Reviewing Guide

This section assumes that what you want to review is a piece of fanfiction, but most of its basic principles apply to all critical reviewing, be it about stories, artwork or websites.

So you've read a story, and you want to give it a review. How do you write a good one?

There are two basic types of reviews: reviews posted for the author, to give them feedback on what they wrote, and there are reviews posted for potential readers in order to advise them on whether a story is worth reading or not, similar to the book reviews you see in newspapers. The latter are not very common when it comes to reviewing fanfiction or other material on the Internet, but they do exist. There are some fundamental differences between how to approach the two types; I'll cover both a bit.

Reviewing for the Author

When you write a review for the author, you post it directly to the story's comment section, forum thread, or author's private messages. Often, with a serially published story, you may be reviewing individual chapters as you read them, but you can also read the entire story and review the whole thing at once, in which case you'll have a broader overview of what you're commenting on but probably can't go into quite as much detail; either approach can be useful.

Your primary concern when reviewing for the author should always be to give them some insight that will help them develop their writing further or else just brighten their day, one way or another – it is for the author, after all. In practice, many or most comments on fanfics online are simple one-liners:

I love this story. When will the next chapter be up?

Wow, this is amazing. Keep up the great work!

These can be perfectly nice comments; everyone likes to know someone read and enjoyed their work. There's nothing wrong with making comments like these; they will almost certainly succeed in brightening the author's day. But they aren't very insightful; they don't give the author much information on what these readers were thinking when they read the story, nor much to work with if they'd like to learn and get better at their craft. Technically it's hard for them to even know for sure that these readers did read the story: these comments could be posted verbatim to pretty much any fanfic regardless of whether you read it or not. So, if you'd like to write a more insightful sort of review, the sort of feedback that will actually give them that precious window into how readers experience their story and help them improve and refine their writing, you'll want to write a bit more than just this sort of one-liner.

The most obvious, straightforward way to help an author with their writing is constructive criticism ('concrit'), where you point out something that you think could be better, but constructive praise, articulating more extensively what you liked and what you think the author is doing right, can also be very helpful – and so can other comments and reactions!

Fandom norms have evolved somewhat away from concrit since I first wrote this guide – on websites like Archive of Our Own, authors often find any criticism to be rude and out of line by default unless they specifically request concrit. Personally, I think this new default is a bit of a shame, for authors just getting into the hobby; I developed my own writing skills by listening to constructive feedback from other writers in communities with strong concrit norms, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. But it's worth being aware of the norms of the community you're reviewing in, as well as taking note of whether the author explicitly expresses any preferences with regards to feedback – it's only polite to consider what the author is looking for, and giving a type of review that is wholly unwanted and will not be taken into consideration by the author anyway is not a great use of your time. Even if you stay away from criticism, however, you can still strive to write a review that gives concrete, helpful insight into your reactions to the story, rather than just something like those simple one-liners.

When reviewing for the author, there's no reason to give the story any kind of a numerical rating. A number is never helpful in itself; it doesn't tell the author anything about what made you feel the way that you felt, and if you do explain your thinking, adding a number doesn't really add anything. That's not to say you can't say a story you found especially amazing is a ten out of ten or five stars if that's simply how you're inclined to express your enthusiasm, but actually giving a rating is generally better left for reviews aimed at readers.

Constructive Criticism

Imagine you are mountain-hiking with your friend through some beautiful landscape. The sun shines and there's not a cloud in the sky. You finally reach the top and are sitting there admiring the view when you notice, delighted, an eagle flying in the sky.

"Wow, an eagle!" you comment to your friend.

Maybe he has already seen the eagle. Then that will do; then, in fact, you didn't really need to say anything. And perhaps just the mention of it makes him quickly look around and find it. But if he hasn't seen the eagle, then you'll need to do more than just say it's there: you need to point out where. And then, supposing he squints at the spot and asks, "Is it an eagle? It's a big bird, sure, but an eagle?" – then you ought to try and hand him your binoculars. You haven't helped him any if you have just informed him that you can see an eagle; the ultimate result should be that he can see the eagle too. Maybe he's very stubborn and refuses to believe it – but if it's a particularly majestic eagle, you'll care about helping your friend see it, too, right?

Or, at least, you ought to care. Perhaps you're a person who only points out that there's an eagle to be able to boast that you saw it and your friend didn't. But if you're that kind of person, you're not great company on mountain hikes.

Constructive criticism is not too unlike you trying to show your friend the eagle. Maybe the same thing was already bothering the author, or they immediately agree when you've said it. But the more important case is when your friend hasn't and doesn't see an eagle. You can't just sit there saying there's an eagle with no elaboration and then getting cross if he asks where. If you actually want to be helpful, you need to actually help them see it. Instead of just announcing there's a problem with the story, you want to be very specific about what it is and why you think it's a problem.

So let's say you're going to point out an eagle. Here are some hypothetical "Wow, an eagle!" (or, as the case may be, "Wow, an entire flock of eagles!") reviews:

I like this story a lot, although there were a lot of mistakes. Keep writing.

Cool fic! I loved the plot twists. Characters were a bit lacking, but meh.

This really wasn't very good, sorry. It's badly written, the main character is a complete Gary-Stu, and it completely defies all logic in too many places to count. The plot looks horribly generic as well.

