Thanks for the tips. The next time I review, I'll bear those in mind. ;)
P.S. I've added you in livejournal if you don't mind.

Before you go all,

-pointing- "AH! An anonymous reviewer! You shall die by flaming potatoes!"

on me, I would just like to point out that I do not have an FP account. Therefore, I am unable to login before reviewing.

Moving on, I give your essay two thumbs up and a cherry pie. I'm a bad writer without an FP account, so I don't get a whole lot of reviews, but I do give them. And when I give them, I usually check out what other people have said, too. Reviews simply telling the author to update or -gasp- reviews only telling the author to review other stories make me irritated on behalf of the author. Sometimes I've wanted to make an account for the sole reason of writing what you just did.

So I commend you for doing what I didn't!

However, the one thing that bugged me was your lack of capitalizing on the ... um, eh, bold-and-underlined-stuff. (Whatever you want to call them.) I realize caps are not needed on every word all the time, but I'm a bit OCD about stuff like that, and that's my opinion.

After reading a whole essay on 'How to Review Properly', only a -insert word of your choice here- would dare give you a simple: 'Kewl! Please R&R my story!' So, writing this is a very underhanded, clever way of wringing good reviews out of people. And sure enough, I checked your reviews, and all the ones I saw were very well written. ;)

With that, Adeiu, my underhandedly clever author.

-Mellie

well since you have pointed out so many factors that one needs to think about before reviewing i have to think before i write reviews now. the guide was very interesting and honestly helped me a lot!=D
i came across this through someone's favorites and I'm glad i did! so thanks once again for the help.
sadly i don't have any sort of criticism to give to you...but once again i surprisingly enjoyed it since i usually don't read such things.
~drama princess2b

I just read something similar to this and both were very helpful. I found this in the other author's favourites.
Anyway, very helpful! I used to be horrible at leaving reviews. I could never think of what to say! I'd like to think I'm better at it now though.
Constructive criticism is the truth. If you keep on getting comments like "That was soo good! Yay!", how will you ever know what's wrong with your story? It's obviously not perfect, every story has its mistakes.
I love long reviews and critical ones too. They're a lot more helpful. And that's what we all need, right?

Thanks for this.

This is a wonderful essay. Each of your points are well presented, and made tactfully. It reminds me of back in the day, where there was a special section on and (the section for Columns) and all sorts of essays were written and aimed at helping authors become better. Thank you for writing this.

And I'd appreciate it if you read and commented on my work. I'm back on the writing ball again, and I'd really love some feedback. Thanks!

-Mikalia

I'm guessing you've got your share of dreadful reviews.
Sometimes I rather get a review that says 'oh, i don't like this and this, but that part was good' than 'luv it'.
Your fic was very helpful and I really hope some people out there read this and are actually use some of this 9and hopefully all of it) when they write their next review.
You had very good points, but I think you should've mentioned that not only should the author accept the criticism, but he/she should try to answer reviews. It'll actually help him/her get even more reviews.

I have to say this was a very helpful guide. I found that it helped me with the structure of my reviews, and it also helped me realize how valuable constructive reviewers are. The only thing that bothered me though was that you seemed kind of pessimistic about writing on FictionPress, but that's just my opinion. I'll probably use this for future reference because you did a great job. -Katie

Hm. This probably sounds naive, but I've always thought that in essence, reviewing the way you described was common knowledge/courtesy.

The point was finely put, though. Professional, but with enough voice and personality that the reader doesn't feel as though they are being lectured or that you wrote it simply to vent pent-up frustration towards not-so-great reviewers. I personally have never written anything like this, but I'm still willing to bet that there is a fine line between the two.

Following those same lines, I liked that you didn't just give a recipe for Good Reviews. It was ambiguous enough that the potential reviewer is forced to use their brain, but there was enough structure to give a good idea as to what would be most-appreciated by authors. Basing it off of personal experience probably helps.

I also appreciate how you acknowledged that "reviews vary depending on the target" and that sometimes you can't save a piece. I think that it's very important for those facts to be addressed.

Aside from the great points, I thought that the Flames section was a bit pointless. You already went over everything you put there in other sections. While addressing the subject head-on is important, if you're being redundant the effect is not as great. And it wasn't just with the Flames section. There were others like it, but they were less obvious because there was some new stuff mixed in.

And then there was the constant reference to kitty litter. It was a lovely, humorous touch, but towards the end of the piece it stopped coming up even when there were places it could have been mentioned. Of course, there's also the risk of sounding redundant there, too, but in hindsight, the lack of that consistent comedy relief jumped out at me.

If memory serves, then I've read something very similar to this before. There were no mentions of kitty litter, but the message was essentially the same. Maybe there's something to be said for that.

