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Rous "True... I read a review (short of a flame) for an admittedly bad story over at the Pit. The reviewer went on and on about how the author's elves couldn't have those particular names. There were much more pressing things than whether an Elvish name ends on a vowel or not. It the end, when you point out things like these it can turn into nitpicking quite easily and not help anybody."

Quite possibly the same person. I took most of my names from a generator, but it was not random. And, I wish I could find it again. Some of my elvish names can actually be translated into passable English. Some, I found, cannot, or mean not nice things. I may change a vowel here and there, in the future, but I am not doing a wholesale nave revision because someone is too anal about names.

"The author basically said that she wasn't born then and can't be bothered finding out stuff from before she was born so we had all better just lump it."

I find that so funny. Would she read a story about the early West that had a land baraon riding around in a car? That is before MY time, yet I would have researched enough to know better than to include something like that. That is what happens when writers do not use betas. I am sorry, fanfic is done for fun, but badly done fanfic is worthless. I was always taught: if you are going to so something, do it the best you can. If that means look something up, then do it. It is not like they have to actually open an encyclopedia anymore; if they are posting on the net, then they have acess to the tools and resources on the net. When I have a glaring error that was not intentional, I welcome the head's up about it. I personally do not want someone trashing my story because of something I could have prevented. It is much better for them to trash it because they are an ass. And, it showe, because I refuse to delete any comments of that variety. Give someone enough rope...
Posted at 2006-04-11 03:19:26
Michelle As a research geek I don't know whether I should laugh or cry regarding this. To amuse myself I always imagine those authors ten years from now, stumbling over a story they posted on the net when they were twelve and had totally forgotten about. I guess they'd be terribly embarassed:)
Posted at 2006-04-15 10:24:31
armourdude
Thanks for the advice. Now how do I generate reviews
Thank you all for the helpfull advice. Thankfully for me things like reasearch are easy. I will just add it to the history of the world I made up. Then to keep that history straight so I wont get called on it later on.
Now I need some reviews to learn from even if it is only a simple I liked it or I hated it.
I have been reading and reviewing other peoples stories but that had not seemed to help. Any suggestions?
Posted at 2006-04-15 21:06:39
Rous You cannot force people to review. The only thing I would suggest is that you ask for a review in the summary, promising to return the favour. i.e. "If you leave a review, I will leave you one." or something like that. Other than that, most people will not even bother. When someone leaves me one, I always at least check out some of their work. If I like it, or am able, I leave a review. Some fandoms I just know nothing about and can only comment on style and grammar. Still, it is something.
Posted at 2006-04-16 01:57:29
Michelle Generally, I don't like to be forced to R+R. I don't want to be coerced into reviewing by something like "you read mine, I read yours". If I have something to say about a story, I will say it. I don't want to feel obligated to say something smart. And of course there's the fact that some people that reviewed my stories here write in fandoms I've never heard about. All the games and manga categories are totally foreign to me:)
Posted at 2006-04-16 04:25:34
Rous Michelle, I agree with you. I dislike the R&R. However, if you want critiquing, it is one option. And, I have found that you do not get many that way either. So, it is really just the luck of the draw if you get any review at all. I have left stories with no review simply because I could not find anything good to say.
Posted at 2006-04-16 11:17:45
Curlyjimsam I think the best reviews are those which qualify whatever they say - those which tell you what's good or bad about the story, so that you know what to keep and what to change (though in the past I have received both good and bad reviews on the same feature of the writing, which is confusing). 'This is great' is all very well, gives you a confidence booster etc., but it leaves you asking - how is it great? Negative reviews are generally better - people generally have the manners to not make the story out to be not-very-good without qualifying it; but even so, I very rarely receive much in terms of useful comments on how to improve, and sometimes I wish I would get more - I can look back at old stories now that are terrible even by my own standards, and yet not one person pointed out how ridiculous any of my ideas were.

As to getting reviews - I don't know, short of cheating the system by reposting stories regularly to get them back up to the top of the list: and if you're that desperate for attention, you're probably overdoing it. A good measure of story popularity other than reviews is to see how many people read onto the second, or third, or fifty-sixth chapters using the hit-count feature - if they didn't stop at chapter one, that probably means they liked it at least a bit.
Posted at 2006-05-01 07:32:14
HRT I think it's correct to say that if the reader kept on with a multi-chaptered work, you accomplished the basic necessity of a story. You held the reader's interest. It can be very difficult to tell what's going on with one of your one-shots, though, since many persons just click to see what it is, and most won't even rate or review. You're most likely to get a helpful review if you state at the top of your story that you are serious about receiving concrit, and that you really want to improve your writing. That specific request seems to draw the most helpful responses from readers, and people are more likely to treat it with respect. Since practically all authors ask for a review, to make your request stand out, you really need to put special emphasis on it.
Posted at 2006-05-01 09:09:33
Michelle "(though in the past I have received both good and bad reviews on the same feature of the writing, which is confusing)"

Well, it might be confusing, but it also makes sense. It's fiction we're talking about, not math. Something reader A likes about your writing might be an absolute no-go for reader B. In the end it comes down to personal taste. I'd say changing stuff around with every review you get might be a bad idea for that very reason. Be open for criticism, but you should also believe in your own writing. Otherwise it might be hard to develop your own style.

Michelle, who will now open a bottle of champagne because she got her first Train Wreck today snickers.
Posted at 2006-05-02 10:00:26
Mercy A good review will always justify the comments, eg "this is good because...", "this bit doesn't work because..., why not do this instead?". It's helpful if a reviewer can make suggestions for the weaker sections because telling a writer section A was weak isn't helpful (they probably already know this) but telling them why and suggesting how to make it stronger helps the writer.

As the reviewer needs to remember it's not their story, the writer needs to remember it is their story. Pay attention to reviews, but don't automatically change the story to take on board reviewers' comments or the story might develop in a way that was never intentional.

It's generally not a good idea to coerce readers into reviewing. The best reviewers generally come from readers who felt strongly (either postively or negatively) to leave a review. If you want popularity, check the hit-count reader.

Posted at 2006-05-19 13:42:16

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