Every so often, a practice thread will be run for members who wish to try out reviewing/editing alongside peers. The following are guidelines for conduct, as well as suggestions if you don't know how to get started. This is specific to the practice threads, and should not be taken as the group rules (although they still apply).

Please read these before participating in practice activities under SfNR.

Friendly guidelines for author-centric reviews

1) Don’t feel pressured to write an essay! If you’ve never done this before, don’t worry - these events was made for you more so than anyone else. Showing up is half the battle, after all.

Cover the bases (e.g. grammar, tone, plot consistency, whatever) that you like, or rather, just cover the ones you feel you need to. There’s no point discussing the importance of dialogue for presenting character when the author’s doing just fine as is. In fact, bite-sized pieces of advice can go the furthest because they’re the easiest to implement; the more unrelated fluff your review contains, the less solid it feels overall.

2) Weave in pointers on things they did well amidst the suggestions. There’s no magic ratio of how many critiquing sentences to praise you should have. Just put it in when you feel the weight of the review needs some lightening up. There is always something worth commending, even if it’s just the bravery of putting it up for the public. Thinking otherwise is a sign of hubris.

3) What path will you take?

You can give a review, which is generally overarching and summarizes multiple areas in one go. Probably the best example of this is Chris’ OMPR blog. Generally, you want to write this up after reading everything. The focus of these tend to be conceptual and characterization issues - the kinds of problems that are systematic, present throughout the story. In colloquial terms, it’s the overall feel of the thing.

You can give editing advice, which is specific and takes the form of line-by-line work. Editing is not just about grammar - it lets you go deep into issues like word choice, sentence structure, tempo, dialogue, flow. Note that anything subjective is best backed up with some justification - not in a “THIS IS WHY I AM RIGHT” manner, but more of a “this is how I read it, and this is where I’m coming from”. Establish an understanding with the author. Help them see what you see.

You can give a comment that consists of both. Look in the comment section for an example I did some time ago.

Or, you could leave feedback as a reader. This is precious in its own way - rather than giving suggestions or pointing out errors, you tell them what you felt and thought of the story. Simply making note of which particular scenes you liked/were bored at makes this helpful.

Less-friendly reminders

4) Read the damn thing. You’re not here to smite the poor deluded author with Judgement From On High. For all I know, the story selected could be perfect. Often, authors possess instinctively a lot more skills and techniques than they let on. There’s a line between nitpicking to bulk up your comment and offering advice.

5) You are not the Ten Commandments of Writing. One of the toughest kinds of work to review is the kind that just doesn’t appeal to you. That does not mean that it was executed incorrectly. Ponder before you type if you’re the intended audience. Even better, ponder what the intended effect was. If the author was, in fact, trying to make an utterly reprehensible MC, then that is a "success" as much as it made you want to tear your hair out (the quality of the idea itself though is an open avenue for discucssion). Compensate for your bias accordingly. Then refer to Guidelines #1 and #3.

6) Keep it civil. “Don’t take it personal” applies to all parties in this. If someone gives you pointers, take it the same way you’d want the author to take your pointers. And if you’re going to give a peer pointers, keep it out of the story space. Thread only.

The twist

To spice it up a bit, we're introducing a twist to the process. This will change with time; check back to see the latest updates.

The following is banned while you are conducting the exercise:

Profanity, disrespect, personal insults, number/star/equivalent quantifier scoring system.

As this round is a reader-centric round, you must be able to point out at least 2 good points, and a concluding recommendation for what kind of person would like it (ref. One Man's Pony Ramblings).

Suggestions on where to start: read if you feel lost

Posing questions to both yourself and the author is what a large part of reviewing/editing is about.

If you're the kind that learns by example, Griffin's done up a spreadsheet full of them - thanks to Chris for pointing this out! You want to be looking at the topics they discuss, what goes into an argument (how many lines are spent on personal reasoning, for example, and how many lines are spent on anecdotes or etc.), and the structure they present them in - some have nicely formatted headings, while others go for the more essay-type style. Pick and choose what works for you.

For the rest of you, here's some examples of questions from RazgrizS57:

- How do the voices of characters X and Y compare to each other? Do they sound believable, or are they out-of-character? Give an example.
- If you were to tell the author there's something they could improve on, what would it be? Why?
- Do you think the story accomplished all that it needed to in the allotted word count? Why or why not?
- What is the aim of your review?

If you're like me and are the more visceral type, you're going to be asking derivatives of these two questions:

Author, what the hell?

Why am I feeling this way?

What do now?

Feedback at its most fundamental is telling them how you feel: "10/10 i crid ".

Better feedback is being able to put into words why: "The way you developed Twilight's relationship over the years with Tom... I'll admit I was skeptical at first, but the strength of your descriptions, your sense of humour, and the genius in how you plotted the events leading to this point justified everything and so much more".

Even better feedback - and this is the slipperiest slope - is exercising know-how to improve: "I noticed that your word choice tends to be on the flourish-y side. While that works well with the landscape scenes, I found it a bit distracting during the dramatic confession scene with Bumpkin - the two individuals are simple in their feelings, frank in their dialogue, so having words like "expeditious" and "cognizant" in the narrative worked against the atmosphere of it all. I think that if you replaced them with simpler words, or even cut out some of the descriptions altogether, it works both as a contrast in prose and also as building the atmosphere - letting the moment impact to the fullest without tampering with it".

The best part? As long as you've got an ounce of self-reflection, you'd be able to do this. Seriously. Don't believe me? Sign up at your nearest Practice Thread today!

The following is banned while you are conducting the exercise:

Sarcasm, profanity, terms such as “LUS/Lavender Unicorn Syndrome”, “Mary Sue” etc variants, “show, don’t tell”, disrespect, personal insults.
B-but how will I point out a Mary Sue if I can’t use the phrase?!1!11!

Think about the points you’re making. Buzzwords are crutches that don’t really help the author understand, and if you yourself can’t frame thoughts without them, it kinda means you don’t understand, either.

Little surprised to see this but I'm glad it's there. Seems to reinforce the idea that as an editor, we're not only reverse engineering the idea for understanding but, in a way, building a story of our own when we explain to an author what did and did not work for us as a reader.

As they say: Line upon line, precept upon precept.