Alpha Readers Forum an interesting article on crit..

I liked that article, but it reminded me how frustrated I am with the review process here on wc.org! I want to highlight a sentence or a typo and leave a comment right there. By the time I get down to the review box, I've lost the moment.

That article was interesting, certainly it goes into greater depth than I normally do in my reviews on here, but I am still feeling my way around, and haven't gone deeply into a review.

I agree with Greg, I find it difficult to do a decent job reviewing. What I finally decided on, when I find something I want to suggest a change, or point out a typo is to copy and paste it in the review box, make my suggestion and go back to the story. Once I have collected all of them, I write my review, and my technical observations are already recorded below my comment.

As a side note, here is what really bugs me:

1. Writers send a read request, and in their comments at the top state  "Ha ha I know lots of grammar and spelling mistakes, but review it anyway. WTF!!?? You know there are mistakes and you haven't even passed it through a spell check? Why waste my time with an unfinished project. Sure spell and grammar check miss many things, but do me the honor of respecting my time and clean it up. Current company is excepted in this statement, this is a general observation.

2. The review points on this website are bizarre. I read a long passage, a story, a chapter, whatever, and in the points box it is showing some large number, 20, 30 points or more, for a long piece. I submit my review and my rating, and see the message at the top of the screen that I have received 5 points. Wait! What? I don"t care about the points, but if I read that much, I deserve them!

3. A guilty confession. You know in the bottom right hand corner of the Writing tab, there are Unreviewed stories. I have been picking these off, reviewing them and making them disappear from there, because one title that was at the top for weeks ticked me off. It was from 2009.

4. I also have explored the Unread stories. Many of them are also 4-5 years old. Can you imagine putting your heart and soul out there on this site and have not one person even view it? Must be soul destroying. It gives me comfort that everything I have shared so far has been at least viewed.

I was very busy these past few weeks, with a major home project. I am now done with that and will try to give all of the work each of you have put up here an honest review.

That leads me to the question, are we looking for reviews and critiques from each other to the depth discussed in the linked article? I would be pleased to put in that much effort if it was deemed worthwhile.

Noel

I also post my chapters on writing.com and all of the reviews are very in depth over there. I actually have a template that I use and as I go through the story, I make notes in a separate window. I thought about doing that for this site as well, but no one else was going very in depth, so I didn't want to overwhelm anyone with critiques and come off as a 'Grammar Nazi'. Here's one of the reviews I've done on the site if anyone is interested:

Hey, I saw this on your portfolio and decided to give it a read. Here's my review!

Overall Impression: It was good, I liked it. The story threw me for a loop halfway through, I was not expecting a stalker story. It was a nice twist. Although, I did feel like it could be fleshed out a bit more. I liked that the story was told from multiple point of views as well.


Style and Voice: I liked the way that you wrote this, everything revealing slowly. It was almost like a lifetime movie, except she never tried to kill Christian.


Scene/Setting: The scenes were well laid out, I could picture the settings easily. If you wanted to you could add ambiance noise, like the beeping of a heart monitor or chattering over the loudspeakers, to make the hospital seem more lifelike.


Characters: I liked the portrayal of the characters, and how you did a slow reveal of Mona's psyche and her past. I would have liked more info on the mother who obviously knew someone was obsessed with her son but never seems to do anything about it. The end of the story implies the mother maybe knew the girl was next door but didn't want her near her son, but instead she approves of the mysterious blond girl. I would have liked to have read more from her side of the story.

Dialog: The dialogue was nice and easy, it read well. I always knew who was talking, no confusion there.


Grammar: There seems to be a word missing here: "grabbed the wooden that had been" - the wooden what? "he could feel their breaths" - breath or he could feel them breathing. "Mona was walking fast toward the caf" - "car." Just a few small things, nothing major.


Suggestions: Maybe add a section where his mother speaks and adds her point of view to the story. I also didn't really empathize very much with Mona, maybe add a scene specifically for that purpose so that when she dies the reader will feel her pain a little bit. All in all, it was good work, I enjoyed reading it. :)

Keep up the good work!

I wish this site had something similar in place, it makes things a lot easier. If this group wants to do those in depth reviews for each other, I'm up for it. Hopefully we won't all hate each other when we do. :P

P.S. - Does anyone know what the points on this site are even for? I feel like I'm playing 'Whose Line is it Anyway' - I want the points, but I don't think they matter.

I am up for more detail, and like the format Kate shared here.
Points on this site are for the badges, for example reviewing, reviews received, welcoming new writers, etc.
If you look on profiles you will see badges, click on one and it brings up a list of waht the awards are.
I did see once that the points collected could be used to "buy" avatars, but I haven't looked for it on here.

Oh wait, I found this: Points are a away for us and the rest of the WritersCafe.org community to track how active each writer is. You receive points for several different actions such as reviewing other writer's work or sharing your writing with others [see a full list here]. The more points you have, the higher you appear on the Writers search and rank pages.

Wow, that would be a really in-depth review. I'd love to receive one like that.

All great points.

Actually, I had a new thought.

Okay, I think I have a cool solution for us. I downloaded a browser addon called Diigo. It lets you stick post-in notes all over a web page and then publish the bookmark to the page in a group.

Interesting. I'm down to try it out.

I registered on it and it looks usable.

A simple form with the highlights as laid out by Kate would be a good guideline.

Noel

I'm just joined the diigo group. I'm going to use this. I like it.

I'm digging Diigo too. I would have liked to be able to be able to post an URL of the marked up page for people without Diigo installed, but for our small group, it would be good.

I'm down with it. It's actually really helpful, great find! I'm way too close to my story to be able to edit it properly, and I know there are a lot of issues especially with the first few chapters, so feel free to mark it all up. I won't take it personally.  :)

It turns out that you can post an URL with all your mark-ups instead of using the group thing. I think I like that and may start doing that instead.

I second these. 

Another interesting article on critiques.