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Review Fuse Team

After you receive a critique we encourage you rate it. Rating the critique allows you to tell the reviewer how helpful, constructive, detailed, insightful, and understandable the review was. Most members consistently rate their reviews very well in all areas except insightfulness. Why is it hard to give an insightful critique?

To be insightful you have to apprehend the true nature of the work you are critiquing. You have to shrewdly penetrate the surface of the writing to perceive its inner workings while paying attention to the details. You have to boldly tell the author what is wrong with their writing while remaining tactful and intelligent. You have to work.

Nothing is so good or poor that you cannot insightfully help the author. It’s not easy to do! If you wanted ‘easy’ you would be in front of the TV wasting your time instead of putting pen to paper and stretching your imagination.

If you take the time required to insightfully analyze someone else’s writing you will greatly enhance your own writing abilities. Are you ready to improve by critiquing others? If so upload your writing now and get started.

Jacob

I wanted to add to my previous post about researching literary agents. I have found a few online resources that will help you capture the interest of a legitimate agent.

• Agent Query
  • One of the largest databases of literary agents
• Agent Research
  • This is the love connection of agent sites. They try to match you with the literary agent who is right for your work.
• Writer Beware
  • Warnings about literary fraud and other schemes, scams, and pitfalls that target writers

Jacob

Tearing someone’s work apart is easy. Telling someone they are a genius is easy. Providing a critique that helps an author improve is hard. I recommend following these guidelines when giving a critique.

1. Critique the writing not the person. Never say “you need to improve.”
2. Be useful. Your goal is to help the author improve.
3. Find something positive to say. If you start by saying something positive the reviewee will be open to accepting your help. Stupid? Perhaps. But this is a technique remarkably effective. If you can’t find anything positive to say then let the assigned review expire.
4. Be respectful. You don’t know how much time and effort someone has put into the work. Don’t assume what they have and have not done.
5. Be balanced. Don’t focus exclusively on the good or bad. Mix it up, it makes the critique easier to digest and more educational. I try to point out one positive thing for every five weakness I identify.
6. Pick your battles. If you think everything is terrible, then just pick one of two areas to focus the critique on. Your goal is to help the writer improve not teach him everything they need to know about writing.
7. Use it as an opportunity to learn and improve your own writing.
8. Don’t say “I love it” or “I hate it”. Both statements are too subjective to be useful.
9. Try to be objective. If you love vampire westerns and you have been asked to critique a sci-fi romance piece tell the author this is not your favorite gene to read. Then try to enjoy it.
10. Help the author being critiqued improve.

Do you want to have your writing critiqued? Join our online writing group and participate in the peer critique process with us.

Jacob

If you have contacts in the publishing world use them to get your work in front of an agent. If don’t have a contact then make a list of the top 10 agents you want to work with and send each one a customized query letter.

The query letter is a one page attention grabbing letter that provides an agent with enough information about you and your project to spark their interest. Agents shuffle through hundreds of pages of manuscripts and query letters each month. Don’t waste their time by sending them unsolicited boredom. Be concise and entertaining. Your query letter should follow this format:

1. Paragraph 1 - The Teaser
   Write the most attention grabbing sentence of your life. If you have walked on the moon or graduated at the top of our Ivey League class let them know. If you are like the rests of use, find a nice fit between who you are and what your book is about. For example, “I have been a health inspector for 25 years and I propose to write a book about what you are really paying for when you go out to eat.” The combination of who you are and the topic of you book needs to be a believable and provide a compelling reason to read more. Being able to match who you are with what you intend to write will generally be enough to get the agent to read the second paragraph.
2. Paragraph 2 - Enlarge the Idea
   Expound about what you intend to write about. Include examples and anecdotes that exemplify your idea. Show off your best material. Writing a good paragraph about your book gives the agent some confidence that you can actually write the book.
3. Paragraph 3 – You You You
   Now that you have shown you have a good idea for a book show that you are the best person to write it. The two most common ways to show you are the best is by describing relevant facts that show the connection between you and your idea, and by flexing academic credentials.
4. Paragraph 4 – Close It
   Tell the agent you are only showing your proposal to only one agent at a time, and only show you proposal to one agent at a time. Agents hate worrying that someone else is going to steal their gem. Tell the agent why you decided to send your query letter to them. Give them your phone number, email address, and home or work address.