Like the analogous comment about the eagle, these reviews don't actually tell the author anything of worth unless they basically already know what you're talking about. An author receiving a review like these would have every right to feel a bit peeved, even if they do welcome concrit. You haven't said anything constructive, just sort of bluntly declared there's something wrong somewhere; anyone would need elaboration before being able to agree with something like this. To be at all useful, you need to try to point out exactly what the problem is, usually by either quoting or referencing specific parts of the story and explaining why it had a negative impact on how you felt about the story, ideally with some tips or suggestions where appropriate. Again, your goal here is to help them see the eagle too, not just to declare that you saw one.

Here's a couple of possible ways to actually say, "Wow, an eagle! Look, right over there – here, take my binoculars":

I've noticed you have problems with homonym confusion sometimes, such as in the sentence "He excepted the Pokéball." The word you want there is "accepted"; "excepted" means leaving something out (like making an exception). I burned some lists of commonly confused words like that into my brain at some point and it's been very useful; here's one website that's pretty comprehensive!

The characters didn't stand out a lot to me; most of them seem fairly similar to each other. For example, they all seem to have basically the same sense of terminally-online humour, and in a conversation like the one on the helicopter in chapter three, I had trouble following who was speaking, because there weren't a lot of dialogue tags and Adam and Roxanne and Clive all talk in a very similar way. Ultimately I didn't mind it that much, though, because I was just having fun following the plot and all the twists and turns, and the characters were obviously mostly vehicles for making things happen.

The way you describe things can be a bit clunky in a way that detracts from the suspense you're going for. For example, take this paragraph:

He walked down the corridor. It was dark so he was really scared. As he was walking down the corridor he heard a sound. It was like a squeak.

You state that Troy is scared here, but it's hard to really feel that – you don't really describe anything that sounds very scary in these sentences! The old adage 'Show, don't tell' applies pretty well here: we're told he was scared, but you're not doing much to show it. It's helpful to think carefully about how he would experience this dark corridor and try to come up with more specific and in-the-moment descriptions and details that will jump out more viscerally for the reader: say, the darkness only thickens as he takes careful steps into the gloom, his voice wavers as he asks if there's anyone there, for a moment he's sure there's something moving indistinctly in the corner, a sudden high-pitched screech sends an icy chill through him and he jolts backward, heart pounding, etc. That way, we can get a real sense of why this is such a scary moment and feel some of that tension ourselves!

Also, note how you state that he walks down the corridor twice there – this happens a few times in the chapter, where the same action is repeated multiple times. This makes it a bit awkward to read and makes the text longer than it has to be; it's worth looking out for this sort of repetition or redundancy when you proofread so you can smooth it out.

Troy's backstory didn't feel very believable to me here, unfortunately. His parents were murdered by Team Rocket and he has somehow managed to take care of himself in his house since he was ten years old by running a website that's so popular he can sustain himself on the advertising revenue? I doubt any ten-year-old kid could actually do that, and surely somebody would notice and do something about it if an orphaned ten-year-old was living alone – aren't there neighbors, relatives, teachers, government workers, anyone? Mew then appears in his house when injured, and he nurses it back to health, but I'm not sure why Mew would have teleported into this random house on the other side of the region in that state, nor how he knew enough about taking care of an injured Pokémon to heal it completely so quickly, if it was dying when it appeared – again, he's just a ten-year-old kid, and as far as we can tell he has no special expertise there.

I think you could tone down a lot of this to be more plausible (is it really important to the story that he's been living completely on his own, or could he have been taken in by a relative? Is it important that he started an actual business at ten, or could he just have inherited some money from his parents when they died that kept him afloat?), or else establish more details and setup to make it more convincing for things to play out the way they do, if that's very important to the story. Maybe, for instance, if it's very important that ten-year-old Troy personally nurses Mew back to health, his parents were vets and he's always wanted to follow in their footsteps, so he's always taking in injured Pokémon and gets advice on treating them when he needs it from the local Nurse Joy. (Maybe his parents had helped Mew sometime before, even, and that's why it teleported to their house!) But if Troy's passion is helping injured Pokémon, then probably Troy doesn't just happen to also be a coding and business genius; giving him world-class talents willy-nilly just makes it harder to believe in or relate to this kid, if the narrative isn't about that.

So far, the plot following from that backstory appears a lot more mundane than I was expecting – we seem to be following the story of the games pretty closely, with Troy battling the gyms of Kanto on his way to the Pokémon League, only with Mew as his first Pokémon and the vague sense that he wants to avenge his parents. I would have figured people would at least be pretty surprised to battle a random kid with a Mew, but so far no one really seems to react to that! That was a bit disappointing to me – there are a lot of stories adapting the Kanto games, and leaning more into what makes your story unique would help it stand out a lot more. Troy is also winning all his battles pretty easily with his Mew so far, so I'm not feeling a lot of tension about whether he'll succeed. I don't know where you're ultimately headed with the plot, but I'd encourage you to think more about how having Mew could make things difficult for Troy, get him into trouble, or derail his plans, rather than letting it just mean he has an easy ticket to beat all the gyms on a standard Pokémon journey; stories are a lot more exciting when the characters really have to struggle, and when the plot doesn't just check off the boxes of what happens in the games!

That last example is a whole lot of critique, and it's possible it might be a bit overwhelming – but even so, this hypothetical reviewer backs up each point by talking about specific things in the story, why they didn't quite work for them, and suggests ways to address that and make the story work better, instead of just making vague, sweeping judgements. Provided the author is willing to consider the advice, it should be very helpful. You don't have to write this much critique, even if what you're reading does have as many issues as this hypothetical story (often it's good to focus on just a couple of things at a time), and you may of course want to write other things in the review that aren't critique, but you'll want to use something like this general approach to communicating constructive criticism.

