100 % Review Forum Reviews: Positive versus Negat..

I think that most people are afraid to review others stories because they are scared to hurt someones feelings. Keep in mind that most people write on here not as a means to entertain others, but for someone to critique their work and turn them into a better writer. Only telling someone, "Gj bro, nice lines", won't do that.

On the flip side, telling someone, "This story sucks." isn't very constructive either. When you take the time to read someone else's story, keep a mental tally of things that strike you as "off" in their writing. General things like spelling, capitalization, and punctuation really only need to be commented on if there really is nothing else to comment about. Those things are minor and are subject to correction at the final stages of a stories completion. These things in the extreme may tend to draw your attention away from the actual story, and if it makes it very hard to read, then you may want to comment on it. A lazy writer who can't even proofread his/her own story a few times sometimes needs a reality check.

Things you may want to comment on are lapses in point of view, where the writer drifts into different tenses for no apparent reason. I can tend to do that without realizing it, and a simple proofread may not solve it, as it sounds right in my own head.

Sentence structure is another thing to keep an eye out for. Run-on sentences and incomplete sentences can make it very hard for a reader to keep interest in a story, only because it takes a lot of effort to do so. Also it creates the chain gun effect, which I'll elaborate a little on the next topic.

Watch for the "chain gun" effect. Sometimes an authors ideas will get ahead of their writing, like someone thinking too fast for their mouth to keep up, creating spurts of gibberish. When an author has an idea, they should expand on it, and make sure that their reader is fully involved in it before running to the next idea. Merely throwing action after action, conversation after conversation, with no interruption in between can lead to skimming, or complete disinterest from a reader.

Spacing can be helpful as well, but that is more a personal flavor of mine. On websites I always put an extra space between my paragraphs to easily signify that there is a break, and to allow my readers to "breathe" in between. This is also helpful in very long stories, as it lets you look away and look back, easily finding your place without losing your train of thought by having to find where you were.

All in all, everyone in this group is here to have their stories, poems, songs, or whatever it is they are writing, be critiqued. Take peoples reviews with a grain of salt, and pick out what you can from each person. Keep in mind that very few people on here actually make a living reviewing others works, and it is up to the writer to pull out what can help them the most from the comments posted.