Chat Speaks: Seven Ways To Not Get Your Writing Reviewed
10 Apr
After taking a month-long hiatus from YWS, I headed for the literature forums to find something to review to make my return seem official to myself. Of the topics I opened up, I was more or less discouraged from reviewing some, mostly because the topics didn’t interest me enough to keep me reading or I had a difficult time comprehending what the writer meant.
I felt I was being too critical, so I ended up not reviewing anything. But it got me thinking: what are some of the things in posts that YWS members feel deter them from reviewing? I posed this question to chat and got some interesting answers in response:
Silented1: Long stories, lots of words, and a “Please Reviewâ€.
Most members here can tell you that if you keep your average post length at 1000 words (or less!) you’re likely to get more reviews. That’s because people generally tend to skim over a story at first glance and take it in as a whole. A large amount of words or a long page seems like a chore to read through, unless you’ve got an attention-grabbing first line that holds us hostage until the end.  If not, do us a favor and keep it short by posting your stories in parts.
People will review what they want. Â Attaching a “Please Review” to the title, or prefacing it with such phrase will only make people not review. It’s the reverse psychology ordeal going there.
Rosey Unicorn: “Ignore all spelling and grammar mistakesâ€.
Seriously, if you forgot to revise, it’s best to put posting off until you do so. Or if you made spelling and grammar mistakes, it’s probably better to let them be pointed out in case you happen to skip over them in your own revisions. If a reviewer isn’t deterred by being told to ignore or spelling and grammar mistakes, such a comment usually fuels them to review your story, flames and all, with the sole target of pointing out spelling and grammar errors.
“Another thing that bugs me to no end,†Rosey says, “is when they [writers] give a summary at the beginning.”
Yes, writers. Please. It’s annoying. Imagine going into a movie theater and seeing a five-minute clip at the beginning of the movie that summarizes everything that’s about to happen. Would you sit for the next two hours?
Yeah, didn’t think so. Readers thrive on suspense, so you should try to keep as much of it alive as you can.
ScarlettFire: Long paragraphs and lack of spacing.
Bombarding your audience with a long paragraph will not do much good. Correction: Bombarding your audience with long paragraphs won’t do them any good.  Part of writing is in the spacing—paragraph breaks let you know when a new speaker starts talking or a new event is about to take place. Cramming everything together into one big mosh pit is tedious for us to read through because we have to decipher where you wanted to break.
Aet Linding: [I don’t like it] When work is unreadable.  If I have to take some effort to figure out how to read it, I’m not going to bother.
“If you’re bad with grammar, that’s okay,†Aet says. But, if you understand the rules of it and choose not to use it for either stylistic effect or just a lapse of laziness on your part, remind yourself that a reviewer won’t feel compelled to dedicate as much time to your piece. Punctuation, grammar, line breaks and syntax were all created for a reason.
DON’T preface your work with explanations.
No one cares if the idea is morbid and you usually don’t think about morbid things. If the idea is good, then we’ll want to read it, but saying that you generally don’t do this or don’t do that makes us feel like we can’t praise an aspect as much as we’d like to. And for the record, no one cares if you wrote it in five minutes, either. We just hope you ran a spell check.
In a story, words are what show emotion. Not emoticons.
When the main character dies, I’d really like to see in vivid description that her mother becomes so distraught that her emotion could reach out and affect how I feel about the character’s death. I really don’t want to see a yellow ball with a sideways left parentheses sign streaming blue tears from its eyes.
In favor or opposition of any of these? Leave a comment telling why, and don’t forget to include your biggest deterrent from reviewing a literary work.
I never review things that are titled “Untitled” because if they can’t choose a name for it, it’s probably not worth reading.
Just my two cents.
-Jared
No matter what genre or style or theme, please, please, whatever you do, *don’t be boring*. A person taking their dog for a walk does not count as plot progression, and a meticulous description of the morning ritual does not contribute towards character development.
Just give me a good reason to read the story. That’s all. Name it “The Rape Tunnel” or something, eh?
Here’s a few things that really tick me off.
1. When the author just posts, “Untitled” as the story, unless “Untitled” actually is the title.
2. When the author posts after just a couple hours whining about how they aren’t getting reviews.
If the style is dull I won’t read it because it puts me to sleep. I don’t care if the plot sucks and the characters are dull, as long as the pacing and sentence structure is good I’ll take the time. If not I won’t even finish reading. Hence I only review content – if the style needs correcting I wouldn’t have got that far anyway.
If you have a huge rant before getting onto the writing. Whether it’s bragging, explaining, putting your work down, whatever. Either keep it short and simple, or don’t have it up there at all.
On the topic of pre-work rants, don’t explain your work before hand. Really what’s the point? xD
So many mistakes so many ignored reviews . . .
Yeah. ‘Bumping’ your work just makes me baulk and click the little x. If you’ve got a piece of work up, don’t undermine yourself by nagging. =P
I totally agree with the paragraph thing. I HATE that.
And yes, even if the plot is nothing, and the characters are dull, if you can pace it and do good grammar and sentence structure, then do.
It took me reading all of the Twilight books to realize that the first one had almost no plot until the end; the writing looked like something I–a 13 year old–could do, minus the words I’d never heard of before; and that Bella’s a girl who more or less died emotionally because a guy she’s known for a few months dumped her.
But because it flowed, and didn’t irritate me to death, I kept reading. That’s the only excuse I can think of why I didn’t dump the book.
Nothing deters me the way a ‘told’ story does.
He sat down. he stood up. He cried….He was angry….was was was, is is is…gosh!
The most tedious pieces of writing I’ve ever reviewed were riddled with grammatical mistakes, misspellings, uncapitalized pronouns ‘I’ and a completely devoid of punctuation.
This, paired with a ‘telling’ style just gives me a headache and I immediately navigate away from the page.
I agree with that, Juniper. I also took a break, of sorts, from YWS and then didn’t feel inspired to review afterwards and I wondered what was bugging me, and why I couldn’t even be bothered putting my immediate rejection of pieces into words.
I mainly browse around poetry, and in that, I have to say that the biggest thing that gets to me is a cliche beginning or just an uninteresting first line period. I tend to ignore bad grammar and punctuation actually.