By Belle, who gets quite worked up about it and tends to overuse brackets in her excitement. Sorry about that.
On a completely personal note and as a prelude to what I hope will not turn into a rant, I can't stand hypocritical reviews. Well, I say hypocritical, but that's probably the wrong term. Let me explain.
Way back in 2004 (that's a long time ago in today's era of instant messaging, you know. If I wanted to exchange pleasantries with my friends beyond the reasonable reaches of the average horse and rider a hundred years ago, I'd probably have to wait well over a month while my letter travelled across the ocean in a boat that would probably, knowing my luck, get attacked by pirates. That's a lot of effort for "Hey, how's it going :)?"), I was brand new to this FanFiction thing. I was also a big fan (sorry, the technical term is 'Phan') of 'The Phantom of the Opera'. So much so, that I thought I'd write a fic about it. I didn't know that was what I was doing, because when I started, I'd never even heard of FanFiction. Nor, sadly, of well-written FanFiction. By the time someone very well-meaning pointed me towards FanFiction.net, I was the proud writer of 'An Opera For The Phantom' - a truly horrible Mary Sue fic. Having already received dozens of messages from my 'fans' on Neopets.com (lovely people, I've no idea what they were talking about), where I originally posted it, I moved on to FFdotnet, eagerly anticipating the plethora of encouraging reviews I would get. Worryingly, I did get a few. However, I also got a single, solitary flame (see glossary if you've lost me already), from someone calling themselves 'Kill Mary Sue' (you'll notice that hardly anyone is brave enough to flame when they're logged into the account holding all their precious stories). Naturally, I was seriously cheesed off. I decided that whoever Mary Sue was, if this person didn't like her, I was sure as hell on her side. Naturally, the friend to whom I expressed this sentiment did the obvious and truly IM thing to do - Laughed Her A*** Off, with all due gusto. Blushing, I googled 'Mary Sue'. Oops.
Fast-forward a couple of years to 2006, I found the notebook in which I wrote that story lurking in the back of a cupboard (I never, ever throw notebooks away. To a writer, they're like gold dust, but more useful). Having now long seen the error of my ways, I shuddered in disgust, but I realised then that if it hadn't been for that one person telling it to me straight (though I really don't think anyone should tell it quite that straight, especially not to a newbie. Most of them are delicate, and I speak from experience.), I could still be writing like that. Well, probably not, since I now have another two years' experience behind me, but it's still quite an unsettling thought.
Am I suggesting you flame the inexperienced? Hell no. But nor am I suggesting that you come out with a complete lie and tell them that it's fabulous when it clearly isn't. All I'm asking is that you review constructively. It's a learning experience. Think of it as being a bit like school, but as a reviewer, don't see yourself as a teacher. Imagine the writer is a fellow student (because, on the Internet, we're all equal…apart from owners of big sites, forum moderators and other persons of great power…) sharing their work with the class. By all means encourage them if they're good and offer criticism if one element is, ah, not quite up to your preferred standard, but help them. After all, the Internet may not be the real world, but it works, on some levels, like an extension of it. In the real world, you wouldn't have a lot of friends if you were mean to everyone, but then, no one likes a kiss-arse, either (OK, that's not a technical term…). On FF, I'd say most writers want to be friends with their reviewers. I know that whenever I receive a review, I'm quick to PM the writer to thank them, and I'm always glad if it develops into a conversation. But, the thing is, a true friend is someone who tells you when you have something stuck in your teeth so that you sort it out before it becomes an embarrassment. That, inelegant as I've made it sound, is what reviewing should be all about.
If you spend any time at all reading review pages on FF (I do this a lot to find out what my peers thought of a story before I put the effort into reading it for myself - lazy, I know, but partly what reviews are for. And if the reviews are bad, I usually read it to see for myself if it's as awful as all that), you'll notice that a huge proportion of them are what I will call here SPF - Standard Positive Feedback. This generally reads something like "That was really good/cool/well-written/exciting, update soon!" Sound familiar? It probably will to most writers. The sad fact is that, particularly, for some reason, when you first start out (in my case, anyway, the reviews seem to have got longer as I've progressed), a huge proportion of your reviews will sound that way. Every time I've received one of these, I've sat, bemused, in front of my laptop and wailed, quietly, so's not to scare anyone, "But what do they mean?" Typing in an SPF is the easiest thing to do, sitting there with that review window open before you, but, honestly, it's so frustrating! The fact is that it's virtually impossible to tell the difference between someone trying to say "Your story was truly beautiful, thank you so much for sharing it", someone trying to say "Mmm…it was…OK, I guess", and someone thinking "Oh, God, that was awful but I can't say that because they'll think I'm really mean!" when they all just tap in a one liner and disappear into the black hole that is cyberspace.
