WdC 2023 Birthday Review Raffle - CLOSED

Thank you so much for joining, Boo! I want to apologize for not getting back to you sooner. Amy Jo is in training and wanted me to check these. She's right about her concerns. (Good catch, Amy Jo!)

Remember that the rules say the reviews have to be a minimum of 500 words and have to include at least 1 suggestion or correction to help them improve. I've not finished the list, but so far, none qualify. However, all is not lost! You are WELCOME (and encouraged) to re-review them! You can copy your previous review so your work isn't lost, delete rating or whatever it says in the review box to review it again, then paste the previous review and add some stuff to it. Not sure if WdC cares (maybe switch it up a bit, to be safe? You can add at the top something like, "Sorry about the re-review, but I found something to improve your item and wanted to include it." Or "Sorry about the re-review, but Schnujo is Prepping 5 Novels is running a raffle and said my review didn't qualify, so the #*$! is making me rewrite it." You know, whatever makes you happy.

Anyway, I would think if you change the intro, paste the rest, then add the changes, it should be fine with the system and you shouldn't have a problem meeting the minimum character length. I'm sure you know the character counter is in the bottom right corner, just below the review box.

For more ideas on easy things to look for in your reviews, check out the dropnote on the page titled Ideas for Review Suggestions/Corrections. I'm sure you noticed in the rules that if you can find 3 suggestions/corrections, you can get 2 tickets, not just 1!

Anyway, here's my cursory assessment of your reviews...

Mystic Love = Too short and doesn't have any suggestions/corrections. A quick and easy one is that they only listed 1 genre. You should probably explain the importance of the 3 genres since obviously they don't know (or at least didn't at this time, but it doesn't hurt to tell them, just in case). 1. Genres are the #1 way people here find something to read. 2. Mods search genres to find something to include in their Newsletters. 3. If your item gets nominated for "The Quills" , you're item is automatically put in the running for all the genres listed. No matter how obvious a genre fit is, if it's not listed, you don't get judged in that category. Only 1 genre means you only get judged in the original nomination and 1 genre. 3 genres means you get judged in up to 4 categories, twice the chances of winning. (The item alias is quills so you can easily link to it. )

My Mom is Me = Same as above--too short and only 1 genre.

Spread the Love Raffle = Long enough, but I didn't see a suggestion/correction. There's not something I saw quickly on the page, but I didn't read the page, so there may be something, or maybe this review just can't count for this raffle.

How Much is Enough = There are at least 2 suggestions/corrections here. Too bad 3 aren't quick and easy so you can get 2 tickets, but maybe another look will reveal something else. Anyway, the title is capitalized as How much is enough. You can suggest the more proper capitalization (as far as I know, but there are things where you can paste or type words in and it will tell you the proper capitalization for different styles) and the addition of a question mark--How Much is Enough? No, those are probably 1 suggestion since they are fixing the title, though if you want to try and argue that it's 2 separate fixes, I might agree and let it slide. Anyway, she listed this as Personal, so you can suggest that since she did that, the audience is curious about anything she'd like to share regarding the circumstances that spawned this poem. She can include them in light gray, in a dropnote, or just put a few extra spaces between them and the poem to separate them. Just to be clear, suggesting 3 ways to add more info is just being a kind reviewer. They all only count as 1 suggestion because they are fixing 1 problem. lol Also, this review is too short, but you can see that after you do these additions, it won't be.

Purple Princess, & Dragon Bo & Sprinkles = Again, too short. If you find yourself with a suggestion, but still too short, you can always paste a sentence or two that are your favorite and tell them why you love it so much. It not only gives you characters, it encourages them and helps them understand what's really working in their writing. I especially tend to do this when I have a LOT of corrections in a review.
For this, there are 2 easy suggestions/corrections, so maybe you can find 1 more in the text with some effort. She has a comma in the title after Princess. She either doesn't need that or doesn't need the first &. She also uses Other as one of her genres. We discourage people from using Other, Contest Entry, Contest (unless it's really a WdC contest), and Activity (unless it's really a WdC activity) because people don't search for the 1st 2 and when they search the other 2, they aren't looking for stories and poems. Plus, they're all a wasted spot in Quills because a poem won't be entered into the Best New Contest category and Contest isn't a genre category that we judge. This review has the potential of being a 2 ticket review, but you'd have to find a 3rd thing somewhere. I BELIEVE IN YOU!

