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 A place for Newbies to seek advice about reviewing |
 1,000 GPs were sent to Brandon Maze White  with this post.
You have asked a really good question and I hope no one minds me chiming in as well since I do often write books on here but don't always share the full ones unless someone is going to beta read for me that I have contacted. I have also been in a group that used to meet up back when we had chat rooms (not just scroll/messenger) where we critiqued chapters of novels and that influences some of my opinion now. First thing I want to say is that I think it's great you want to review books on here. Getting anyone to read long stories or anywhere higher than 10,000 words can be a challenge. Poetry and flash fiction are a little easier to sent out some thoughts and that is also why at times some reviews are rather short and some are much longer than the actual item they are reviewing. As a novel writer, I would say thank you for anyone that wants to review long items on the site. There isn't an exact limit to how long you can make a review but I would take a few things into consideration. One thing would be the date the item was created along with if there is a different date to show they have gone back to rework the novel or any item. I say this because if it's a first draft you might want to limit the technical comments and small details like where a comma might go. This was the trouble I had in the review group because often the comments for the chapter were more for the editing stage and most novel first drafts need at least one rewrite, if not more. So, those details won't matter because the words in the sentences may change. Something you could do is contact the writer first. Send a message and ask them if there is any type of review or detail they want feedback on for specific help. You never know as they might really want to know how the characters come across or they could even be cool with a long edit type review. I have done it before for someone where I gave a review that was very detailed and long. And if they don't want a review or have abandoned the novel, then that saves you a little time as you can move on to someone or something else. Sending a pre-review email can also help with any details you might not know before reading a story. Every now and then someone reviews my item that don't catch on until they read the item that I write gay characters and some are unhappy about that. So, if someone sent me an email asking to review a novel, I would make sure they knew the type of book it was just to make sure they were comfortable with the content. Not that you can't surprise someone with a review. It's just something to consider as an option. If you are doing a long review, I would also suggest using a template and have sections that are broken up with the use of bold fonts and underlines over the section title. I have several templates for reviews. Some just have a few sections like my initial thoughts, contest details (for contest entered items) and final thoughts plus my review signature. My longer ones have sections that are specific to characters, plot, technical issues and such. So, this is a long way to say that you can definitely write really long reviews but maybe consider some details beforehand. There aren't any rules on how length when it comes to being too long or not. Most of the review groups have a limit on how short, to make sure there is some content to the review but I haven't seen one say that you can't go over any number of characters or word count max for reviews. You want to review novels, then go for it. I am sure many of us that have long items on WDC will appreciate it. Hope that helps.  |
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