Shouts From Down Under

Would you want a review like this?

I note the StoryMaster's post about reviewing, and keeping our feet on the accelerator, even if we are insane enough to tackle NaNoWriMo.

This set me thinking.

What would a review look like, that reviewed all of WDC's items in one hit? How would the rating process work? With thousands, perhaps millions of pieces all coming under the same banners, for example, Title or Plot. Then what about Descriptions, or Characterisation. Weaknesses and Strengths.

I'm reviewing {suser;everyoneonwdcplustheirdogandcat} as a member of whoever writing group.

Title and blurb.
All your titles were excellent, average and totally horrible.
Narrative Hook.
The odd one of your pieces totally forced me to read it by the hook line / paragraph / sentence / stanza but many were ho hum and sort of lame. As I read your stories and poems and stuff, there were some that made me violently ill with boredom.
Strengths.
Thousands of your stories had many intriguing plot directions, some had average ideas in them and a few were complete twaddle and wouldn't have entertained or stimulated a spider with 20 flies and moths in her web.
Weaknesses.
Most pieces had at least a few weak sentences and many lacked enough drama. Some were racist anti human nasty drivel, and a few I'd recommend that you delete them.
Suggestions.
Some should try to get their pieces published and I can't understand why they aren't already, Some need a bit of work such as many different errors of all different types, and a few would make good tread patterns on a 4 wheel drive's tyres - that's about the best I could come up with.
Ratings
I think you all, every single writer on WDC should be rated between 1 and 5 out of a possible 5. That's because your work was either terrible, laughable, not amazingly bad, sort of averagely ok, getting better, quite readable, better than not bad, fairly reasonable, good, very good, excellent and totally perfect.
Thanks everyone for the chance to review all your pieces at once, and just send all the gp's to my account marked, "the total population of writers" on WDC.

Yes, I think that an overall review of everything, all at the same time, in one review, would be just as averaged out and useless as one of those reviews that just say

I enjoyed your story. Or,

Your story was great, but I rated it 3 out of 5.

These comments don't help. The first one, how much they enjoyed it, while it's something doesn't even tell you what it was they enjoyed. Why did they enjoy it? Were they having a cold beer at the time and got their pleasant feelings mixed up?

Did they like the fact that your / my lame boring story ended quickly?

Perhaps they just liked black text on white background. I mean, we wouldn't know would we?

If every piece was reviewed at once, then the whole thing would average out I suppose. Some outstanding pieces alongside less than inspiring efforts full of mistakes, lacking direction and basically unreadable. Our dog wouldn't even eat the paper it's written on.

So, with all this tiring information swilling around in my headachey brain, I thought, what is the point of all that? What am I trying to say?

Well, the thing is, if you are going to have a go at reviewing, it's best to at least give a couple of comments on how the story / poem / whatever made you feel.

That's all you have to do. And if you divide that up into even three sections, you could make a quick comment on their title and blurb, then in the second part say what you liked and why, then the third part say if you didn't like something and why.

Really, that review you just took time to do for someone, would be all that's required.

Why that simple? Because you've helped the person who wrote the piece with some feedback that had meaning. You gave something of yourself to them. You not only gave time, but you gave mental focus. After reading their stuff, you stopped thinking about your own life for a few minutes and put yourself into the writer's shoes. You saw things from their angle, their writing angle.

You communicated to them how you felt about their communication method and style. How you felt about their way of expressing that collage of their life experiences made into a fictional or non fictional view.

You reviewed. The more you write and receive reviews, the more you want to improve your reviewing, because you know what it's like to get those critiques that have meaning.

Sparky