Tips for Constructive Criticism

• Be specific. Take concrete examples from the story of what you're talking about; don't just state vaguely that the plot was confusing, or that a character is a Mary-Sue, or that there were grammar mistakes.
• Be kind. Even if you found something frustrating while you read, you're doing this for the author; expressing your frustration with comments that are mocking or vitriolic is not only unpleasant but also counterproductive, as it makes the author less likely to want to take any of your advice. You can even state honestly that you did find something frustrating without being mean about it! (Expressing frustration towards characters in the story, however, in a way that's clearly directed at the character in-universe rather than at the author for writing the character doing that, is generally fine and not criticism! You can call a character an idiot for their choices, so long as it's obvious you don't mean the author is an idiot for their choices.)
• Check your assumptions. This should go without saying, but nonetheless – if you criticize something, try to make sure that you're correct about it. Make sure you're not, for instance, correcting a British author's British spelling of a word to the American spelling, unless you're very sure they meant to write American English. Double-check things before you assert them as fact, and if it's difficult to double-check, have some humility about it. It may infuriate the author and cause them to take you less seriously all in all if you try to correct them on something but you're actually just wrong.
• Think about why something isn't working for you, if it's not something obvious like a grammatical correction. Don't just say this scene was boring; introspect a bit about what exactly made it boring for you. Maybe it had long paragraphs of description that weren't very engaging and had nothing happening, so that you got restless and just wanted to get to the next thing. Maybe the scene went on longer than it needed to when you'd already gotten the point. Maybe it was kind of repeating the same information you already learned in a previous scene and didn't quite seem to add anything new. If you aren't sure, try your best to put your finger on what it might have been, so that you can give at least some insight into what's behind your reaction.
• Make suggestions – but don't hijack the author's story. It's good to suggest fixes where that makes sense – give the correct version of the sentence if you're pointing out a grammar mistake, or give some examples of how something could have worked better for you. But avoid rewriting entire paragraphs for the author as if you expect them to write exactly like you do, or authoritatively instructing them to change things in such and such particular way. The point of giving suggestions, outside of simple spelling or grammar corrections, is to get the author's creative juices flowing and nudge them towards how they could come up with something better, not to tell them to do this particular thing. Your suggestions are not necessarily going to be in line with the author's vision for their story – but they might still give them an idea for something that is. Phrase your suggestions accordingly: not you should do it like this, but maybe something like this, assuming this, or perhaps this?
• Always meet the story on the author's terms. You are not there to decide what story the author should write; you are there to help them write the story that they want to write. Telling someone that the genre they're writing is uninteresting or that the romantic pairing the story is about is gross is not constructive criticism; it's just getting mad the author isn't writing some other story entirely. Don't expect them to change their story's core premises; instead, a good critique should always try to understand what the author really wants to do here, why they're writing this story, and then try to help them make that work.* This is why the example critique of the hypothetical Troy story doesn't say Troy shouldn't have Mew as his starter, no matter how far-fetched or silly that seems as the story stands, but instead suggests ways to set it up more plausibly and lean more into exploring what it would mean for a ten-year-old trainer to have a Mew! The reviewer has surmised that the author is probably mostly invested in this story being about orphaned Troy going on a Pokémon journey with Mew after nursing it back to health, but some of the other details of how it plays out may be more throwaway elements that could be changed without compromising the author's core vision. You may not always guess correctly which elements of the story are fundamental, but always make a good-faith effort. If you absolutely can't get past some crucial premise and this story would never work for you unless it were changed – then this story simply isn't for you, and that's okay. If you wish, you can still review the story's other aspects if you have helpful things to say unrelated to your misgivings about the premise (if relevant, you can mention briefly as context for your reactions that you're not personally a fan of the genre, pairing, etc., but don't go off on a rant about it!) – or you can simply press the back button in your browser and find another story to read.
• Distinguish between real criticisms and matters of personal taste. Your personal preferences are not constructive criticism; even if you would technically enjoy the story more if the main character caught your favorite Pokémon, and nothing about that would compromise the author's vision, that still doesn't mean that's a suggestion that belongs in a review. Similarly, in the Pokémon fandom people have all sorts of different takes on the Pokémon world when they write fanfic (such as exactly how intelligent Pokémon are or how training works), and you may prefer one sort of interpretation of some element of it, but that doesn't mean everyone ought to do it like that or that it's useful critique to tell others to go with your approach instead. It's valid to critique where worldbuilding elements are incongruent with each other or have strange implications as implemented in the story, but once again, critique should aim to help the author make the thing that they want to do work as well as possible, not to try to push them to write things exactly like you would have written them.
• Be humble. You won't always be correct about everything, and your suggestion won't necessarily always be the best way to go about things; everyone will sometimes just miss something, misunderstand something, or have an outlier opinion, and the author knows best what the story they want to write is. Write your critiques accordingly – we're all just fanfic writers having a conversation and working on improving our writing together. I like to try to speak of how something came across to me in reviews, and often qualify something that doesn't make sense to me or such with Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's going on here, but... Perhaps that in particular is not your style, but it always helps to sound down-to-earth.

