We all have our a special bit of advice for reviewing, something that has been drilled into our minds over time.
Share your special tip with everyone else!
Put Your Helpful Piece of Advice Here!
8 posts in this topic.
-
-
-
One thing I've found really useful is not using direct pronouns, like "you" or "I." They're cause for defensiveness.
I usually replace all "you"s with "the narrator." -
I make sure to go paragraph by paragraph with all suggestions and nitpicks. That way your review is more organized and clear for the author to understand.
-
My suggestion would be on how to format your review. I basically think you should start with the cool super nice stuff first, then go into nitpicks and the like, and then finish it off with the conclusion. Like the YWS sandwich! I've found that if I do the encouraging part first, then its much easier to find all the good stuff, and I'll sound much more genuine in it (not that I'm not people.
).
That's my bit of advice! -
I am going to slightly disagree with Therese, but not really. You should start off with something nice before going into constructive comments (notice I did not call them criticism), but you should rotate the two throughout the review. If you group all of the constructive comments together then it makes the amount of them extremely obvious, and can be a little discouraging to some writers. If you rotate between good and constructive then the author stays encouraged, but they still know what needs working on. That way, they'll actually really want to work on what needs working on.
The YWS Sandwich is a good idea, but in all practicality, a review needs to be a bunch of mini sandwiches (except for the conclusion, which should just be the one time at the end). -
Correction taken Writing Wolf. I have always split the two parts( constructive and encouraging) as it seems to keep my reviews better organized for some reason. But I've always enjoyed the reviews that have an even mixture of both all throughout!
Who's next for offering advice? -
So here we all are, in disagreement when we are all saying the same thing. xD I structure my reviews like Therese does, with critiques sandwiched inbetween nice things (or just general comments on story). It gives me review a nice structure to it, and I can get into critiquing "mode". As for mixing niceness and critique up in the review, that works well and I do that sometimes, but I find that you can always keep a positive outlook to your reviewing. I mean, there shouldn't be any nitpicks that you can't tell them nicely about, and at a certain point, you are going to have to ditch the praise, and get your hands dirty. But that doesn't mean you can't look positive the entire way through.
So that, I guess, is my teensy piece of advice. Keep it positive. Keep it nice. The entire way through.
Sign in to reply to this topic.
Delete this post?
Are you sure you want to delete this post? This cannot be undone.