Search options (Page 18 of 165)

Existing members, please point all new members to this thread, in case they haven’t already found it.

Below are tips to maximize the number of reviews you receive on the site. Everything here is voluntary, but it’s what works for many people, especially those who are new to the site and have yet to build a network of fellow writers here (using “connections”) with whom to trade reviews.

——————————

Review, review, review. It's the best way to find long-term partners with whom to trade reviews. You’ll want a network of them to give you feedback on an ongoing basis. Building relationships here also regularly leads to new friendships.

The best place to find active members is on your home page, which contains the writing of everyone currently actively posting new work.

There are many casual users of the site (e.g., folks who don't write/post/review here year round), so be sure to check out the writer's personal profile for when they were last online on this site. If it's more than about two months, they may not respond/reciprocate in a timely manner. They may even have left the site for an extended period, which could be months, sometimes years.

Respond to reviews in a timely manner, otherwise reviewers may just move on. It only takes a few minutes to respond to most reviews. However, understand that the turnaround time to actually do so varies from a few hours to a few days because real life often intrudes (e.g., illness, deaths, other crises).

Read stories in your own genre, many of which you may find in the individual groups or by searching for new works by genre. You may get more reciprocal reviewers if they share your interests. But! This is a small site focused on serious writers, so we often review outside of our usual genres to help each other and to get the best reciprocal reviewers for our own work. Feedback from other genres writers is another great way to learn. Many folks here regularly write in several genres.

Post your work in the Premium group. When you do, your work will be visible to all members. Also, reviewers of Premium works are rewarded with points with which to post their own work, which leads to more reviews for you. If you're serious about becoming a writer, Premium is where you need to be. Note that the Premium group contains the Premium forum.

While gathering points to post your own work can seem like a pain, you would have to read the work of other writers anyway to keep them as long-term reviewers (they need feedback too). The points system on this site is much less onerous than on other professional workshop sites. It's main purpose is to keep out folks who just want to post, get feedback, and give nothing back. And it automatically leads you to network with other writers here. If you regularly trade reviews with others here, you will almost always have more points than you actually need.

If you don't review the work of others, you can't expect to get reviewed in return. Most members here are experienced writers and, in many cases, published authors. They don't have the time to review the work of every new trial member, of whom there are many. You may get a free review or two, but the best way to get reviews is to give reviews. It shows you're serious. You are serious, right? :-)

You're not expected to be a great writer or reviewer if all this is new for you. But you are expected to try. That's how everyone else here got started. We all suck at writing and reviewing initially. Trust me! But if you're not willing or able to do even that, then this site isn't for you.

Reviewing the work of others also allows you to study how they write. There are experienced writers on this site to learn from, including published authors. And reviewing makes you a better reviewer, which should allow you to build relationships with the best writers, who generally are among the best reviewers.

Post clean chapters to the extent you know how. That means proper punctuation, grammar, and proofreading. If you're still new to writing, ask for help in the Writing Tips & Site Help or Premium forums. Google for articles on punctuation and grammar, or buy a good book on the subject. You want your reviewers focused on your story, not your writing mechanics.

Use a picture as a cover page in lieu of the default red cover. If default covers worked, there would be no need for real covers on Amazon either. When you look at the home page, it's the pictures that stand out first/most. Free pictures are available online from multiple sites, including pixabay.com.

Have a content summary for your book so people know what it's about. This seems like common sense, but we still see books without a summary posted on the site. Who buys books when they don't know what it's about?

Try to come up with an interesting book title.

Keep a clean portfolio that is easy to peruse. That means inactivating (hiding) or deleting obsolete versions of stories you no longer want reviewed. Or simply rename any obsolete versions (e.g., stick the word OBSOLETE at the end of the title (this is the easiest solution)). Note that deleting chapters also deletes any reviews you received for those chapters, so be sure it’s what you really want.

Don't post massive chapters that take six to eight times as long to review as a regular post. If a member has to choose between reviewing the chapters of six people they regularly review vs. reviewing one massive chapter, the former will usually win out since we're trying to maintain as many reciprocal relationships as possible with only a limited amount of time.

A good chapter length for the site is perhaps 1500 - 2500 words (costs about 5 to 8 points to post).If you have a much longer chapter, break it up and post it in parts, and clearly identify in the chapter names and chapter notes that it is a multi-part chapter, otherwise you'll get repeated comments about how a chapter seems to end abruptly or has a lousy hook. Short chapters generally get the most reviews.

Be patient while waiting for reciprocal reviews. Expect to wait a few days up to a few weeks for people to reciprocate. Most writers do so part-time, which may include writing a chapter or story every few weeks, posting it, and then catching up on reviews owed to others. Many reviewers do it this way. If someone has never reviewed you before, try to reciprocate with them more quickly, since it's a chance to acquire a new permanent reviewer.