After Posting Critique

The author won't necessarily immediately agree just because you wrote some crit, even if it was written in good faith and followed all the principles. Maybe some of your criticism was based on a misunderstanding of what was stated or implied in the story; maybe you suggested changing something you thought was throwaway that is actually very important to the author's vision for this story; maybe they did give your critique fair consideration and understand where you're coming from but still disagree on its impact for the story; often people are just defensive of creations they've put a lot of work into and will be kneejerk dismissive of criticisms even when they're very valid; and you can inadvertently strike a nerve even if you tried to be kind, which might make the author snap back. But good, well-considered, constructive criticism is valuable and may end up helping the author even if they don't immediately or directly act on it – don't feel like you necessarily wasted your time even if the response isn't immediately enthusiastic. They might still take some of your advice on board in some way later in the story or in other stories they might write in the future. Even if you criticized something based on a total misunderstanding, it can still be useful – perhaps the author might realize they'd like to make something clearer, in case other readers might have the same misunderstanding!

Sometimes it's worth writing a follow-up response, if you'd like to clarify something, explain some of your points better if you think it would help, or just respond to any questions the author had for you. Avoid starting an argument or getting too insistent, though: ultimately, the author does not need to implement your critique if they don't want to.

Criticizing Older Works

When writing constructive criticism about something that a writer wrote long ago, what you're reading isn't necessarily representative of what they'd write today, and it's entirely possible your criticism could be simply redundant – perhaps they'd have many of the same critiques if they reread it themselves. This is why it's generally not a great idea to give much of a critical review on a completed story that is years old – you may simply be wasting your time pointing out things the author is already aware of, and unless they go on to rewrite this story in its entirety, your criticisms will never be implemented as such.

The first chapters of a story that is still being written, however, are a bit of a different matter. The author is obviously still interested in the story, and presumably wants to make it the best it can be, but the early chapters might have been written years ago – how do you go about reviewing those?

The best way to review a long, ongoing piece of work is to read it in its entirety (thus far) before posting a review of any part of it. That way you can have a better overview of what the author has grown out of, so to speak, and what they have not. If the writing is clunky in the first chapters, you might find that it's fine in the later ones, sparing you the need to comment on it more than briefly, for instance. If the main character feels like a bit of a Mary-Sue at the start but stops exhibiting those qualities in later chapters, you can probably presume that the author knows better now. However, it may still be worth mentioning if these things were putting you off early on, just to help the author gauge how much of an impact it has for new readers.

But often reading through the entirety of a story before reviewing it would be challenging. Maybe you don't even know if you'll get through the whole story. In that case, you might as well review just a few chapters at a time, but when it comes to critique it's worth being conscious of the possibility you might be beating a dead horse. It might be good to try to find out what the author thinks of the early chapters – if they talk about them being badly written or the main characters being flat in them, say, it's not worth spending a lot of words criticizing those things, because they're clearly already aware. If they don't, critique might be helpful, but it's probably still worth keeping it relatively brief and not hammering on it too hard; you can explain how it's affecting your impressions as you read, but you don't necessarily need to be in advice mode. It's good to indicate you're aware that these chapters are old and avoid sounding like you're judging their current writing abilities.

Constructive Praise

Now, there's a term you don't hear very often. Praise, surprisingly enough, follows many of the same principles as criticism. In our mountain hike analogy, the praiseworthy parts might be the beautiful views of the valleys and rivers below: they're a lot more straightforward to see and point to than rare birds and don't need quite as much thought by default – but if you can get your friend to stop and really take it in and appreciate what they're seeing, that's going to make your hike even more magical.

Praise, obviously, serves a different purpose than criticism does. While criticism is aimed at helping the author improve the weak points in their writing, praise is helpful in a more subtle way. Primarily, it is encouraging: you can give an author confidence and motivation by telling them what they're doing well, and conversely, authors can get dispirited and lose motivation to continue if they feel like nobody is actually enjoying reading their work. Praise can also help to 'balance out' criticism: where a purely negative review might be dispiriting for the author even if it's constructive, seeing you praise other parts of the story can counteract that, make them feel better about the review overall, and make them more likely to be able to take your critiques on board, too. (It's never good to be dishonest about your thoughts – don't just sort of make up things to praise if you don't actually mean it – but learning to identify what's fun, inventive, charming or well done in a story instead of just coming up with nitpicks is a skill well worth developing if you lean very critical!)

But praise can also legitimately be constructive. You can tell the author what they did right in a way that helps them do the same again in the future and keep developing their strengths. Just like with constructive criticism, constructive praise needs to be specific about what you liked and why you liked it. Let's see an example:

Ooh, I loved the battle in this chapter. You had more varied strategy going on here than usual, and you really capitalized on these unusual moves, like Trick Room and Gravity, that you don't see every day; it kept me guessing as to what the characters would do next and how the whole thing would turn out. It also gave the Pokémon characters more room to be active characters responding to what's going on in ways unique to them; Staraptor bringing out his inner Fighting-type under the Gravity effect was great, as was Ninjask throwing a fit at all these shenanigans. It was a lot of fun to read!

That's nicely specific, and it's all constructive praise. While it doesn't tell the author to do anything they hadn't already figured out how to do by themselves, the positive response immediately tells the author they were taking a step in the right direction and that what they were doing worked for this reader. If they were deliberately experimenting with more varied battle strategies, it tells them someone noticed and loved it, confirming they were successful and should keep doing more of that with their battles – and if they just sort of happened to write this battle like this, it will help them realize why they've stumbled upon something great and how to keep going consciously in that direction, even if they weren't thinking too hard about it when they wrote it.

