I am a writer, even though I do not have anything posted with this user name. I have another account here with my fiction on it, but I made this second account to use solely to review other peoples' writing.

I suppose I may be one of the few writers on this site with an actual college degree in Creative Writing, even though it has not helped me get published (yet). I've written about 8 or 9 complete novels, depending on how many pages you consider novel-length, and over 100 short stories of various lengths. I've been writing for about 13 years, and in the past few years, I think I've actually gotten kind of good at it.

Anyway, I made this account in order to review other peoples' stories. This is not because I like to read fiction on this site, because I don't. I enjoy reading, but not here. The simple reason is that most of the writing on this site is pretty terrible. And I don't mean terrible in the "I really don't like it" kind of way, but terrible in the objective "This is legitimately bad writing" kind of way. I mean most of the writers on this site are truly, honestly bad writers.

And there is nothing wrong with that. After all, this site is not supposed to be for professionals. It's for people who enjoy writing but are still amateurs, and want to get some feedback for their writing. Most of the writers here are probably still in high school, and they simply don't have the writing experience or the education to be good writers. And I can sympathize, because all the stories I wrote way back in high school were total shit. Like I said, I didn't get good at it until recently.

So that's why I'm here. I want to help some of these writers out. I will leave reviews that aim to make the writer better. I will give constructive criticism. I will point out flaws and show the writer how to fix them. I will give praise when the writer deserves it, and criticize them when they deserve that too. I want to be their personal writing coach.

Am I qualified to do this? Well, not really. Like I said, I am not a published author, and for all I know, my own writing could very well suck donkey balls. But a lot of the people here don't really get good writing advice from anyone at all. I think I know enough about writing to give them at least a good starting point.

So if you've recieved a review from me, please keep the following things in mind:

1. Don't get all huffy and offended because I told you that your story was lousy. If you don't want honest criticism, you shouldn't post your fiction in a public forum. If you just want people to read your story and say "I love it!" then maybe you should just let your friends read your stuff. If you are offended by honest constructive criticism, maybe you shouldn't be writing in the first place.

2. Just because I trashed your story, it doesn't necessarily mean you are a bad writer, and it doesn't even mean that I didn't like the story. I only leave reviews for stories that have the potential to be better, and that even with their flaws, were good enough for me to read in the first place. If I leave a review at all, I must have at least liked the story a little bit. If I really hate a story and think it is completely awful, I won't leave a review, because nothing I can say would make the story better.

3. I will be the first to point out spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, but honestly, that kind of stuff doesn't bother me too much. I merely point them out as a courtesy. Spelling mistakes alone do not make your story bad. But I've seen a few stories here with spelling so atrocious that it was like reading another language.

4. For the most part, don't expect me to continue reading the story when you update it. Like I said, I don't really enjoy reading on this site. I may leave more than one review at a time, but once I leave the reviews, there is a pretty good chance I'll never go to your story again. I just don't have the time to keep up with all the stories I give reviews to. If you ask me specifically to read the new updates and review them, I'll do my best, but I make no promises.

And if you're interested, here is a short list of things that will almost always make me wince in pain when I see them in a story. Basically, this is a short list of Don'ts.

1. Flashbacks. They are almost always unnecessary, and are usually confusing. If you need to go back in time to tell part of the story, you probably should have started the story then.

2. Second-person point of view. Commonly referred to as the "you" point of view. Basically, the author is talking directly to the reader. I've never read a story where this worked.

3. Putting several characters' dialogue in one paragraph. For the love of God, start a new paragraph every time a new person starts talking! This one's a no-brainer, people.

4. Forced romance or humor. This always bugs me, when writers insist on having romantic subplots in horror stories, or when their characters talk in snappy one-liners all the time. Basically, when writers try to force these emotions on their characters, having them fall in love with random people for no reason, or constantly make jokes when none of them are that funny.

5. Blatantly cliché storylines. I understand that coming up with something truly original is kind of hard these days, but that doesn't mean you can just write a direct rip off of Eragon or something. If the plot of your story sounds amazingly similar to a bunch of other stories, then you should probably rethink the plot. For example, a story about a young girl who lives in a village, who has her parents murdered by mysterious people, and when she escapes, a strange wizard tells her it is her destiny to save the world. I swear that about 90 percent of the stories on this site have that exact plotline.

6. One-sided characters. This one is sometimes harder for people to notice, and I will honestly say that I probably am guilty of it from time to time. If your main character is always noble and brave and heroic, and your villain is cruel and evil and mean, then you probably have one-sided characters. Characters are more than just names with actions attached. Characters must have personalities and mentalities, and their actions must come from that.

7. Skipping the important parts of the story. I've read way too many stories on this site that have big battle scenes like this: "The warriors fought for a long time and pretty soon all the bad guys were dead." Or they explain a journey like this: "He traveled a really long time and finally arrived at his destination." Basically, the writer skips a vital part of the story because they are too lazy to write it, because they want to get on with the rest of the story. You can't skip the important parts just because they are hard to write.

8. Damn near anything with vampires or dragons. I don't have anything against vampires or dragons personally, but there are just way too many stories with vampires around here, and they're all the same. If your story has vampires or dragons, there's a good chance I won't even bother reading it.

9. Whatever else I can think of. I'll add to this list as more things come to mind.

I know that no one will read this far, so I'll just shut up now.