The problem both with SPF reviews and flames is that there will always be people who take everything said to them in reviews at face value, and also very personally. With flames, obviously this means that they will get very upset - far more so than those who've been around FF for a while and know that flamers are losers with nothing better to do than pick on people. With SPFs, however, it means that we get a bit of a vanity problem. I wouldn't be all that surprised (amused, but not surprised) if in the future, once all the teen FF writers grow up and decide they want to hit the big time (and yes, I know not all FF writers are teens…), publishers start getting letters saying, "And in 2006, I received 336 messages, all saying that I "rock the world" and am "totally the best FF writer EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Now, publish me, loser." These people are usually less paranoid than me, which I expect is quite nice for them most of the time. However, if they take all of these wonderful compliments at face value, they may never see the problems with their work, which brings me back to my flamer. She (I'll assume it was a girl, I can't see why a guy would even have attempted this fic) was the only one to give me doubts about the amazingness of my work. And hey, I can tell you, somebody had to.
Don't get me wrong, though, if you have any sort of talent, you will get yourself a fanclub somewhere along the way. Just bear in mind that they're unlikely to actually be writing professionals, and also that they might be after something - like a return review. Don't use your amassed collection of SPF to persuade yourself to discount the opinion of a reviewer whose compliments might be less forthcoming. Ignore them if you want to, but don't assume that the masses are entirely right.
Most writers on FF are charming people who, provided you're careful to sound friendly in your criticism, will at worst ignore you (and hey, you tried) and at best thank you for the advice and take it on board (yay! Success!). And sounding friendly really isn't that hard. I mean, look at this:
Bloody hell, how old are you? Your spelling sucks, it's 'elephant' not 'elefant', stupid. This story is crap, seriously.
That, my friends, is a flame. Well, sort of, I have to say I've never written one. If I did, I probably wouldn't say 'bloody hell' because that narrows my location down a bit, and recipients of flames get mad. But you see what I'm getting at. It's more of an electronic insult than a review, and there's no sensible reaction the recipient can take but to ignore it.
Look at this one:
Great story so far, hope you update soon! I'm really enjoying your characterisation of Character X - he's quite a sweetie, isn't he? Hope we see more of him soon! I suppose the only comment I really want to make is that it might be an idea if you ran a spell check before you posted, because there's a couple of errors that you might want to sort out, but otherwise it's great!
Now, obviously it was very much a 'me' kind of review - I tend to say 'great' quite a lot - but you get the idea. I've got across exactly the same point, but, unless the person is very sensitive about their inability to spell 'elephant', it shouldn't ruffle too many feathers. Plus, it's far shorter than my reviews usually are. To the point for once. Well, that was a little OOC for me, wasn't it?
Basically what I'm hoping I can encourage you to do is to strike a balance. If you really, genuinely can't think of anything nice to say and you're so maddened by the poor quality of a work that you don't think you can even try and sound constructive, it's probably better if you keep quiet. Whatever you do, don't flame. Even if you're so incensed that you wish the writer's computer would implode leaving them incapable of writing another fic, just keep schtum. At the end of the day, there's nothing you can do. There's no point upsetting someone. It's only a hobby. But if you do see something good in a story, a writer showing a real talent for characterisation, description, whatever - then, please, tell them. The chances are that they won't be able to tell your genuine admiration apart from the SPF, but you'll know. Plus, you could always point them towards this site and have them read my article so they know where you're coming from with your reviews :)
Actually, that's my final point. I hope you'll find some of this useful and that you at least give some of my ideas a try. If you agree with me, the best thing you can do is just review constructively! However, a link to this article on your profile, blog or website might be nice!
Peace out,
Belle
Disclaimer: This site is for amusement purposes only, no profit is made from any mentions of copyrighted material.
Claimer: All content (articles etc) of MeBe is copyright 2006 Belle and Kenzie, unless otherwise stated. You can reproduce articles on this site WITH PERMISSION FROM THE WRITERS, but we'd probably prefer you just to link to it.