PSA (sort of) · 5:52pm May 29th, 2016
So, as a writer, especially a fanfic writer, I live for comments on my stories. I know a lot, if not most other writers, do too. Upvotes are nice and all, and faves are awesome, but comments are invaluable. They make us feel as if people are actually reading our stories and that makes us highly motivated to keep writing and keep putting out more content. So today I'm going to give you guys some tips on how to make a comment that isn't just a generic "I liked this. Good job. Keep it up."
1. QUOTING SPECIFIC PASSAGES - What was your favorite sentence in the chapter/story and why was it your favorite? Were there any lines you thought were well executed? Would you have used a different word and if so why? Were there any lines that hit home for you? How did you react to a specific line?
This method is so easy to use and is honestly my favorite to use. It's all just a matter of highlighting a passage that you liked or wanted to talk about and copypastaing it into the comments.
2. QUESTIONS - Questions about things are fucking awesome because writers are fucking nerds and love to gush about shit. Like if you ask about why I used one particular word in a passage rather than another, we will go off on a nerdy rant about connotations and definitions and blah blah blah. Most of us will resist posting spoilers, but we'll answer as much of your question as we can. Or you can ask about our writing process! Like, ask if we were writing to music, or what time of day we were writing at, or where we were when we wrote it. We love questions please ask us things.
3. REACTIONS TO THINGS - We don't get tired of you getting mad at our antagonists or weeping along with our protagonists. We love that we did a good enough job to bring out such emotions from you. If anything, that makes us writers proud of ourselves.
4. ADVICE/CRITIQUE - We writers want to improve our craft, so critiques and advice is a great way to help speed along the improvement process and help writers grow. But there are some things about this one that I want to discuss. Text has a lot less room for context than actual voice communications. With that in mind, if you phrase a piece of advice wrong, it can come across as an attack on the writer or the piece. So a good rule to follow when offering a critique is to follow the PQS method. First you find a thing that the writer did well, and you offer that some Praise. Then you highlight the part you want to critique and ask a Question about it. And then you offer a Suggestion on something the writer could to to improve, and it doesn't have to be a suggestion related to the Question. You could suggest something entirely unrelated to the original question. And in order to keep things as non-negative as possible, try to make sure there is an equal amount of all three parts. But a good example of a PQS would go something like this:
"Hi author. I noticed this thing you did here "[quote from story]" and I think you did a good job with it for this reason. I also had a question as to this passage "[other quote from story]" because of this reason. In order to avoid causing the confusion I had with previous passage, perhaps you could try doing this thing instead. Thank you for your time and have a nice day. -generic signoff"
This has been a PSA from your local DarqFox. Thank you for reading, and happy commenting. Go make some writer's day.
<3 DarqFox
Posting alpacas is good too.
Right?
3986398
It can confuse some writers. If the author you wish to send an alpaca is particularly prone to confusion, I'd advise against it, or recommend providing context.
<3 DarqFox
I agree with everything in this post.