When praising somebody's work, it's always better to praise particular things as opposed to writing a generic "I love it, write more" one-liner, in all aspects of what praise can do for the author. Ultimately, while a positive one-liner is great and the author will almost certainly appreciate just hearing that you read and enjoyed their work (certainly more than not hearing anything from you at all – don't let the idea that praise is better if it's constructive scare you away from commenting at all!), it's a lot more exciting to hear some insight into what you liked about it and why. Naming particular things that you liked shows the author that you really did read it and pay attention, noticed particular things rather than simply skimming and moving on to the next story, and that in itself means a lot, even if you can't quite articulate why you liked them so much or if you feel like your reasons sound dumb. A detailed review full of constructive praise is one of the best gifts you can give to an author who wrote something you really liked – they'll not only love to hear about why you loved it, but it may help them make their subsequent work even better, with even more of the things that you liked.

Tips for Constructive Praise

• Once again, try to be specific about what you liked. Just as with constructive criticism, naming concrete things from the story is better than vague, broad statements – though with praise, there's nothing wrong with also making some vaguer statements! If you loved everything about the story, you can absolutely say that, but it's still good to try to think of some examples of things that stood out. If you really loved a particular scene, or a particular character, or a particular twist, or even a particular turn of phrase, name them – that's author candy.
• Again, try to mull over why you liked this particular thing. It's okay if you can't actually articulate it – the author will still love to hear you liked it even if you're not sure why – but if you can elaborate, that's both even more validating for the author and gives more insight into how they can continue to write stuff you will love.
• Mention when something made you feel strong emotions. Causing an emotional reaction in the reader is generally high praise! Authors love to hear that you felt things reading their work; all the better if you can point to individual lines that hit particularly hard and why. This can include negative emotions, when those are reactions to the in-universe happenings and obviously intended by the author; for example, if you're emotionally devastated by a particularly poignant character death, that's probably praise and the author absolutely wants to hear about it. Knowing that your emotional punches are working is not only delightful but also very useful feedback.
• Notice and mention where the author has improved over time. This is especially important if you've given them a critical review before – letting the author know they're on the right track is both satisfying for them and helps them continue to improve.
• Tell them if the plot has piqued your interest, for a story you haven't finished. Mention mysteries that intrigued you, stuff that has made you curious to keep going, anything you're excited to see resolved. Hearing you're interested in where things are going gets the author excited to keep writing more or to see your reaction to later chapters – and also gives them valuable insight into how they're doing at hooking the reader in!
• It's good to start and end on positive notes. The 'compliment sandwich', where you start and end a review with something positive, is a nice way to give your review an overall positive and encouraging impression, even if there's more neutral or critical feedback in the middle. Starting by talking about some of your favorite aspects of the story helps the author get pumped about your feedback and trust it, and returning to it at the end with something encouraging reassures them that they should keep at it. Don't be disingenuous about what you thought, but if you can arrange your review this way, it's a good way to go about it.

Other Commentary

Reviews don't have to be all constructive critique or praise to be helpful – it can be just as valuable to make more neutral comments, too!

These sorts of neutral comments include questions or comments about the progression of the plot or the characters, speculation about what you think might happen in the future of the story, or your internal reaction to particular lines or scenes even when it's a more neutral sort of reaction rather than praise or criticism – did something surprise you? Did it make you think differently about something that happened earlier? Are you wondering why a character did something? What sort of impression does this scene give of the characters in it? Do you think this plot point will turn out to be important later? All kinds of reactions like this can give valuable insight into what a reader may be thinking as they read the story, and that's incredibly useful to the author. If you're not sure you have too much to say in terms of praise or criticism, or aren't confident in your ability to identify why something worked or didn't work well for you, then you can't go wrong with just writing down these sorts of reactions and making them the meat of your review.

It can be useful to take down notes or even write your reactions as you go – open a text file or notes app and write what you're thinking in there live as you read and then integrate those thoughts into the review. However, if you'd rather read in one go without interrupting yourself to take notes, that's fine too. If you need to, you can re-skim the chapter after reading it once to remind yourself what you were thinking at critical moments, or just write down what you remember, if you have a good memory.

Responding to Criticism

So somebody has just posted a critical review of a story. How to respond?

As the Author

If the review upset you in any fashion, the absolute first thing to do is to cool down. Criticism can absolutely touch a nerve even if it's well-intentioned and constructive, and if you aren't very used to it and respond to a critical review the moment you see it, it's easy to be kneejerk dismissive and snappy in a way you might regret later, even if you think you're being very reasonable at the time. Trust me; I've been there, too. Just read the review, take a few deep breaths, and go do something else for at least a couple of hours. If you weren't at all bothered by the review, of course, you don't need this step so much – though it can still often be easier to respond thoughtfully if you give it a bit of time to sink in as you mull it over.

Either way, go back and read the review again after giving it some time and distance. First, is it honest constructive criticism or just flaming? This hinges largely on how specific the criticism is and whether it involves personal insults or mockery. Obviously, if someone is outright insulting you as a person, you aren't obligated to give them the time of day, and it might be reportable to the platform you posted on, depending on its rules – and if the 'critique' is just a bunch of vague assertions that the story or aspects of it are bad without attempting to explain why or point you toward how it could be improved, that may be less reportable but it's not a useful good-faith review and it's not constructive. (Platforms like Archive of Our Own even sometimes have bots posting vague 'critical' comments like this copy-pasted to thousands of fics, often accusing the author of using AI or the like – don't be fooled, and always ignore and delete such comments. Remember: any real, good-faith constructive criticism will be specific enough that it could not possibly be copy-pasted to a bunch of other fics!)

Thus, "reviews" like this are just flames:

God, this is inane. You and people like you are the problem with this fandom.

This really wasn't very good, sorry. It's badly written, the main character is a complete Gary-Stu, and it completely defies all logic in too many places to count. The plot looks horribly generic as well.

