Judging someone’s work can be a daunting task, especially when you find it needing a lot of work. Who are you to be telling them how they should have written their story? Well it turns out you are the expert and writers desperately crave your feedback and opinions.

Many reviewers forget that they have been given the title of expert and belittle their own thoughts and opinions just in case they are wrong.

• “The comma in the previous sentence is in the wrong spot, I think”
• “I believe it would be better to use a pronoun here instead of repeating the name so many times”
• “I would think you might want to shorten these paragraphs”

If you don’t know for sure that the comma is in the wrong spot say what you do know instead. Are you right? Absolutely, you know exactly what effect it had on you and the writer would love to know it.

• “The comma in the previous sentence made it difficult for me to read by breaking the rhythm I had established”
• “Repeating the characters name so many times made the paragraph feel very repetitious. Using pronouns would have helped the flow.”
• “The long paragraphs made the story feel like it was dragging on. Paragraph breaks would help to liven up the action and give my eyes a break as I read.”

Both sets of comments say about the same thing, one set just sounds like it came from an expert. Writers aren’t necessarily looking for a grammar expert, plot expert, or a voice expert. Most of the time they simply want to know what the story did for you. Let’s face it, Writers are very creative and stubborn people; if they don’t like what you said, they will just ignore it :-d. They don’t want you to be right, they just want you to be yourself “The Expert.”

Need some practice? Critique this post, I am sure it could be better.

steve