hope you continue writing and working on it and flesh it out even more. There's a lot of potential here and I'd love to see it grow even more!
Shaye
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Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever you were going to do anyway! Robert Downey Jr.  My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
 You responded to this review 08/04/2023 @ 2:27pm EDT |
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Review #4706379
