Simpler Feedback

[Patrick Haines]

I know, from reviewing myself, that it can take a lot of time and effort, yet it is a little frustrating as a writer, to get no feedback at all when I post my stories. I was wondering if there is a way that the Forum can design a way to give Super Simple Feedback. I know we have the reaction thing, but I don't think that gets used much by readers. Even something as simple as a LOVE-LIKE-DONT CARE-DISLIKE-HATE system would be better than what we have. That way, when someone has time to sit down and read a story, they don't have to give detailed feedback, they can just hit one of the buttons and be done with it. Views do a little bit in the ways of feedback, at least I know ??? are looking at my story, but I don't know how many of them read two sentences and quit or if it is just ten people looking at the same thread five times to give me 50 views.

Does anyone else agree? Know of anything that we can do? Am I crazy (er than I think)? Thanks

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I don't find review checklists helpful. Most of the cost of reviewing, for myself at least, is in the time taken to read and process the fic, not in writing up a few thoughts. The main reason I don't review something is because I haven't read it - I actually review pretty much everything I read. I would not be surprised to learn that the review bottleneck for most writers is readership rather than effort taken to review.

So perhaps the best way to accrue reviews is to expand your readership. This is not easy, or simple, but there are some things a writer can do towards this regardless of what they're writing:

• Proofread properly. Unless I have an incentive, if I perceive a fic to not be proofread, I will straight-up quit within a couple paragraphs. Actually go through and fix your errors by hand. If it helps, then change the font or read it aloud or send it to a competent beta reader. It's not enough to have no spelling errors - your fic has to be as readable as possible. No awkward phrasing or bad formatting allowed. This is the single most important thing you can do, in my experience.
  
  
• Include a summary that advertises your story. Don't put yourself down or make excuses or ramble - write a coherent, laconic, interesting blurb. Not a teaser that implies there might be fun plot twists or merely lists character names and objectives, or explains anything inessential. An actual blurb that promises something specific in exchange for the reader's time and tells them what kind of narrative they're going to be presented with.
  
  
• Produce something worth reading. Put the work in. Write to a high standard. Don't take shortcuts or rely on trite descriptions, show don't tell, think character behaviour through, ensure each scene has a purpose, get to the point, don't waffle, all that and more. And if you learn a few skills or improve your authorial voice, go back and fix up your first chapter to demonstrate to newcomers that your story is worth their time.
  
  
• Review plenty of other people's writing and link to your fic in your signature with a single-sentence blurb. They might reciprocate.

The bitter truth is that there is a lot of fanfiction available for free, and people looking for something to read online can usually find a ton of fics on AO3 and the like, often written by experienced fanficcers, featuring their favourite tropes and characters and AUs, and thoroughly tagged. Your writing has to look sufficiently enticing and be enjoyable enough to actually read for people to want to finish reading it. Remember: you're competing with everything else on the internet for readers, and they need a reason to choose your story to spend their time on.

Addendum: I have some brief, hard truths to leave on. Reasonable people don't usually like to drop a "hate" reaction on something and leave it unexplained, and I doubt the staff will want to enable a low-effort means of trolling people by creating such a reaction. Original fiction on a pokémon fanfic forum is advertising itself to people who want to read pokémon fanfic, not original fiction. People often prefer to simply say nothing if they just read something fairly substantial but can't think of very much to say that's positive. Absolutely nothing is more important than having protagonists the reader cares about, and no up-front information about anything else will serve as a substitute for establishing character and motivation with face value appeal.