Reviewing Advice Center

by Lornda

Rated: E · Message Forum · How-To/Advice · #2292893

A place for Newbies to seek advice about reviewing

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Feb 7, 2026 at 3:46pm

#3786570

Edited: February 7, 2026 at 3:47pm

Past Questions & Responses

by Lornda

I want to review, but I don’t know how to start. - John

Reviewing does take a little time to master when you first join but with practice, you'll be sending reviews in no time.

The first step is to find an item you would like to read, and at the bottom of that entry is where you can find the tab on how to send the review with your thoughts to the author. There's more information found here: "Reviewing On Writing.Com" .

If you want to see how other members review, scan the public reviewing page to get ideas. It's found at the left panel under Recent Reviews. Give yourself some time, and it will all come together! - Lornda

Am I overthinking things or should ...
Question & Response ▶︎

I'm extremely new here and I would like to have some of my writing reviewed but I would also like to leave some reviews in kind (it's only fair). -

The only thing is, I don't know if my reviews are very valuable as I have little to no experience. I figure I can leave a 'Reader reaction' type of review but not get into the technicals. I also don't want to step on any writer's toes and make comments like "I'd word this like this and I'd restructure this sentence like that" so leaving a more technical review makes me extremely nervous. If I made critical errors in my sentence structure or used 1 adjective 78 times in a single paragraph and simply didn't notice,
I'd want to know about it. I want to know if this bit gets slow and boring, that bit is good and I love how when this person said that one thing it made them a more rounded character, but the type of reviews I'd want to get would probably be overbearing and for lack of a better word toe-stompy for other people. Also, some of the stuff I've already read is so wildly outside of my wheelhouse, I really don't feel free to comment, for example, I like long-form stuff (as you can probably guess from this post) and I've read a couple of stories that are about 2 - 300 words in length. My first reaction is "I'd love you to expand on this" or "Is this an outline or a finished piece?" and then looking at the profile, everything is max 2 - 300 words so that must just be their style so I can't leave such a comment. Is there somewhere I can find "Here's my 2000 word chapter 1. What do you think?" because these are the types of posts I'm likely to make.
Ultimately we are all artists here and we all know what artists can be like.
Am I overthinking things or should I just leave a 'Readers reaction' and leave it at that? - Dave Ronnert

Response: I don't think you're overthinking things. I have to agree with you. It's not easy to review others — it's nerve-racking at best, and I felt the same way when I first joined.

There's nothing wrong with leaving your 'reaction' to a piece of writing here. I think most Author's appreciate knowing how someone reacts to their writing. The technical side of the review isn't easy either, so I wouldn't worry about that side of it. For me, I found the more I reviewed the more I was able to catch those type of 'technical' mishaps, but the easiest thing is to do what you're comfortable with while reviewing. Don't force yourself to review something you don't like. If you want to read longer works, there's plenty of them here.

I see you have posted your first item. Nice! You've written an opening chapter, so if you want to review others who write chapters or longer works, I'd say to visit the review pages where Author's are asking for a review. You can even find other novel writer's there, too.

At "Please Review" , you'll see all sorts of different postings where the author is specifically asking for what they want you to comment on, and I'm sure you'll find something in your 'wheelhouse'.

Same here at "The Shameless "Plug" Page" , if you scroll down the left side you'll be able to see what's a longer short story or a chapter. You can also post your chapter at either one of these forums, too! - Lornda

Can you explain to me what reviewing is? - Donald

Thanks for the question. The simple answer is to give feedback to other authors on their work. As you familiarize yourself with the site, you'll find many genres of work to read. Find the one you enjoy and then send your impressions of the piece.
Above in the forum header

, there's some examples of reviews to help you, and there's also information on how to send a review. Take your time. - Lornda

How long is too long for a review . . .

Question & Response: ▶︎

. . .on Writing.com? I'm planning on writing reviews of books, and I want them to be very fleshed out. - Brandon Maze White

Response from Elycia

I don't think there is an easy answer for this question nor are there any hard and fast rule for review length.

Allow me to focus on different types of reviews:

1. Reviewing WDC Authors:

Keep your intended reviewee in mind; make your opinions as clear and concise as possible; don't drag on your points; and focus on delivering the message.

Finding a review length that both you and your reviewee are comfortable with takes some practice.

My suggestion is to first review something and then look at the key points of what you review. What are the key elements involved?

From there, establish a template consisting of subsections perhaps because writing a detailed review in a whole chunk of words overwhelm your reviewee.

Eventually, you will work out your own style and suitable length for yourself and your reviewee.

2. Book Reviews

What you are asking right now are book reviews which is another ballgame altogether. In this case, your audience changes. Are you writing a review to give books a critique or reviewing to give book recommendations? What do your audience want? Who are they?

There are many resources and case studies in terms of book reviews and there are many types of different reviews out there. There are commercial reviews then there are literature reviews. I'm assuming that you may be looking into literature review where you are studying the elements of story-writing and also assuming that your intended audience are writers, then you can write your reviews longer than a commercial ones (which is probably 300 - 500 words for the small column in lifestyle section in the papers, a 2-page full print-full colour book review for detailed professional ones [book week] or for lifestyle magazines, only 50 - 80 words = 4 lines) The same applies for literature book review as I've mentioned in Section #1 (Reviewing WDC Authors): make your opinions as clear and concise as possible; don't drag on your points; and focus on delivering the message.

I have not done a detailed book review, but I can share my template when I review for WDC authors and how I fill them up.

Again, this is not a hard and fast rule. You will work out your own eventually.

You can look around for really good reviews around WDC.

Here is what I personally do and I'm still trying to improve it.

My rating description is still evolving so bear with me on that.

"From My Review Desk"

Review of "Dreams Charging Toward Reality "

Further Response from Dawn Embers

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.