Tweet
Okay, so you have taken that brave, bold step of posting your fanfiction here at Buffyforums. What happens now? Has anyone stopped to read your story? What did they think of it? How do you find out?
Feedback is vital to any writer. Words of praise fill us with confidence and inspire us to write more, while constructive criticism allows us to learn and develop as writers.
Anyone who has posted fanfiction here at BuffyForums may access feedback, and this Feedback Forum has been provided for that purpose. For writers with only one or two stories under their belts, we have a General Feedback thread - or you can invite feedback by Private Message if you prefer. For more prolific writers, when you have written and posted four complete stories, please post in this thread supplying links to those four stories and a feedback thread will be set up for you.
For writers who have qualified for individual feedback threads, I strongly recommend that you use the first post in that thread to create an index for all your work, linking to the individual stories, for ease of reference.
A word of warning, however - for any writer, especially in a small community like this, feedback tends to be unfortunately rare. It is almost universally true that far more people will read and enjoy a story than will ever take the time to write a note to the author expressing their enjoyment of that work, so please don't take it personally if feedback is less than plentiful.
Having said that, each story that is posted here is a gift from the writer to the reader, and we would actively encourage anyone who reads and enjoys a story to take the time to say thank you for that gift by offering feedback to the writer, even if only a few short lines. It means more to a writer just to know that you have read their work than you could possibly imagine.
Maybe you aren't sure how to go about offering feedback - you enjoyed the story, but wouldn't know where to begin to express why to the writer. Just remember that you don't need to say much - even one sentence that simply says 'I read your story and enjoyed it' would suffice, although obviously the feedback-hungry writers here would prefer a little more than that.
Try breaking it down. What did you like most about the story? Did it have an interesting plot? Did you feel that the characters were well written? Did you find that the dialogue was snappy and engaging? Were there any areas of weakness that stood out for you? Did you notice any spelling errors or grammatical mistakes? Maybe you thought that the writer had a good idea, but maybe lacks the writing experience to maximise that potential - how might you advise them to improve? Even if you answer just one of those questions, it will be of benefit to the writer and they will be delighted to hear from you.
If you still aren't sure where to start, we have provided below a form that can be filled in and posted in the appropriate feedback thread. Please feel free to pick and choose which fields of the form you are comfortable using, however.
Plot:
Characterisation:
Spelling/grammar:
Style:
Emotion:
Favourite part:
Even if all you do is rate some of those categories with marks out of 10 or on a scale of 1-5, it is information that will be valuable to the writer.
Feedback is vital to any writer. Words of praise fill us with confidence and inspire us to write more, while constructive criticism allows us to learn and develop as writers.
Anyone who has posted fanfiction here at BuffyForums may access feedback, and this Feedback Forum has been provided for that purpose. For writers with only one or two stories under their belts, we have a General Feedback thread - or you can invite feedback by Private Message if you prefer. For more prolific writers, when you have written and posted four complete stories, please post in this thread supplying links to those four stories and a feedback thread will be set up for you.
For writers who have qualified for individual feedback threads, I strongly recommend that you use the first post in that thread to create an index for all your work, linking to the individual stories, for ease of reference.
A word of warning, however - for any writer, especially in a small community like this, feedback tends to be unfortunately rare. It is almost universally true that far more people will read and enjoy a story than will ever take the time to write a note to the author expressing their enjoyment of that work, so please don't take it personally if feedback is less than plentiful.
Having said that, each story that is posted here is a gift from the writer to the reader, and we would actively encourage anyone who reads and enjoys a story to take the time to say thank you for that gift by offering feedback to the writer, even if only a few short lines. It means more to a writer just to know that you have read their work than you could possibly imagine.
Maybe you aren't sure how to go about offering feedback - you enjoyed the story, but wouldn't know where to begin to express why to the writer. Just remember that you don't need to say much - even one sentence that simply says 'I read your story and enjoyed it' would suffice, although obviously the feedback-hungry writers here would prefer a little more than that.
Try breaking it down. What did you like most about the story? Did it have an interesting plot? Did you feel that the characters were well written? Did you find that the dialogue was snappy and engaging? Were there any areas of weakness that stood out for you? Did you notice any spelling errors or grammatical mistakes? Maybe you thought that the writer had a good idea, but maybe lacks the writing experience to maximise that potential - how might you advise them to improve? Even if you answer just one of those questions, it will be of benefit to the writer and they will be delighted to hear from you.
If you still aren't sure where to start, we have provided below a form that can be filled in and posted in the appropriate feedback thread. Please feel free to pick and choose which fields of the form you are comfortable using, however.
Plot:
Characterisation:
Spelling/grammar:
Style:
Emotion:
Favourite part:
Even if all you do is rate some of those categories with marks out of 10 or on a scale of 1-5, it is information that will be valuable to the writer.
Thanks, Jo!
Comment