Reviewing is a skill. · 3:20am Sep 9th, 2017
Most writers are bad writers. We get better through practice. We also get better though feedback, critique, and perusing a large library of past wisdom about how to write well. All these things improve our skills as storytellers.
Writing reviews is also a skill. And most reviewers, like most writers, are bad at it.
Somewhat ironically, reviewers get very little feedback, almost zero critique (and what little critique I've seen offered has generally been poorly received) and there is no large library of past wisdom about how to write good reviews. Also practice only provides improvement when you're aware improvement is needed and are actively trying to get better. If you're sitting on your duff, self-satisfied at your current level, no amount of practice will make you better.
I do feel that story review is a thing that can offer value. A good review will expand on your appreciation of a story, point out things you may have missed, bring together various bits into a coherent whole you may not have seen, or just offer and new and interesting perspective. They can also deconstruct where something went wrong, inform what you want to read in the future, or provide entertainment in and of themselves.
But those good reviews are rare, rare, rare things.
"Summary of the plot, plus whether I liked or disliked it" is the "red-and-black alicorn self-insert" of reviews. It's where most people start, but it's not actually that great. Alas, it's as far as most people ever get, which is part of why I think reviews tend to get a bad rap. Though the level of ego I've seen from some reviewers don't help. When you're writing the red-and-black alicorn self-insert and acting like it's the best story on the site... yeah.
I wish I could offer actual constructive advice on how to give a good review, but unfortunately I'm not very good at it myself, so I have no idea what to say. Other than "do something other than just sum up the plot and give it a rating." Probably you should be reading well-respected reviews outside of pony fandom, that'd be a place to start, at least. (Anybody who reviewed fanfic the way MovieBob reviews movies and games, for example, would totally get my watch.)
So far I have yet to run into a FimFic reviewer whose reviews have caught my attention. Sure, gushing about my stories has gotten me to read that specific review, I'm not going to skip over those! But gushing about how you loved it is really no better than ranting about how you hated it, it's just a simplistic expression of an opinion every reader has. Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back for having an opinion.
So there's my $0.02 on the hot topic of the day. You're not required to agree with me, of course. But I really do feel that the problem with reviews around Fimfic isn't that they exist, it's just that they're mostly beginner-level stuff and need to step it up a notch before I'm going to be interested in them.
Can we get this blog posted sitewide?
(Also as someone looking to start writing reviews, I really wish feedback on them was more common)
I keep in mind all reviews on this site are from people who just as amateurish in reviewing as I am as a writer. So, I take them all as just opinions and nothing more, even if one or two become personal because of a bad case of pettiness.
I may need to go redesign a character for a moment, excuse me...
4662749
That'd be pretty meta: reviews of the reviews
The best reviewers give their readers a sense of whether or not they'd enjoy the story being reviewed, whether or not the reviewer likes it. They also refrain from dreary gimmicks, condescension, or auto back-patting.
Yeah, that kinda narrows it down, doesn't it? Still, there are a couple reviewers in the fandom whose tastes are aligned enough with my own that I make a habit of following them in order to be made aware of new stories I might like... or want to avoid. I hardly ever read reviews of stories I've already read.
Still, a FimFicBob would be a treasure!
Mmhmm. One of the most common pitfalls I've seen is how various "reviewers" treat the idea of subjectivity.
Many new or inexperienced reviewers (and contest judges, for that matter) treat subjectivity as something to be avoided at all costs. Any feedback you give must be objective. Opinions are verbotten, as the people reading your reviews may not have the same ones, and that's a bad thing.
The other end of the spectrum is equally annoying, and possibly more prevalent. The one where the subjectivity is front and center, but presented as objective. Tends to be more prevalent among reviewers who have been doing it a while, and had enough time to really sniff their own farts. They have an opinion, and boy do you want to know about it! Of course you want to know, because it's correct!
