Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Lick and a Kiss Review

Lick and a Kiss Review.

This type of review is very popular here at writing.com. It is very informal and the Reviewer picks one aspect of what has been read that strikes them as most significant and points it out.

It is an abbreviated sort of Macro Review and can be useful.

When you get one of these you need to ask yourself…assuming the reviewer actually read your work (And wasn’t trolling for Gps) this was the single aspect of the work that caught their attention….

Now it could well be and often is that it resonated with some personal aspect of their life experience. Say in the story a dog dies and the reader recently had a similar experience and they do a little venting….This doesn’t do much for the writer except to respond with something positive and brief…ie Thanks for your comment…glad it resonated with you the same as it did with me….or something like that..

Then again someone might actually like a particular line…or they might express an emotional response…ie I hated it when you killed off Myrna….she was the only thing about the story I really liked…

Another type of response is the grammatical….You need a beginning quote before the line….---My love is like a butterfly,” he said.

I write these one line reviews in a journal on a page for each category. By themselves they don’t mean much but if you find that a page starts filling up while the others stay blank that might be something to think about.

A traditional structured review can be time consuming and often the writer just blows it off with a two second blink….You might have spent an hour on it and they brush over it in a heartbeat…. Because this response in not uncommon I use the Lick and Kiss review with many first time writers. I try and make the observation a quality one that represents the single thing that is best or where the most improvement could be gained. Then I wait and see if they send an answer or better yet do a reciprocal review in kind…. If “yes,” I wait awhile and do another a bit more comprehensive….In this way you meet some interesting people and strike up some friendships, without wasting a lot of time.

If I get any kind of a negative response I make a note to make sure I don’t do any more reviews on that writer’s work.