Your writing style is completely soulless, the characters feel like they have no internality, and the plot is utterly basic. I ran this through an AI detector and it came out as 70% written by Claude.

Lugia isn't a Water-type, you moron.

While something like that last one may have a point worth taking on board somewhere in there (Lugia is indeed a Psychic/Flying-type, and if your fic stated otherwise you may want to correct that), the straight-up insult shows this person isn't here to help you improve your writing in good faith, and even if you make the correction, you're under no obligation to engage with this person like they're actually trying to help.

If the review does not contain personal insults, though, and is making an effort to point to specific things about the story that are worth improving and how, then it is probably a good-faith attempt at constructive criticism – even if it's kind of harsh in tone or if the critique isn't actually very good. A lot of people, especially teens, may default to a very blunt tone on the internet that can come across as rude even when it wasn't really meant to be (I definitely did this as a teen). In these cases, it's worth trying to look past the tone or any particular nerves it may have struck, and remember that if the critic went to the trouble, they probably do want to help you improve your work and not break you down. Try to carefully consider their points and see whether you can take any of them on board. And it may be worth replying to their review to answer any questions they had, respond to their criticisms, and thank them for their time.

When considering a critical review, it's always worth bearing in mind that if one reader had a given reaction or was bothered by something, it's very possible other readers out there may be having that same reaction, even if they aren't telling you about it. This is a large part of why constructive reviews are helpful: it's one person's opinion, but it may represent a larger number of readers. For each critical point made in the review, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you understand what they're talking about? If it's unclear to you what they're saying or suggesting or what they mean by a certain point, it's usually worth asking for clarification. Usually a constructive reviewer would be happy to explain better what they mean.
• Is the reviewer misunderstanding your intentions somehow or making incorrect assumptions about you or the story? For instance, are they assuming a character is meant to be correct about something when they aren't, or criticizing a plot point for not making sense when they've just misunderstood how it worked? If so, you'll probably want to politely explain what your intentions were and clarify any misunderstandings. But it's also worth considering why the reviewer would misunderstand this; can something be tweaked to make your intentions clearer? Remember, if one reader got some particular impression, it's quite possible others might also get the same impression for similar reasons, unless it's very obvious they just had some kind of brainfart. There is a balancing act here, of course: not everything ought to be spelled out maximally and immediately, and sometimes you may conclude it's okay if readers think this at this point in the story or otherwise don't get what you were going for. If you do conclude there's something you'd like to do to address it, though, it's good to note this in your response; much like authors love to hear when you liked something, reviewers usually love to hear when their feedback has been useful.
• Are they suggesting a change which would undermine the very point of the story? If so, explain this and why it is important to you to keep this as is. Do remember, though, that criticizing how an element is used is not the same as demanding you remove it altogether. Sometimes, when a premise is offputting to a portion of your audience in one way or another, you could make it go down better by adjusting the execution or the context around it in some way: if someone balks at a trainer getting a legendary as a starter from Professor Oak, it may be worth considering whether you could make the way the legendary is obtained more reasonable, even if the entire point of your fic is for the trainer to have a legendary starter. Other times, though, especially with an inherently absurd premise, you may be willing to simply shrug: maybe your story is only ever going to be for people who are willing to just go with it.
• Is the comment something plainly subjective that you disagree with? If so, you can say that. Do try your hardest not to just dismiss all criticism as subjective, though: don't just figure anything that doesn't really bother you or your current fans personally is "just a matter of taste". There are distinct commonalities to what people tend to consider good writing and want to read, and if there's any sense in which you'd like to improve your writing, especially if you ever want to get into traditional publishing, you really should generally be striving toward those things (except where breaking those rules serves some very specific purpose): this includes standard spelling, grammar and punctuation, lucid prose that reads smoothly, three-dimensional characters whose actions track from their point of view, pacing that keeps the reader engaged, and plot progression that makes sense given how the world works. Critique aimed at how you're doing on those goals isn't subjective in this way; I'm referring to comments like, "I think character X should catch Pokémon Y, not Z, because Y is much cooler," or, "Ash should be with Dawn, not Misty," here, not, "You're punctuating dialogue incorrectly."
• Do you believe their suggestion to be bad advice, at least in this case? Sometimes, a criticism is aimed at improving your work on those common metrics of good writing, but that doesn't always mean the critic is right. Sometimes someone has the wrong idea about punctuation and is trying to correct you from the right way to do it to the wrong way; sometimes someone insists that something would be better if you did it in a particular way, but you already thought very long and hard about what they're suggesting and went with what you did instead for well-considered reasons that you still stand by. Do, again, try to be careful with this: don't just dismiss any criticism out of hand because you like it this way. If the reviewer is not simply objectively incorrect about something, you should give their point some serious consideration, even if your first kneejerk thought is that changing it would be worse; humans tend to be biased towards thoughts they're used to, so that first kneejerk thought is likely to be skewed towards whatever you're already doing. If you do conclude even on reflection that you're not taking their advice, you could let them know your reasons – if they're just incorrect on something, in particular, they may want to know!

If none of the above applies, you have a critique worth taking on board in some way or another. Maybe you'd now like to make some revisions to your story to fix or adjust something they pointed out; maybe you'll just keep it in mind for later, either for later chapters of this same story, some hypothetical future revision of the whole thing, or your later work.

I would recommend always thanking the reviewer for taking time out of their day to review your story (if they did so in good faith), even if you ultimately concluded none of their criticisms were actionable advice. It's still useful insight into one reader's thought process, and detailed reviews take a lot of time and effort to write – appreciating at least the time that went into it encourages them to read and review more of your work, as well as encouraging other readers to go ahead and comment.