'Til next,
CD 1.0

Great job, i love this essay/guide and I agree with many of its points (Exept for the part about needing praise, sometimes you need that to keep you going!) Unfortunatly I am a teen and i write angst(I find it rather helpful, it helps me relax)Teen angst isnt disappearing soon, neither are the 'kewl! plz r&r my stuff' comments because there are a LOT of teen on both FF and FP. Many teens (myself included) belive that jus letting the auther know you are there is enough. Ahum.. anyways this essay is easy to read and it offers alot of good tips,good job and keep it up!

Considering that it's been a while since I've been on this site (and now scrolling through it backwards; past to the present), I have to congratulate you on daring to speak your mind abourt reviewing.

No, seriously. I so far have ever posted 46 reviews on this site and 100-something on FFnet, and on both sites I've been a member since 04-05.

On the review constructure... WhenI mainly posted onto the Fantasy section of this site I had fewer reviews, but when I DID they were at least seven words long. Just recently I switched over to the Romance section and have had more reviews, BUT they're along the lines of "i luv ur story, plz continu" et cetera.

And so, I agree whole-heatedly to this essay, which has little spelling errs as well, by the by.

- Lise

This was very helpful. Thanks for posting this. Now, I have to go and revamp my stories...*sigh* ^-^

wow, you've really helped me write better reviews to help the author. before i never really bothered much with spelling and abbreviating but i understand by doing that it is slightly disrespectful. so, thanks alot!

This essay was amazing. It was needed. I just wanted to say thank you for posting it because it brings warm fuzzies to my heart.
I can't think of anything to critique except to say that the phrase: "Kewl! Plz r&r my stuff!" was used a little too often. Other than that, I have no complaints.
I was being perfectly serious, this was an outstanding essay.

I liked this. I can sympathize with receiving pointless reviews of praise that genuinely don't help the author to improve. I absolutely despise reviews that can't even show a proper respect for the English language, and I agree with you about throwing them to the kitty litter. All in all, this was a pretty good essay about constructive criticism and reviews and such.

However, I do have a few things I disagree with (and these will just come out in whatever random order that my brian gives me).

The first is when that praise should always come before the criticism. This is alright in some cases, but other authors prefer the criticism before the praise. Such as myself. After hearing what I've done wrong//what I could improve on, it's nice to hear what I did well. I guess you could argue that this preference is based solely on a need for ego-inflation, but you said it yourself: the author is really exposing him or her self by posting his or her works, and it is nice to know that over all, you did well, as opposed to "this is good, but you did such and such things wrong." Just when the author thinks that he/she should give up, there is hope. Besides, I hardly think that a review should end with criticism (unless you didn't mean it in that way).

And this leads me into my second comment: the objective reviewer. Humans are always going to be subjective, no matter what. If you read something in third person while you personally prefer first person, it's going to color the way you feel about the story, and there's no getting around that. I agree with you on the fact that one shouldn't review saying that he/she disliked the story BECASUE it was written in third person, but, like I said, it's still going to affect the reader.

Onto my third point. I'm going to have to disagree with you when you say that praise isn't helpful, and not just because of the obvious boosters to one's self-esteem. In a way, praise is almost necessary to ever encourage the author to write again. If one receives all criticism and no praise, one is going to think that he/she can't write to save his/her life, and he/she is going to give up completely. I think that a lack of praise in a review is what leads people to think that a perfectly constructive, nonflaming review IS a flame. Also, I think it's important that people know their strengths as well as their weaknesses, so they can maintain said strengths while working on these weaknesses.

Jumping off to another point, I just want to mention that not everyone has the ability to return reviews. Some people who receive dozens of reviews for a single chapter (or a single update, in the case of poems and one-shots) will physically be unable to return all of the reviews without driving themself crazy, as they are real people with their own lives to live away from FPcom. While I would love to return all the reviews I receive, I simply don't have time.

In addition, I think you should describe the difference between a flame and a constructive review. There are some people who take offense at any criticism at all and, when receiving a review full of constructive criticism, claim that someone flamed their work. I agree that it is pointless and stupid to flame; I don't understand why people do it.

So anyway. There's my fairly long review. On the whole, this was a nice, systematic way of pointing out the "dos" and "don'ts" of reviewing. Good work. =)

LOL! This is funny and witty and so true. My friend and I have been talking about FP and the horrible, non-constructive reviews we get on here at times. She also got flamed on one of her stories ... she wrote back, "I'm sorry you didn't like the story, but can you tell me why?" They offered her nothing in return. :)

Anyway, really enjoyed the piece and it made me smile. Take care.