If you're not going to reciprocate because the other writer’s book doesn't interest you, please thank them and tell them that it's not something you normally read and/or probably can't be of much help with. The other writer can then move on. And don't be offended if someone doesn't want to read your current work. It happens. With any luck, they’ll read your next one.

Read the work of new members. There's a points bonus, they'll probably be grateful to you and may read your stuff, and they'll be more likely to join the site permanently if they see they're getting helpful reviews. A thriving site helps everyone.

Ask other members about who else might be good to ask for a review, then check out the latest posted work from those writers. Keep in mind that the people you ask may be too busy on any given day or week, so it may take some time for them to provide a review. If someone doesn't reciprocate after two or three attempts, move on. On the flip side, when you review someone new, suggest who else the new member should review to increase their chance of gaining more reciprocal reviewers.

If you’ve tried most or all of the above tips and still have trouble finding enough reviewers, post a message in the Premium forum about that, and ask for reviewers. Give the name of the posted work, a summary of what it’s about (quote some or all of your story’s content summary if you like), and the type of feedback you’re looking for. Since this is a small workshop site, you may find that the best feedback comes from members outside your own genre, so don’t restrict yourself. And be prepared to recip.

——————————

If you don't know how to do some of the things mentioned in this thread, don't hesitate to ask in the Writing Tips & Site Help forum or even in Premium. Note that the Premium forum is where you’ll get the most number of eyeballs on your post and, most likely, the fastest and most number of responses, so don’t be shy about using it. Site members are generally happy to help.

Feel free to reply directly to this thread with any feedback you may have about reviewing and this writeup. Going forward, this article will reside only in the Premium forum to avoid having to maintain two copies (the other was in the Writing Tips & Site Help forum), which can get out of sync. An article by the same name still exists in the latter forum, but it merely directs people here.

Marilyn and I have been going back and forth for a couple of days trying to figure out how to improve retention of new members who may be attracted to the site by contests.

All of what follows is open to discussion, but it also depends on what Sol believes is both wise and possible for him to do. We've tried to focus contest entry requirements to things that can be checked manually in the system to avoid the need for software development for contests.

Strongest Start: Although we discussed Strongest Start (SS), we need to attract members more quickly than that in the short term. We also discussed scaling back future SS contests so they could be done more often (e.g., limit entries to one per member, which focuses the contest on members submitting what they think is their highest quality entry, rather than on the number of entries per entrant; this also seems more fair). The upper word count should be limited to something sane, both for the sake of the judges and to encourage entrants to say more with less.

Contest-Related Suggestions
- more (regularly occurring) contests, especially in the short term; shorter contests with criteria that are easy on the judges (e.g., shorter word count, one entry per member, shorter contest window)
- contest entrants should be premium members at least on the day the contest closes (requires checking every entrant's membership status on the day the contest closes; this can be done manually); this requirement may limit how many outsiders are willing to enter contests, so it may not be a good idea; perhaps the membership requirement should be limited to Strongest Start, which has bigger prizes
- every prize for every contest should include free premium membership of some length for the winners and runners up; that reduces the actual cash cost of prizes for Sol and focuses the prizes on membership (one hopes people will stick around longer once having been a member); some (many?) contests might only offer membership, no cash, to keep costs down even more
- the contests should be advertised outside of TNBW (even if only on Booksie) so we get plenty of outside entries
- a key rule of the contests (ideally any contest going forward) should be that entrants have to do a certain number of "legitimate" reviews (5? 10? more?) of posted works on the site within the contest window; this forces those who are entering to do more than submit an entry; since reviewing styles differ, we could simply define legitimate as any review that meet's the site's basic requirements to pay points (i.e., 5 inline comments+closing comment OR a 50-word regular review)
- it seems like it would make sense to only check the posted reviews of potential winners to ensure they met the contest criteria and that their comments are real (as opposed to someone who enters bogus comments to pad their reviews); if one or more of the potential winners are disqualified, whoever is judging the contest would have to select additional potential winners to replace those who were disqualified; checking reviews can be done manually, so no software development is required
- we could also have somewhat harder contests requiring more reviews and more inline comments/longer regular reviews; this ought to encourage members entering the contest to improve their reviewing skills

EDITs:
- One more idea that came to mind might be contests that are open only to trial/new members, with the rest of us focused on reviewing their entries before the contest deadline.

Questions (for Sol):
- how do we avoid getting hit by large numbers of spam entries? Or is that something we even have to worry about?
- how do we avoid getting flooded with outside entries? Should the contest be limited to the first N entries?
- is it possible for Basic members to give and receive inline reviews? if they can, I'd suggest let them enter at least some of the contests since it would require them to use the review system here (regardless of how many points they have!) and have at least some interactions with existing members and the writing on this site as part of the contests

Marilyn, did I forget anything?

Thanks
Dirk