As a Reader

So somebody has just posted a critical review on your favorite story. How do you react?

The first thing you should keep in mind that the author is going to see the review; they don't need you to elaborately respond to all of the reviewer's points. Mostly, if you are dead certain that the reviewer is objectively incorrect about something or that it would make the story worse if the author implemented some of the critic's advice, you could explain your take on it, but – just as above – don't just kneejerk decide every criticism is wrong because the story's great as it is. If you're going to disagree, it should be based on very sound, considered reasons.

Do not, under any circumstances...

• ...tell the author to just ignore the other reviewer – you can explain how you feel about things, but ultimately it's up to the author to determine what they want to do with their story and how they feel about the review.
• ...post just to agree with somebody else who disagreed with the other reviewer, even if that is the author. Ganging up on a critic is just mob behaviour and discourages other people from reviewing.
• ...insult the other reviewer or generally make them feel unwelcome. They're entitled to their opinion, whether you like it or not, provided it's good-faith criticism and not just a flame.
• ...flock to the reviewer's own fic so that you can announce it's worse than the fic they were criticizing. If you're going into their story in order to pick it apart as some act of vengeance, that's just being petty and not good-faith critique – and even if the critic's fic were bad, that wouldn't say anything by itself about how valid their review on some other fic is!

Reviewing for Readers

Reviewing for readers is a bit of a different beast than reviewing for the author. Instead of trying to help the author improve the work, you're trying to advise other potential readers on what it's about and whether they might enjoy it, as well as give commentary on how well it's executed and whether you'd ultimately consider it worth reading.

Because of these different goals, a review for readers should always briefly summarize the plot of the story, while generally staying away from any real spoilers, and then give a general idea of the quality of each individual element of the story. You will generally be reviewing a complete work, or at least one that's substantial enough to sensibly comment on its quality as a whole. This advantage helpfully allows you a better overview of the story, its plot and exactly what it is about before you start trying to summarize it.

Plot Summaries

The plot summary in a review for readers is designed to inform the reader what the story is fundamentally about and give an idea of what kind of thing to expect from how it plays out. As the target audience are here generally potential readers who have not read the story already but may do so in the future, the information you give should mostly be limited to what is explained in the opening chunk, the 'Exposition' phase, of the story. That information is probably essentially something along the lines of, "Meet [character], a [description], who after [inciting incident] sets out to [do something]." You could sum up the exposition of a lot of classic stories in that exact format:

First arc of the Pokémon anime: Meet Ash Ketchum, a boy from Pallet Town, who after receiving an unruly Pikachu from Professor Oak sets out to become a Pokémon Master.

The Troy story: Meet Troy, an orphan who has been taking care of himself since he was ten, who after Mew appears in his house sets out to become the League Champion and avenge the death of his parents.

The Lord of the Rings: Meet Frodo Baggins, a hobbit, who after the wizard Gandalf tells him that the invisibility ring his uncle Bilbo owned was in fact an evil object that can raise a Dark Lord to power sets out to destroy the ring.

Star Wars: Meet Luke Skywalker, a young man who lives on a distant planet, who after the murder of his aunt and uncle with whom he lived sets out to become a Jedi Knight.

This is not how you should actually phrase your plot summary, and obviously things can get more complex in less traditionally structured stories with a larger number of main characters, but it gives a basic idea of what to say in it. After that you can say something generally suggesting how the plot that follows plays out: "Ash then meets a hotheaded redhead named Misty and a lovesick gym leader named Brock, and together they travel across the region of Kanto as Ash tries to fight his way to the Pokémon League. Meanwhile, a group of thugs called Team Rocket repeatedly tries to capture his Pikachu."

Never include important plot points or ending details in the summary of a review for potential readers – don't then go on to say, "At one point he releases Pikachu but it comes back to him," or, "He places sixteenth in the League Finals," because that's probably information readers will want to find out as they read the story. But if there's a big twist or revelation as part of the initial exposition phase of the story (usually this would be the inciting incident of the plot), you should generally include that, so as to be able to give an actual idea what the plot is about. Special exceptions can be made to that if the early twist is something particularly worth experiencing for oneself, but only rarely.

Evaluation

After the plot summary, proceed with an evaluation of the story's qualities. Are the characters interesting and believable? Does the plot make sense? Is it exciting, if that's what it was meant to be? Is the writing style readable and appropriate? Does it get the emotions the author was going for across? Is the pacing well done? Is the ending satisfying? When it comes to amateur fiction posted online, like fanfiction, are the author's spelling, grammar and punctuation acceptable? Tackle these topics and whatever else you might think of as being relevant to whether a potential reader might enjoy it, in whatever order you like. Unlike in reviews for the author, you'll not want to be too specific; you'll just want to grade how the story overall fares in these areas, name an example if it would help to illustrate your point, and perhaps note if some particular aspect becomes notably better or worse as the story goes on. If particular parts of the plot really warrant specific comment, you can briefly explain them if they are unimportant, or just refer to them as "the big twist" or "a particular revelation" if they are too important to spoil.

You should generally try to point out both the better and worse qualities of the story, so as to give a stronger idea of what the experience is like overall; try to think particularly about what's the best and worst thing about it and bring that out in the evaluation.

Conclusion

After evaluating each individual quality of the story, you'll want to sum up the review. You can mention each of the aspects you commented on, or at least the most important ones, and what you thought of them again. Then present an overall evaluation of the story as a whole: did the good outweigh the bad? Was it enjoyable overall? Did it do what the author meant it to do? What strengthened it and what dragged it down? How much? Is it, ultimately, worth reading?