Share Your Faith = Another short review and another without anything quick and obvious. This is what you get for reviewing really active members, especially Mods. Though I have seen Mods who do things that can be corrected. I recently saw a Mod post an item they wrote that had the description as something like "Written for ______ Contest." No one wants to read your contest entry just because you wrote a contest entry. Get them excited! What is the story about? But, in general, you get better chances at making legitimate improvements with black cases and even a lot of yellow cases, though not AS much with the really active ones like Beholden, Buddhangela, Sumojo, etc. Anyway, this review might not be able to be made into something you can submit, but you can try looking for an error or suggestion. If you find that, you can probably turn this into a review that's long enough.

Into the Darkness = Too short, but there are suggestions you can make that will earn you a ticket (or probably 2) and will increase your length to 500 characters. The title is capitalized as Into The Darkness, but "the" shouldn't be capitalized. If you REALLY want to add value to your review, you can mention that A and An are also not capitalized, except at the beginning of the title. You can even go deeper and explain more, but I doubt you want to. This one's description says it's written for a contest, which is fine since it also gives info about the item, but you can suggest he take that part out to give more room for a description, if he wants. Then he can add that to the body area, putting it in gray, a dropnote, or just separated from the body of the poem. You can also suggest a link to the contest, if he wants (sort of all the same suggestion, so this still counts as 1, IMO) and even also write the contest name beside it in case the contest is ever deleted, he'll still know what he wrote it for. (This is more a note for you, but what I mean is something like, "Written for "The Whatever Contest -- Closed for Now"  (The Whatever Contest)." If he remembers the prompt, he can include that as well since the audience might find it interesting what prompted such a deep poem (that would count as another suggestion ). Also, if he wants to share any part of his personal experience or what caused him to write this or feel this way, he can do so with the previous suggestions of doing it in gray, etc. The reader would likely be interested and may feel more connected to him and/or his poem. That would count as another suggestion. I think that when we write deeply personal things, people are interested in the history behind them, if the writer wants to share.

The Library of Forgotten Fables = Again, too short and the genres were Contest Entry and Other. Correcting them both is still only 1 suggestion. For low-hanging fruit, this is all I saw, but you might see 2 more if you give it a careful read. You can always make a suggestion without reducing stars.

Regarding reducing stars, I wouldn't recommend reducing star ratings on the re-review. I assume you agree. But since I think everything I pointed out was at the top, you can simply explain that the body looked fine, so you're not taking off stars for errors (such as incorrect capitalization in the title) and, of course, not included all 3 genre, at least IMO, isn't a reason to reduce stars for an item.

Regarding genres, I tend to offer additional suggestions, but that's me. I will even try to offer at least 1 more than they need so they can have some to choose from. I'm sure you know this trick already, but just in case, you can click Browse by Genre to pull up the list and scroll through it to add options to your review without losing your review...assuming you don't accidentally click one of the genres.

Again, I do apologize for the delay, but we're happy to have you re-review these. Not ideal, no. But also not as hard as finding a bunch more things and starting those reviews from scratch. You can do this!

I know this is a lot, but I hope you find it easy and encouraging! That's why I spent so much time going through each review to help you know EXACTLY how to fix it so it will qualify. I don't want you to feel angry or frustrated. Well, frustrated is probably unavoidable, but at least not hopeless.

Be sure to check the dropnote Ideas for Review Suggestions/Corrections for other ideas.

I look forward to seeing your revised reviews soon!