So far, we have quite a few threads dedicated to becoming a better writer. However, no good writer has ever gotten that good on their own. It falls to you to help them get better by doing your bit and writing a proper review, because those chucklefucks at FFN sure aren't going to.

This thread is intended to give you some tips on how to do just that. I'll start us off by sharing a handy infographic that I made just now:

 

I made a similar thread a little over a year ago. There were good tips about the process of critical reading, which I wasn't the only one struggling with here, including the importance of taking notes and finding patterns, shifting the focus from the work onto yourself, reading what the author is writing instead of what you think he's writing, etc. The posts over there explain those things in more detail and helped me a lot.

Link's here https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/becoming-better-at-critical-reading.36283/

 

Sure.

Compartmentalizing helped a lot in the beginning. I looked over some detailed reviews and identified core ideas to address. Consistent characterization, distinctive character voices, detailed worldbuilding, etc. Jotting down notes and taking some time to reflect as I went along helped a lot as something is bound to get lost in mental checklists, at least until you internalize the process.

But I couldn't write a good review without reading attentively. We can find a lot about stories while skimming; God knows I closed the tab of loads of fics because I identified tired cliches or a first chapter riddled with spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes. We're usually more lenient with fanfiction and all of us have guilty pleasures, but speaking for myself, I turned my brain off a little while reading some of those, and found myself having little to say besides a few general impressions and a sense of like or dislike. This was no good when trying to leave a proper review.

I benefited from reading well received published works as well, making notes in the process too. When you dedicate most of your reading to fanfiction, you have less to judge them by since stories written by amateurs more often than not will have less effort dedicated to them.

So, basically, I try paying full attention to the story while reading it, scribbling down some notes and assessing the impressions the story caused on me, which means elaborating what elements triggered those feelings. It's not perfect but it went a long way to improve my critical reading skills.

 

I might just be confused but I remember r adding that review in your infographic. Taure wrote that, right?

That aside, this is great advice. Reviews are how I judge a doc before reading it and it would be nice if someone wrote good ones. I should prob write my first review on FF.net too.

And in your reviews, “pls write moar”

:wink:

 

As it pertains to criticism, what even is "stilted" writing?

I see it in reviews all the time but haven't the faintest idea if it means anything at this point considering I've seen that adjective used for all sorts of stories.

 

I'd say stilted writing has nothing to do with whatever story is being written but how the the story is written. This comes from the rhyme and meter of the text, writer patterns, the amount authorial flourish and how formal/clinical the writing is.

Or just a short hand way to provide critism without providing any useful information. Namely, on the hows and whys of why you find the authors writing dull on a technical level.

 

Not sure if this is just something that they teach in British schools or everywhere but we were always to PEE all over out work (Exact words)

Point
Evidence
Explanation

Some teachers swapped the second e with "Analysis", it was still pronounced the same way but was a bit easier to hear for their sensitive ears.

The same technique can be used for reviews.

Point out what's wrong or right with the story - "There's no conflict".

Give an example - "That scene where Harry defeats Voldemort by blinking".

Explain why this evidence backs up your point and explain how it can be improved - "Harry didn't have to push himself like he would have had to if he faced Voldemort in a duel with his hand tied behind his back and wearing high heels".

Of course, try and string it together as a full sentence or sentences.

 

Halt, while I agree with you on the general content of the stages of a review and the example you gave, I disagree with the order, primarily because a substantive review that would be most useful to an author in the Wba section parallels the editing process really closely.

Listed in order of importance: A developmental edit, focusing on structure story. A stylistic edit, focusing on clarity and flow. A copy edit, focusing on grammar, usage and consistency issues. A Word-level edit, focusing on catching spelling and such.

Enembee's critique, as you said, does this about as well as a review for a piece of incomplete fiction could do. As the story stands its impossible to accurately track an entire character arc or a relationship or even the big picture. This makes it hard to move around and test where to best to put events for maximum impact. But that's a limitation of fanfiction and its generally serialized nature. Doing a structural review on the chapter-by-chapter level is the second best thing and this is shown through the example given. Reordering the dinner chapter ups the punch considerably. If anything enough examples like that would work as a decent enough guide for an author to use when proceeding to polish a story.

Providing that kind of content, however, is hard and is not an inconsiderable timesink. If I had to point to something and say that its the gold standard for useful feedback in the Wba section, I would link to that particular post.

There is no concrete guide to providing that feedback beyond having the knowledge of what makes good story or a chapter and commenting when you see someone running afoul of that. It is very much process built on feel and experience.

You can do somethings to make it easier though. Break down the overarching plot and try to gauge whether a particular section serves to further or enhance it. Look at whether the plot makes sense and try and disentangle why it does or does not, highlighting specific sections that work extremely well or poorly in this regard. Try and answer whether the story left you feeling frustrated or satisfied.

Analysing themes would also help in creating a structural review. This means asking and answering effectiveness, the number of prominent, and how focused the story is on any particular one. I'd put this as relatively low on the totem pole because you'd need a complete story or arc.

Identifying issues of pacing. On your initial read when did you start scanning the story rather than reading it. And why did you do that. Too much description clumped together? Or not enough interesting things happening? Something else entirely?

Characterisation would require you look at how rounded a character is. A general rule of thumb is the more words spent on someone the more rounded they should be. Do the changes they through make sense given the context. Can you track the pivots and is the amount time spent on it well served.

In the end, it all comes down to hunting for the whys.

Even just looking into one of these can provide great feedback.

 

Speaking as someone who has often bemoaned the quality of responses in WbA, the criticism that is useful to me as a writer is for someone to identify their 'pain points'. That is, anything that took you out of the fiction, anything that seems to lack coherence, anything that seems like bad characterisation, anything that appears to be a continuity error, anything that didn't resonate with you in the way you might expect it to, etc. etc.

However I do think, having read Halt's post though, that authors need to do a better job of identifying what they're looking for in WbA. For instance, @Seyllian wrote two excellent Stage 1 reviews of my work this week, that I feel very guilty about because I will chop and change huge sections of that prose before it ever hits any sort of publishable state. I'm not yet in the phase of writing that particular work where I care about the finer details of writing. What I am primarily looking for is Stage 2 and 3 feedback and I ought to have specified that before I wasted someone else's hard work and good will.

 

-.-

 

The main reason I don't write reviews too much is that I'm insecure about my own writing. I like to think that my English is pretty good for a second language, but I still feel bad for calling someone out on "mistakes", be it characterization or spelling, because I'm probably a much shittier writer and if I try to correct someone and it turns out that I'm wrong, that really shakes me.

I'm 90% sure that's just me being an insecure bitch, but my skin is not that thick and I don't really know what to do about it, so I just lurk and give a rating. Being lazy doesn't really help that much either, I read fanfiction/books really late at night and by the time I'm done, I just fall asleep and never bother reviewing.

Sorry if this wasn't useful to the thread, I'm just sharing my reason for not reviewing because that might be someone else's reason as well.

 

Characterization mistakes have nothing to do with the technical (read: grammatical/mechanical) writing. Have at it .

 

I get what you're saying, but what bothers me about it is that I don't know if I can do any better than some of those shitty stories with shitty characterization.
Do I get to call out someone for doing something bad if I can't do it any better?