101 Writing Tips from an Exhausted Reviewer

An Extremely Sugar-Coated Review

If any of you have diabetes, get your insulin pumps ready.

If any of you have good healthcare plans, ring up your dentist and book an appointment for cavities.

And if any of you have a good looking dentist, let me know because my mum wants me to find a rich husband help.

Anyways!

I've vented a lot about reviewers. Sometimes, they are unreasonably harsh, or weirdly vague, or... way too good at pouring honey onto our egos.

One of the most notorious category of reviewers is the sugar-coaters.

Now, I want to make it clear: a nice reviewer is not necessarily a sugar-coater. Someone can be polite and friendly in their review, as well as positive and supportive, without being a sugar-coater. However, once that person starts ignoring any obvious weaknesses in a story and decides to gloss over clear grammatical errors... yeah, that's a problem.

As reviewers, we should try to help people with their stories while also encouraging them to keep trying. However, if you are encouraging them to continue lazy writing habits? Then, well, sure, it's great for their confidence. But it won't be great for them in the long-run when they submit their story to another reviewer and have it torn to shreds, and get extremely upset because no one told them that the issues in their stories were issues.

Look at it this way.

If you are teaching a dog how to eat grasshoppers, but you give them treats when they eat ladybugs instead, the dog may be happy and excited. However, when they enter the National Grasshopper Eating Contest, and then only eat ladybugs... they'll come dead last. They will cry. Their doggy parents will cry. Their dog food will cry. The universe will cry. And suddenly, ladybugs are extinct. And whose fault is it? Yours.

Well. That got intense.

Anyways! So I asked people to send me the worst possible writing they could send me so I could make fun of it, but then... I got another idea.

My Immortal.

So, without further ado, here is Sunshine's Extremely Sugar-Coated Review!

STORY: MY IMMORTAL

AUTHOR: TARA GILESPIE

REVIEWER: ray_of_sunshine9

[Story is in italics; review is not]

CHAPTER ONE:

Hi my name is Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony hair (that's how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and ice blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don't know who she is get da hell out of here!). I'm not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie. I'm a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I'm also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I'm in the seven year (I'm seventeen). I'm a goth (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. Alot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

Okay, wow! What an amazing, fantastic, fabulous, shockingly brilliant introduction to your story!

I love how you start the story with an info-dump on the character! It's so great knowing that her teeth are white and straight (perhaps it says something about capitalism?), and that she's a goth! I love her outfit so so much, wow, that's so cool!