Remember to make your query letter exciting. Use it to make the agents crave more of your writing. Do not exceed one page or your letter will go into the trash instead of in front of their eyes.

Do you want to have a chapter of your novel critiqued? Join Review Fuse and let us help you refine your novel.

Jacob

About once a week I get a support email from a distraught member that goes something like this: My story was just critiqued by Darth Vader. He mercilessly tore my work apart. How could you let someone do this to me?

I usually try to respond with soothing words that calm these poor souls. However, just between you and me, this is what I want to say: Congratulations! You received a real critique. You should thank Darth Vader for caring enough to help you improve. Take his ideas and run with them, your work will probably improve if you do. And don’t forget to send him a thank you note.

Why do people act so surprised and distraught when they receive a good critique on a peer critiqued writing group website?

Jacob

*See all of our writing contests

Purpose: Have fun, enjoy the competition, and become a better poet by participating in our peer critique process for this contest.

Who Can Enter: This contest is open to all poets. All submissions must be posted and assigned critiques completed by September 25, 2009. Poems must be 50 lines or fewer. You may post additional poems to this site for critique, but only one poem will be eligible for this contest.

Subject Matter: Open, you choose. The poem should adhere to our content policy.

Prizes: The winner of this contest will receive $100.

How to Enter: It’s pretty easy

1. Create a free account or sign in for existing members.
2. Upload your poem; make sure you select “Poetry Contest (Open Theme) as the category.
3. Submit your poem for peer critique.
4. Complete your assigned reviews, this is discussed more below.

Decisions: There will be 3 rounds of judging.

1. Authors from the Review Fuse staff will select the 10 best poems for Round 2.
2. Of these 10 poems, Review Fuse management will select the 5 authors who gave the most detailed and well thought out critiques of their peer’s poetry for Round 3.
3. The winner will then be selected by 3 creative writing and poetry professors.

• Find out more about what our judges think great poetry is.

Entry Fee: There are no entry fees or purchases of any kind required to enter and win the contest. After you submit your poem to the contest you will be required to complete assigned critiques of other poets (4 for free members and 2 for premium members). You will receive 3 critiques of your poem in return. Those who do not complete their critiques will not be eligible to win the contest.

Rights: All poems remain the sole property of the author. After we have selected the winner we will seek permission from the author to publish the winning poem on our blog. The author is under no obligation to allow this.

Notification: The prize winner will be notified by email on October 3, 2009. We will announce the prize winner on our blog on October 5, 2009.

My team was down by one point. There were only 30 seconds left. Darren passed the ball to the giant forward I was guarding. He turned to shoot. I reached as high as I could and blocked his shot. My opponent wrangled the ball back into his hands and went up harder. I blocked his shot again

The testosterone filled forward turned and bellowed “you have freakishly long arms.”

Should I respond with my own verbal joust when insulted or I should I let it go? I chose to smile and reply “my wife does have a hard time finding long sleeve shirts that fit me!”

The game stopped. Everyone started laughing, its only basketball with my coworkers, who cares if the time runs out.

If you receive a peculiar critique of your work, let it go. It’s not worth raising your blood pressure over. Everyone has an opinion, everyone is allowed to share it, but you are responsible for choosing your response.

And yes, I do have longer than normal arms, but I don’t think they are freakishly long.

Jacob

“The Hot Pink Headband with the Bow” by Lindzander was selected at the winner of the flash fiction writing contest.

Second place is “Disaster Relief” by AngelaLambertHustus and third place is “The greatest gift” by ReenaHelmy.

I emailed Lindzander on Saturday to request permission to post the wining story on this announcement. I have not received a reply yet. I will update this post when I receive a reply.

Jacob