Reviewing Philosophy

My review philosophy started when I joined Writing.Com. But it grew as I took a course and it grew each week with every lesson and as it grew I learnt about things not just to improve my reading but also my reviewing.

Boring Words
Say this was a sentence of someone’s work I was reviewing
.
I walked across the street.

I would look at this and I would think about changing the word walked to something more interesting and descriptive so that it can describe emotion. Then I would look at the word street. Could I add an adjective in there? This forms a critique on a single sentence but it also helps slowly improve the piece which I am reviewing, thus doing my job as a reviewer. My first speciality is looking at words that could be improved, (but don’t look in my work because I am useless at doing this in my own work) I think you usually need a fresh pair of eyes to see things like over-use of a word or a boring word used over and over again. I would say something like this to them in a review,

Grammar ~ I have noticed a couple of words that you seem to be over-using. If you take a look in the second paragraph, you see the word nice four times, whilst I would use this at most once. I suggest using a word like pleasant or appealing.
Do you see how changing just a few words could put the rating of a piece up?
Commenting on these little thing can make an author thankful for the review you gave and if it is really awesome, you could get some extra Gift Points out of it If you don’t you still get the feeling of happiness knowing that you have helped someone on their way to improving the reviewed piece.

Spelling
Each time I see a mistake with spelling it distracts me from what I am reading and I always stop to make a note of it before carrying on. If a piece is without mistakes it usually makes it easier to review because the flow of the piece isn’t affected by bad spelling. A simple way to check for spelling is using a simple spell checker, or so most of you thought. Sometimes spell checkers miss words because it is set to American instead of English and we all spell it slightly different. There is also the problem with words you made up. I would hate to be J K Rowling and see all those red squiggly lines across the page because she wrote another spell into the system. When I review, I don’t copy the work into a spell checker like some people, I proof read it for a second time and specifically look for that mistake. If I saw a sentence wrote like this, I would say something.

Are you write or left handed?

I would immediately point out the incorrect homophone and correct them so they know for the future.

Tone
The tone of a piece is also a thing that is often included in my reviews. I feel the tone should reflect the title. I don’t think you would call a book The Fluffy Pink Bunny Rabbit, if it was about a cemetery of zombies. If I saw something like this and I didn’t see a reason for it to be called what it is, I would say something about it. The tone of the piece usually reflects the genre and shows what words came to your mind when reading this piece. I include this in my reviews so that people know what I think of the tone and the changes I think could be made to improve or change the tone.

Imagery
Imagery is important in both poetry and stories. It can present a beautiful view in a poem or an ugly character in a book. I feel it is important for you to have imagery in a story as it is something that draws you and absorbs you into a story. When reviewing, I comment on how well I got sucked into the piece and if I did what was portrayed by the words. I often comment on a particular bit of the piece that I loved or comment on a bit I didn’t particularly like and how it could be improved.

Poetry
I have never been the greatest at reviewing poetry but something that does seem to catch me if it is wrong is flow. I hate reading a piece of poetry that reads in a horrible, jumpy style. I feel you should be able to read a poem with a sort of elegance and it should effortlessly flow out of your mouth. If it is all jumbled together and I feel like I can’t read it properly due to poor pacing or syllable counts, you should probably mention it in a review. I would include this in a review. After all, reviewing is about correcting people when they go wrong and improving their overall piece.



I think of reviewing, like writing a little note on my own work to help myself, so as I read the piece I pretend it’s mine and write down things that could be improved. I then put this under the relevant sections and this forms my usual review. I owe a lot of my usual reviews to A.J. Lyle and her commitment to the lessons she has taught me over the time period she has suffered with me in her reviewing class.
If you have a moment pop by her port and give a quick review off of something you have learnt off of this that I have learnt off of her. Does that make sense? Anyway reviewing is a big part of any authors career, whether you are a school child just learning and get little hints from teaching or a published author refining a book to soon be in print. We all appreciate reviews and we all love it when we have them so do a favour and give out something you like to get.