Writing Forum

Stephen,

I'm well aware that writing and reading are the most important things when it comes to improving my writing (as stated above), and I'm not looking to spend days and weeks going through online lectures and books on writing. Though, that doesn't mean some advice on writing, ideas for writing exercises, and advice on how to improve my grammar wouldn't be useful.

Stating that I'm disappointed with WdC is probably putting it the wrong way. The site is just something different than I expected it to be, not worse just different. In general it works more like a social media and less as a place to do online writing workshops and finding writing groups. Though, I do agree that it also depends a lot on how you use the site yourself--one of the reasons I started this thread was to get a discussion going on how to improve ones writing.

As for me looking for encouragement and not critique, I really don't see where you got that idea from. There are people who are only looking for positive comments on there writing and that's fine. I just hope they wont take the comment and suggestions I offer in my reviews personal, since I personally feel that reviews that lacks in depth critique are useless. The only reviews I've gotten which I consider to be bad reviews are the ones that doesn't offer any suggestions on what to improve.
I don't mind getting reviews that offer much more critique than praises, quite the contrary.

Yes, reviewing (or simply reading critically both when it comes to amateur and professional fiction) can be a really useful way of improving your own writing. It can be extremely hard to see the mistakes in your own writing when you've gone through the same text a hundred times, but seeing the same mistakes in someone else's writing usually helps me become aware of those mistakes too.