Critiquing can evoke the dark side of a reviewer. Some misled reviewers use these dark and loathsome feelings instead of logic, wisdom, and common sense to guide their critiques. These unfortunate souls have not yet learned the valuable lesson Kurt Vonnegut taught when he said “any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a story is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”

When you are critiquing don’t waste your time mutilating the sundae. Spend your time telling the author how to improve it; after all, a good critique provides specific ideas about how to improve. Praising or degrading without thorough explanation is a complete waste of your time and the author’s. As writers shouldn’t we be able to constructively present creative ways to help each other improve our works?

Do you enjoy eating a nice chocolaty sundae? If so please join our writing group and satisfy that lingering hunger for help.

Jacob

Our beta period will end on January 10, 2009. This will change a few things on our site.

• We will always offer a free account. A free account will allow members to give and receive peer critiques, but free accounts will not have access to the premium features. We will update the FAQ page by January 10 to reflect which features will be available to free members.
• All active members who joined Review Fuse before December 23, 2008 have been upgraded to a premium membership. These premium accounts will expire on July 1, 2009. These members will have a chance in February to extend their premium membership through July 1, 2010 for only $14.95.
  • An active member is anyone who has used Review Fuse in the last 2 months.
• All members who joined Review Fuse after December 23, 2008 can upgrade their free account to premium at no cost through January 9, 2009. These members will also be given a chance in February to extend their premium access for only $14.95.
• From January 10, 2009 through March 10, 2009 we will offer a special rate to new members who join our writing community. They will be able to purchase premium access for $29.95. After March 10 we will charge $49.95 for a premium account.

Please let us know if you have any questions and join Review Fuse now in order to take advantage of this great deal.

Jacob

by Annette Lyon

A recent discussion among some writer friends had some asking the question: “Is WAS a bad word?”

The talk had a lot of writers developing WAS-phobia, because face it, sometimes WAS is bad to use in writing. But why? And how can you get rid of it?

The answers are pretty simple. Using WAS isn’t always a bad thing, but often it is, because there’s generally a better (READ: STRONGER) way of saying what you’re trying to say.

Here’s some simple guidelines:

1. Find a case of “was” and chances are you just found a case of “tell” instead of “show.”

For example: Emily was embarrassed.

Pull out “was” and replace it with vivid details: Emily’s flushed cheeks, her desire for the ground to open up beneath her and swallow her up. Now the reader knows she’s embarrassed, because you just showed it. Search for instances of whenever your character WAS something, and give showing details in its place.

2. Yank WAS 90% of the time when it’s connected to an ING verb.

For example: He was sitting. He was talking. He was writing.

Just say: He sat. He talked. He wrote. Generally speaking, the plain old past tense is more effective. It’s a punchier, stronger verb form.

Sometimes you can find an even stronger verb altogether. Instead of walked, how about stormed, strode, or sauntered?

Once I did a search for “was” in a manuscript (most word processors can do this quite easily) and challenged myself to have no more than one “was” per page. This required me to find strong verbs. I amazed myself at the creative verbs I came up with!

3. Passive voice.

Passive voice happens when things are acted upon instead of doing the acting themselves. But stories and conflict are most exciting when your characters are the ones who act, so bag the passive voice whenever possible.

Example: The boy was bitten by the dog.

Instead, say: The dog bit the boy.

Make it direct. Passive voice adds words to sentences, and fewer words makes a tighter story anyway. Even better, show the dog biting the boy in a scene. Give us action and conflict!

If your WAS fits another category than any of the three above, it might be just fine. Don’t panic; you can keep it. But when in doubt about a stray WAS, try to get rid of it. There’s a good chance you can find a way to notch up your verbs and make your sentence stronger.

Annette Lyon is Utah’s 2007 Best of State medalist for fiction and 2007 Whitney Award finalist. Her sixth novel, Tower of Strength, will be released March 2009. She edits for Precision Editing Group and blogs at The Lyon’s Tale.

To kick off the New Year, Review Fuse is offering a free writing contest to our members. The winner will be awarded a $50 Amazon.com gift card. In order to qualify for this contest you must have:

• Joined Review Fuse on or before January 5, 2009.
• Submitted at least 2 works for review any time before January 5, 2009.
• Completed all of your assigned reviews by January 15, 2009.

To enter the contest, write a critique of Review Fuse following these guidelines:

1. Include your overall thoughts and impressions about Review Fuse.
2. Talk about what you like most about the site.
3. Most importantly, tell us what needs the most improvement at Review Fuse? What areas are we lacking in? Which pages are hard to use?
4. Your critique must be posted on your blog and the link to your critique emailed to contest@reviewfuse.com by January 17, 2009 with the subject line: Review Fuse Review. If you don’t have a blog, don’t fret. You can easily start one and it’s a great way to practice your writing. We suggest Blogger or Wordpress.

The winner of the contest will be determined by the following:

• Was this review helpful to the Review Fuse Team?
• Was the review phrased in a constructive manner?
• Did the reviewer provide sufficient detail to justify their review?
• Did the reviewer provide new ideas or insights to the website?
• Did the reviewer explain their ideas and critiques in a manner that is easy to understand?

We are not looking for endless praise, although some wouldn’t hurt. We are primarily looking for ways to improve the website. There are just a few days before this contest starts, if you join Review Fuse now you can still qualify.

Jacob