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

We had over 1,200 critiques performed last month, about 50 of these critiques where lousy. How should the unfortunate recipients of a rude or hasty feedback react? They could curse the universe, but that really won’t help. They can curse me for helping conceive the idea of Review Fuse, but with the host of curses already trying to do me in their curse will have to wait its turn. Or they could give the reviewer a low feedback score, tell them why they did so, and move on to the next critique.

WHAT? No retaliation! No counterstrike! No retribution!

We are trying to build a community where we help each other improve. Think neighbors not enemies. Helping the bozo who tried to assault your honor understand why they stink, helps cleanse the community of their foul stench. Don’t augment the stench and waste your time by striking back. If you get rude feedback, in any form, then pity the fool who spent part of their life trying unsuccessfully to attack you and move to the next review.

Jacob

Several members have asked us for a way to communicate with those who review their work. In order to better meet your needs Steve added a new feature to accommodate this last week. We intentionally made it a little hard to find because we want just a few people to try it out before we added prominent links to this feature on the My Account page. If you would like to be one of our testers please follow the steps outlined below and let us know what you think about this feature by commenting on this post.

1. Click on the “view icon” for either the “Latest Reviews I’ve Received” or “Latest Reviews I’ve Given” on the My Account page. See screen shot 1.
2. If you chose the “view icon” from the “Latest Reviews I’ve Received” section, please take a moment to rate the review if you have not already done so.  See screen shot 2. We use review ratings as part of our peer matching criteria, if you tend to give good reviews we will match you up with people who also tend to give good reviews and vice versa. By the end of next month review rating will be a much more significant factor in determining your peers for the assigned reviews.
3. Screen Shots 3, 4 and 5 show the two users interacting by posting messages to each other. Screen shot 5 also shows that you can choose to “redo a review.” This is primarily for new members who give low quality reviews on their first attempt. We wanted to provide a way for them to repent of this misdeed.

The “discuss this review” feature will become more prominent and easy to use over the next few weeks. Please let us know if you like it and how we can improve it. If you have not had a chance to do so please feel free join Review Fuse, after all it’s free.

Jacob

I know a lot of aspiring authors who think writing is easy. They dabble in writing under the illusion that they can write a great work anytime they choose to. This attitude will forever condemn them to the ranks of the aspiring.

Fortunately we seem to have writers with more fortitude than that at Review Fuse. I reviewed a first chapter today that exemplifies how an author should write:

Books aren’t written — they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it. — Michael Crichton

The story I reviewed was titled The Distance of the Heart by peacemusictwloha13. This young author has rewritten this chapter several times and submitted it for review at least 3 times. This chapter has transformed from a fairly dull story about a day in the life of a teen to an engaging chapter that leaves the reader wanting for more. If you look over the various reviews of and revisions to this story you will be able to see how she transformed this work by rewriting it several times.

If you would like some help finding the fortitude to keep rewriting your works please join the Review Fuse online writing community.

Jacob

We are pleased to announce the beta version of private writing groups. You can now create or join writing groups to share your work with a subset of the Review Fuse Community that is focused on a specific topic. You can also move your face-to-face writing groups online for those weeks you just can’t find the time to get together.  You can create groups that are publicly accessible or private groups that require an invitation and a password to join.  All groups also have the option for the moderator to approve all members who wish to join. You will be able to make sure the group remains true to what you need it to be.

We appreciate all the suggestions we received on how to implement the writing groups and welcome any additional feedback while using this new feature.   Our goal for these writing groups is to help you:

• Receive quality reviews from peers you trust
• Learn how to critique work by following our guided reviews
• Save time and Gas by moving your personal writing groups online
• Mostly importantly, to improve your writing with the feedback and help of your peers

Join Review Fuse to take advantage of our new writing groups and to help us improve services available to writers.

I am excited to announce a feature that a number of you have asked for. A summarized printable view of the reviews you have received, click on the image to see an example. We appreciate all of your suggestions for this feature that we did not think of on our own. Without your input we might not have created this feature which has proved so useful to Review Fuse authors. If you have not yet, signup to receive peer critiques like this one.

Private writing groups is getting really close to being released as well. There are a few tricky things to work out with it, but we are well on our way and excited for this too. I will let everyone know when it is released. Thank you all again for the suggestions on what we can improve. Please continue to let us know what you need, we will definitely do our best to get it for you.

Steve