The real worth of reviews lies in the middle. Mentioning objective mistakes is useful, obviously. And sharing your opinion is also useful. But it's important to remember in all things, that opinions are subjective, and that inherently means that it's going to depend on how you look at things, and can differ from person to person without anyone being wrong. "X is bad, remove it" is awful criticism. "I don't like X, but I can recognize that's because I generally don't like X-ish things. It seems perfectly fine otherwise" is much more useful.
Present your biases, but acknowledge them as such. Authors and potential readers might want to know what the reviewer is feeling, but they don't want to be told how to think.
Just my 1.51p on the subject.
Also, if "summary plus opinion" is the red and black alicorn cliche, I motion that numerical scores on the end be the same as GeneralZoi's ponycreator OC cover art
... I'm trying to find where the feature is that allows me to follow you twice, but I cannot! D:
Ha, literally just posted a review over in the PCaRG right as soon as I saw this blog come up. Talk about timing!
But now I'm curious of your opinion on the general way in which I do my reviews. I approach a story from a set number of angles, like plot progression, mechanics, character development, etc. and do a write-up on all of those regardless of whether they were good or bad. I think of those reviews more as trying to help smaller authors out and show them what they're doing right or wrong. Given that 9/10 stories I get are from authors just cutting their teeth, I don't think there's a lot of room for more than that.
Damn, now I kinda feel like a hack.
4662762
If what you're doing is aimed at the authors of the stories you're covering, then you're critiquing, not reviewing. Reviews are aimed at the readers of stories. Critiques are an entirely different animal.
4662764
Well I'll be derned. I've been calling them reviews all this time lol
4662766
The terminology is a bit mushy, most people use review pretty interchangeably with critique. But the thing I'm talking about in my blog is the thing that's aimed primarily at readers, not the thing that's providing feedback to authors.
You hit the nail on the head, SPark.
Finding hypocrites among reviewers/editors/prereaders is like finding sand on a beach.
Which is why, from time to time, I like to give them a hard time.
The advice I would give is 1) do your best to learn to write like you have probably advised an author or two (or twenty) to do, 2) actually write, so you'll know what it feels like to have someone come along, unasked, and deliver their divinely inspired verdict of your story, and 3) pay attention to how much you want to impress your readers or the author you're reviewing with your knowledge of story telling, causing you to realize how much of this business has actually been about you the whole time, and then try to make it less about you. If you're anything like me, this will be the hardest part, and it'll probably never end.
Are you really looking for a review at that point, or a commentary + recommendation?
I also feel a missing element is that people like MovieBob or the Nostalgia Critic try to offer is that they don't just tell you whether to watch something, but rather they are interested in the story of our mainstream culture. Usually they won't just talk about a particular work in isolation, but try to fit it in with other similar stories that they have been seeing so we get a sense of the significance of the story in the context of the bigger mainstream culture. That takes a much broader interest than just offering an opinion on one data point.
4663045
Well, I think a good review should do something more than meet the minimum definition for being a review, just like a good story should do more than meet the minimum definition for being a story. "Yep, that was some words that contained a series of events, how great" said nobody about any story they enjoyed ever. A good story makes you feel something, or has commentary on some aspect of human behavior, or does any number of things other than just "be a story", and I really don't think it's unfair to expect a similar "extra mile" from a good review.
Chris has done a few posts on his One Man's Pony Ramblings blog in which he discusses reviewers in some detail, including giving examples of what he considers stronger and weaker reviews. I was one of the "victims" a while back and I appreciated it. The reviews I write aren't in the same league as Chris's own, but I think his comments have made them just a little bit better since. I never really set out to be A Reviewer in the first place anyway -- I set out to do something more like the "Here are some fics I read recently" posts many people do here on Fimfiction. Enough people have told me they like them that I've carried on in my little niche, but I'd never have predicted I'd still be writing the things after more than three years. I don't write long, deeply analytical assessments of stories for two reasons: 1) I wouldn't be very good at it, and 2) I don't want to!
4662754
Such things exist. Here's Chris's take on mine, for example. I thought it was a pretty fair assessment, in both the positives and the negatives Chris mentioned.