Young Writers Society

An interesting observation struck me last week, and that is there seemed to be more posts being made in the "Will Review For Food" forum rather than actual reviews in the literary forums. I've been watching this for a week now, and I think this is the fault of both the reviewer and the reviewee, so a couple tips of advice are in order.

First, to the reviewer, it is all very well and good to spend an hour or more on a review, but you have to think to yourself if that is time well spent. That is, will you do more good by reviewing three or even five works in an hour, or will you do more good by reviewing just one work in an hour? Of course, it all depends on who and what you are reviewing, but personally, I'd never spend more than ten minutes on a review (amounts to about three an hour). Writing long reviews is great, but you should not be doing so many that it precludes you from reviewing other works.

Second, to the reviewee, before requesting a review, make sure you start reviewing works yourself. If you've made twenty reviews in the past week, people are going to be much more receptive to your request than if you've only made five. Additionally, if you're going to make a request in the "Will Review for Food" forum, please only make the request to one or two people. If you request a review from ten people, I guarantee every single one of them will see that and every single one of them will refuse to review your work.

Lastly, I want to stress again that not every review should be long. For some reason, a tendency has developed on this site to spend an hour or so on a review, and that does greatly concern me. Authors are typically looking for impressions and any grammatical mistakes they frequently make, not a line by line critique of their work.

Psh, you're no fun.

Lol, I've done 102 reviews this month. Most of them have been fairly longish. I say what needs to be said -- and only if it *needs* to be said. i.e if someone before me has already pointed out all the relevant issues, grammatically, I'm probably not going to review the piece unless I really enjoyed it and want to make some general comments.

The general comments I call reviews.

The longer, grammar and content based correction/analysis I call critiques.

But I mean, I think its a question of what's appropriate -- for the younger, less knowledgeable writers just starting out, I'd say the longer, instructional critiques are good but for the older, better writers, more general reviews are better suited.

Cheers

Ah! I've been trying to do contest prize reviews before Will Review for Food reviews. I try to give 15 minute-ish reviews on a little grammar and then my impressions, occasionally line-by-line. I will try not to fall into any negative reviewing habits, Nate.

Thanks Jiggity; I agree with you almost 100% that the length and depth of the review should be in proportion to the writer's age. I don't get quite to the 100% only because I don't like to classify writers according to their age but rather to their ability level. There are tons of 13 year old writers on this site who are excellent, and there are tons of 18 year old writers who are a little too whiny.

Clo ->> Haha, no worries! This is a general trend and I don't have any particular people in mind. Rather, I think most do a mixture of short and long reviews. I just fear that when there's too much of the latter, a lot of other works don't get attention at all.

I don't know about others, but if something goes on my food thread, it gets critiqued. It's not always up the next day, ( I have a life too) but I have never refused to do a crit, and I doubt I ever will, it seems... rude after you've offered your services ><;

I'm in agreement with Nutty there, it may be a month late due to NaNo but it gets done =)

And I'll admit I often go with the line by line review and then a general summary with tips for improvement and such. But it doesn't take me an hour, usually half an hour but really it depends on the length of the piece I'm reviewing. If it's a shot chapter, it doesn't take long. If it's an advanced critique, it can take ages.

I line-by-line, but not literally line-by-line. I pull out a error here that's repeated, a confusing sentence here, something that made me think here, etc. That part goes pretty quick. It's the making it sound nice so the author doesn't think his/her work sucks that takes longer. I'm good at finding bad stuff for improving, but it takes longer to find the stuff that's already good/okay to keep them happy-ish.

But pleh, you're right. One of the reasons I don't review that much is because of the ammount of time I put into them. I'll try NaNoing them out, see if it makes much difference in quality. Pretty sure it'll boost quantity.

I've actually noticed this in my critiques. It doesn't take an hour to do, though. On a good run, it takes only 20 minutes.

And I have seen some people mention how grammar nutty I was in my critiques, so naturally, I worry about my critiques. I don't want people saying they love my critiques and saying behind my back how irritating they are.

So I've tried mending the situation by reducing the grammar unless it's a big eye popper. I will definitely mention punctuation in poetry, but with fiction, I'm trying to die. And my recent reviews have used Microsoft Word for the grammar just because it takes time to actually do it on YWS. Word makes it fast and easy. Unless the author's grammar is in excellent condition. Then I will pull out sentences that I find with a grammar situation. And typos are hard to find, and I make plenty of those. XD

And like Nutty and Heather, I hate not critiquing requests. Now my Food thread kinda died and is currently buried somewhere in the back, but it's not cool. Of course, if it gets to be a month or two before I get to it, I'm not going to critique it unless they don't have any and welcome the review. By that time, most people have started a new project or they have enough reviews to get by.

I'm with you all.

If someone asks me to review something, I'll review it. That's simple.

I usually point out things that stand out, and also if it's hard to understand something because of the phrasing or so. I wouldn't say I do line-by-line.

Jabbs: I don't talk about you behind your back! If I do, it's all good, fluffy, warm things!

And you're grammar critiques are amazing, love. I just hate it when people repeat what you say. I'm like, 'I got a crit from Jabbs for a reason.'

But if you're worried just watch how often you say one thing. Like, if they miss 10 periods, only mention it once and tell them to look for the rest. Also that way you're not doing all the work for them.

*Huggles Jabbs*

Oh... I should actually respond to the original post, si?

Nate, you make me afraid to crit! O.o

*Chants* We all must crit more like Sam. We all must crit more like Sam. We all must...

*Shakes head* Got a little side-tracked there.

But honestly, I'm not hesitant to crit something when the author hasn't critted anything. I'm not so much for 'a crit for a crit' - I'm more of a 'if you ask or if I stumble upon it have a crit and same to you.' So if someone leaves me a crit, I won't return the favor unless they ask, or if I stumble upon it. Of course there are some authors I love, either personally or writing-wise or both, and will read their stuff whenever possible whether asked or not.

~JFW1415

I'm new, but have been hitting the reviews hard...don't write much anymore so it is easier for me too review. Where is this 'review for food' forum? I'm hungry...

If you go to the community forum, it's a sub-section under 'The Lounge'.

I guess I know where your coming from Nate. Now my reviews generally do take me a little longer (ok, so two hours sometimes) but I'm one of those annoying multitaskers so I'll spend some time reviewing then bounce over to play some games or talk on messenger. But I do get my reviews done. Without the multi-tasking I could probably do two reviews an hour.


And though my thread in the Will Review For Food forum is rather bare *points towards her post and waves for someone to give her some work* I do sometimes snoop on the more populated threads and steal reviewable from there. It almost feels like charity.


Oh well, just thought I would throw my two cents in.

I just copy/paste stuff while I'm reading the piece, and then I'll add comments and general stuff at the beginning... I tend to put too much grammar stuff in, and it looks really long, but...