On Proper Reviewing Technique

I am forced to write this due to the recent dearth in essays on this extremely important subject. My—no, our beloved FictionPress, excellent community that is home to thousands of incredibly talented writers, implements an ingenious system of reviewing, whereby the readers of our writers’ pearls of joy can share their thoughts, and thus help writers improve their technique—not, of course, that our writers are far from perfection!

However, of late—and especially in the Essay section of this website—a small clique of users has been spreading a message of hatred, rather than love. I won’t name any names—though it is accepted practice—simply because of the all-encompassing forgiveness I espouse—but I’m sure you, dear reader, know to whom it is that I refer. These people, known only as Flamers, are a tightly-knit group of close personal friends, who have created a conspiracy to derail the artistic train of our excellent writers. It is my personal belief that these misguided writers lack only education in the fine art of criticism, and I have therefore taken it upon myself to—not to mince words—educate them.

Immediately after reading a story, reactions can be mixed. The quality of the work is of small concern—after all, quality is an entirely relative issue, and what is great literature to one mind can be a hideously loathsome excrescence to another. It is important, in these cases, to note that all opinions have equal merit, and that no story is actually superior to another except in the eyes of the reader—and clearly a story is precisely as good as the writer thinks it is. When reviewing, then, one must keep these things in mind, and make sure not to make any definite statements of criticism—if there is something in the story that you disagree with, one reviewing technique is to gently allude to it immediately after praising something else. A good example of a review of this sort is “I liked your ideas, and I thought your usage of the letter ‘e’ was absolutely stellar. I also coughyouforgothowtospelleverysinglewordcough loved…” However, particularly in this instance, it is important to note that spelling is only a matter of opinion. Much like grammar, what to some people may be a spelling mistake could be perfectly correct to the other, and it’s wrong to force our opinions on others.

Another issue is nitpicking. It’s possible that a story can contain many things that you disagree with—for example, three hundred “spelling mistakes” in a four hundred word story. In this case, referring to more than one or two of these is known as “nitpicking,” a truly abominable practice. In these cases it is best to be extremely gentle with the writer, and say something like “I think you may have had a few typos, so it might be a good idea—if you have the time, that is—to run the document through a spellcheck, because that fixes all your spelling mistakes.” If you’d rather not employ this particular technique, there is another important aspect to proper reviewing that you might like to keep in mind:

If you don’t like it, don’t read it. FictionPress is a friendly community for growing writers, not for nasty writers. No writer likes to hear something in his work put down, so if you can’t find something to praise don’t review at all. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to stay silent if you have nothing nice to say? Insulting or offensive reviews can crush the spirit of young authors, before they enter the gentle, harmless world of professional writing. Writers begin to write assuming that all their work will garner praise, and this is true—in the world of publishing, no one will ever put down your work. However, certain FictionPress elements take it upon themselves to judge the quality of a work—as if any mortal man could decide whether something is good or bad! Learn to stay away from these characters, and don’t be one.

On a related note, it is technically possible to call something good or bad. However, the important word there is “technically.” It is an obvious truth that only a superior practitioner of any art can judge the quality of that art—for instance, only an expert musician can judge the quality of a band, and only an expert painter can judge the quality of a painting. What kind of world would we live in if a sculpture could be criticized by a non-sculptor? Well, the Flamers on our site want that world. Despite the equally obvious truth that no writer can be considered superior to another—because all opinions are equal—they believe that they can somehow determine the quality of writing, no doubt because they believe themselves superior writers! The wisest thing is to entirely discard the concept of “bad,” and simply praise work.

In conclusion: the guidelines for proper reviewing are simple and easy to remember—Flamers, take heed!

1. If you must say something that isn’t entirely favorable, try to mix it with praise. If you can’t come up with true praise, LIE! No writer wants to hear the truth if the truth is painful, and as a member of FictionPress it is your responsibility to keep writers from hearing anything that they don’t like.

2. Don’t nitpick! If you think a lot of things are wrong with a story, that’s just your opinion, and it’s bad to force your opinions on others. Try to gently suggest acquiring a proofreader if you must, but NEVER point out that there are several mistakes, because you might hurt the writer’s feelings. If you’re a really nasty person and simply can’t help it, try to pay attention to rule 1 and add something nice.

3. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, DON’T READ IT! You should only comment on things you like, and in all honesty, you should like everything. I’m not sure where I was going with this, but if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

4. Unless you’re better than an author, don’t put him or her down. And you’re definitely not better—because no one is better than anyone else—so to be safe, just don’t put anyone down, ever.

In fact, just play it safe and keep a text file on your desktop reading

“I thought your ideas were very interesting, and I really like your work. Keep writing!”

Copy and paste this for every single one of your reviews, and you can’t go wrong.