Young Writers Society

In honour of the upcoming review day, I thought it would be fun and interesting to document why you review. There aren't any wrong answers, and if you've lost your motivation you could find a driving force here!

I'll start.

Reviewing for me means getting better. I use reviewing to improve myself, my work, and to better hone my instincts. I am a firm believe that the better you can edit others, the better you can edit yourself, which means the faster you improve when you write.

Reviewing also means a dialogue. It means I open up a conversation with somebody, giving them space to ask questions about what I thought of their work, why I said what I did, and how to reach their goals. This, in turn, makes the both of us better— I have to think harder, and they get more detailed feedback.

It's a constant path to self improvement that has served me extraordinarily well, and it's why I keep picking apart ideas. It has redirected my inner editor, made it I feel more comfortable reading my first drafts, and in general taught me how to write.

Anybody else have any reviewing motives they want to share?

points.

Hm, I'm in a terrible dry spell of reviewing lately which I'll hopefully fix soon but if we transport back to my newbie noob days I reviewed mostly because it was a good way to discover other new stories and writing. It was a good way to hone my skills as a reviewer and recongize errors in others so I could avoid it in my own writing.

Reviewing to me means helping someone else grow as a writer. We all have the same passion around here and I love seeing others find that like I have.

Reviewing to me is like planting trees. It means branching out, building on what you have, and constantly getting better. It's a two-way road; I can see my mistakes so much more clearly when I'm helping other people weed out their own. And the sense of pride you feel when you can see the visible improvement in someone else's work--and the knowledge that you might have helped them reach this stage--is astonishingly wonderful.

I could write a sentimental prose on reviewing if someone asked me to. XD

For me, it means making my read a worthy one, not a one-time read. If before I finished reading stories and left them like that without further, deeper thoughts about them, now I analyze each little detail of it in the aim of making it a better story, in the aim of changing my habit from just accepting them to testing them in my mouth. Not only I'm helping the writer of the story, I'm also helping myself to learn from the stories and get better by studying them in terms of writing since those words and phrases and plots inspire me and give me something to write about for my story.

Reviewing means constructive criticism. I am a generally unorganized person, but whence reading a work that I am preparing to reviews, I concentrate on organizing my points and getting straight into what I need to say, in a constructive manner.

For me, a big part of why I review is remembering what I learned from previous reviews of my work and getting to pass that on. Now I don't remember every review I've ever gotten word-for-word, but I do remember general points that have stuck with me, even years later. I don't know if I've ever been that person for someone else, but I hope I am sometimes.

When I first joined YWS (and for several years after that), I didn't review much and I didn't feel like I was a good reviewer. Then somehow in 2013 I did over 300 reviews o_O. I think as I became more well-read and more confident, the easier reviewing became.

One of the biggest things I've learned is learning how to improve my own writing by helping someone else improve their writing. Being exposed to so many different types of genres, writing skills, imaginations -- it's all amazing. Sometimes I go into a work thinking only about the review and come out thinking about the story and the ideas it's exposed me to. Thanks to reviewing, I now know about many different types of literature, things I definitely didn't know about before because it was out of my comfort/familiarity zone. Especially being exposed to different poetry styles. I love learning something about myself while reviewing. It's a win win situation.

For me, reviewing is all about helping someone else. I like being able to reach out and help someone in any way I can—whether that's by pulling them up or taking them down a notch, to help them look at their own work with a more objective eye and see what they did well and what they can do to improve from this point onward. I've received a lot of helpful feedback on this site, and I want to be part of making YWS a memorable place for those of us who have come here to improve and grow.

In twenty years, I doubt we'll remember our reviewers' names, but we aren't about to forget the messages they have passed on to us. And that's, you know, important.

For me, a massive part of it has to do with understanding and being able to recognise how different uses of language can have an effect on your writing - whether it's making the writing feel forced, or the characters feel real, or just giving it a certain kind of vibe. It's trying to pinpoint why the piece of writing works or doesn't work - and then trying to articulate that in a way that (hopefully) makes sense. I guess it's just becoming more aware of the craft of writing and how ideas are translated into actual words. And how using the right words can bring characters to life, but the wrong words can hold them back.

So it's trying to help in my own ability to work out what works and what doesn't, but also trying to help the writer whose piece I'm reviewing work on their own ability to understand how and why something is or isn't working.

I also love the occasions where you get to see someone growing as a writer, and steadily improve as they write more and more.

I also think that getting reviews (or reading other reviews in general) has been massively helpful, not just for my own writing but also for my writing of reviews. If somebody points out an area for improvement in something I've written, I guess I become more aware of its existence, and also how to give advice about it, so it ends up helping me to make my own reviews more in-depth, and finding more ideas to cover when I review.

I actually enjoy reviewing. I mean I do like helping people, and sometimes I'm sort on points, but I enjoy it because... it's like any other writing. You write what you like, what you don't like, and make connections with things. I think the reason I don't do as many reviews as I could is because I find I get anxious as I'm reading the work if I'm not finding anything that needs critiquing! I also forget- but BACK on topic, or more so on topic than this whole post has been:

Reviewing to me is like what most people have been saying; it helps me grow as a writer, and the goal is to primarily help whoever I'm reviewing! And I recently had a horrible thought, that, what if YWS was no long a place where you could count on getting constructive feedback on your writing? I really don't like the thought of that, so that's been my motive of late.

Reviewing to me was/is the journey to finding your own words and ways of putting on paper what's in your mind - the transfer of thoughts to something tangible. It's not just helping the author, although that is the initial and most important goal at the time of the review. When reviewing, you're working towards a long distance goal of conquering your own obstacles in writing - finding your voice, tackling your grammar/punctuation problems, weeding out redundancy, etc.. It's helped my writing more than writing itself... all while under the primary purpose of helping someone else. Such a perfect win-win situation.

For me, reviewing is many things. It is, first and foremost, helping the other writer, and writing reviews is a lot like writing in general - the more you do it, the better you'll get at it.

But it is also a lot more that that. For me, it's learning how to pick apart writing, how to figure out what makes different things work and what breaks other things. It's about learning to recognize those mistakes in your own writing as well as others.

It's also about learning to separate your emotions about the piece from your logical analysis of it (though both are important). For example, you may have been disappointed in a story, but figuring out if the reason you're disappointed is because of a flaw in the story's construction and what the flaw may be is equally important. It's the difference between "this was disappointing, your writing sucks and I hate it," and "this was disappointing because x wasn't set up properly."

It's also nice because you get to read a wide variety of works and have a discussion with other people about writing.

To me, reviewing is about helping people through constructive criticism. I like giving people suggestions and advice, and I also like to let know what I like or don't like or what works and doesn't work. It's a lovely feeling, knowing you were (hopefully) helpful!

And points, because I also need that amazing feedback that YWS provides. <3