When you have answered those questions, just wrap it up and consider yourself done with the writing of the review.

Number Ratings

In reviews for readers it is often good to give a numerical overall rating, whether a grade out of ten or a hundred or a number of stars out of four or five in order to clarify your overall feelings and have a quick grade that people can look at if they can't be bothered to read the whole review and just want to know if they should read it or not.

When grading in numbers, remember not to be too generous with perfect scores. Five stars, ten out of ten or whatever should be reserved for true masterpieces only; otherwise, after all, you have no way to express when something really is a true masterpiece. Likewise, there should be very few things you read in your life that deserve a zero (or one, whichever is the lowest on your scale). Use them sparingly and go with the mid-numbers more often.

An Example

Here's yet another one of those hypothetical reviews, this time one for readers, written for some sort of a hypothetical general Pokémon fanfiction e-zine (which would be neat, but unfortunately does not exist to my knowledge). (All names and plotlines are just the first things that popped into my head and have no connection with any real-life stories or persons.)

Pokémon Ultimatum: Balance of the Dragons has hardly gone unnoticed by anyone as it finally came to a close last month after its three-year run. Its author, SilverSuicune146, has tirelessly promoted it at multiple forums as a trainer fic with a twist for all this time, but now the last chapter has been posted and the story has been moved to the archives for ages to come while the author plans a sequel and an official website.

The story starts out innocently enough: a hotheaded ten-year-old girl named Sarah Cleaver sets out on a Pokémon journey in the made-up region of Laria with the Squirtle she receives from her local tree professor, determined to become the first female League Champion in the region's Pokémon training history. She catches a number of Pokémon and starts to collect badges, but is soon distracted by the mysterious Team Photon, which she learns is plotting to capture and kill or weaken the legendary dragon of darkness, Myrkian, in the hope that it will eliminate evil from the world. After a teenage boy she meets, Damien, convinces her that this would disrupt the balance of the world and possibly destroy it, they set out to stop their plans.

It all sounds a bit clichéd, and it is. While the team's goal is on the face of it noble, the team members seem like your average thugs more than people with high ideologies, and only the team leader really comes across like he believes in the team's ostensible goal. Even then, he makes it clear from the moment we meet him that he is a bad guy who deserves to be stopped: he speaks of his hatred of the dragon Myrkian in cartoonishly evil terms, and after that scene it's hard to see the noble goal as much more than an excuse and Team Photon as much more than your standard evil team. There are elements of the plot which make it a bit more interesting than your average fight-the-evil-team story (most notably the prevailing question of whether neutralizing Myrkian's power really could rid the world of evil and whether this would make it right, which is a recurring ethical question for the main characters and gets some interesting focus there, even if not with Team Photon itself), but the team itself is not quite utilized to its full potential. The final battle is nicely written, but ultimately the ending is predictable by the time we get there, telegraphed quite a few chapters in advance, and the resolution holds few surprises.

The characters are rather stereotypical to start with, particularly Sarah, who seems like the average newbie trainer who dreams of being the League Champion, only with this somewhat trite feminist twist. Early on, Sarah breezes through battles with minimal struggle, and one expects her to reach her goal with a bland ease, even as the reader wonders why no other woman has done this before; by chapter ten or so though, this flat Mary-Sue quality has been toned down considerably, and she quickly grows more human dimensions over the course of the following arcs. She seems unusually mature for a ten-year-old at times, perhaps, but that's par for the course in this fandom.

Damien doesn't get as much development, but the sense of how long he's been chasing Team Photon is tangible and fun, and while it feels a little contrived that he would bring Sarah on board so easily, their relationship is well portrayed and becomes quite sweet, particularly towards the end. The minor characters are less engaging; many seem shallow and stereotypical, particularly the rank and file of Team Photon. Pokémon characters are generally decently portrayed; the (non-legendary) Pokémon are intermediate between the animalistic and humanlike views of Pokémon intelligence, and it works out well enough, although none of the Pokémon characters truly stand out.

The setting and writing style are probably the fic's strongest points. While SilverSuicune146's prose leaned a little awkward in the first chapters, this being his first step into writing, it did not take him long to develop a highly readable, efficient, and punchy prose style which has helped the story become as popular as it is. He goes all out in dramatic moments without veering into melodrama or purple prose, and the battles are intense, gripping and always a joy to read. The setting of Laria is crisply portrayed with rich worldbuilding peppered smoothly into the story, and SilverSuicune146 has chosen to give every gym in the region a unique set of creative rules, which makes each one memorable and fun. This is one of the primary factors in making the story as enjoyable as it is.

Pokémon Ultimatum: Balance of the Dragons, despite the clichéd plot and underdeveloped antagonists, is an entertaining read. The main characters develop over the course of the story and feel like old friends by the time you finish it, outweighing the shallower minor characters and antagonists. One cannot help thinking, however, that such an obviously talented author could have done more with the fascinating region and interesting basic concept than what he ultimately did. The story is pulled down towards the end by its predictability and the weak antagonists, although Sarah's character and her unique relationship with Damien keeps the reader's interest afloat. It's enjoyable on the whole, but not for those who like to be surprised.

Page last modified December 9 2025 at 13:10 UTC

Post comment

Name*

E-mail

Website address

Website name

Comments*

Please type the name of the above Pokémon into this box*: The above sprite has a 1/8192 chance of being shiny. (Modern browsers will give it a yellow glow if so.)

Submit message Reset

Comments

No comments on this page as of yet.