Age isn't an excuse

I hate authors who, when you harshly criticize/flame them, tell you that they write badly "becuz im unly 13!!11!"

Stop it. Age isn't an excuse. You have spell check and you can get a beta, can't you? I mean, I'll excuse the Sues and Stus sometimes, but seriously.

Vividus
Fanfiction Gripes

Ransoming Stories for Reviews

Holding a story hostage for reviews. This is not being a writer, it's being a hack. A writer writes for the joy of it, and to entertain. A hack writes for the pay (at ff net, it takes the form of reviews). Doing so guarantees I'll stop reading and not leave one.

Robert Teague

Reviews: They Aren't There to Start A Fan Club

First of all, I would like to point out that I'm not mean, wolves are mean. (Thank you, Cornelia Hale- WITCH reference)

Second, when someone reviews your story they aren't necessarily doing it to help you start a fan club. They may be trying to not so gently nudge you in a better direction than where you're heading.

Like when you load your story and you have a large block of dialogue one person talking after another- that shouldn't be that way. It's wrong, hard to read and seizure inducing. If someone asks you to fix that they mean separate all the dialogue not just the large blocks.

[...]

Chibi Horsewoman
Advice!

Flaming vs. Real Constructive Criticism

The only thing I can offer advice on is how to deal with flamers. I spent two years on a flamer's forum, and a lot of my friends flame, and I flamed a long while ago.

So, several things.

Yes, flamers are not nice. But if they're an actual flamer and not a troll, then they'll flame someone whose story really does suck, badly enough that it's nearly illegible, it's bolded/italicized/underlined completely, et cetera.

Don't send them angry review replies unless you want to look like a fool; that's part of the point. They like to get a rise out of people.

If someone gives you constructive criticism, don't yell at them with a "YOU FALMED MEE!1121!!" Learn the difference. Constructive criticism applies to the story itself, that's it; flames generally attack the story and the author, i.e. "You suck, you should just stop writing, my eyes will never recover" and whatnot (although that's probably the worst example of a flame). At least, that's from what I know.

Sometimes flamers are right; your writing could really just suck. I have a friend who got flamed, engaged in a flame war, but eventually it all got left behind, she and the flamer became friends, and she looked back at her work and it really was just plain bad.

Reverse psychology ("FLAMES WELCOME!") doesn't work on flamers. And "THIS IS MY FIRST FIC PLEASE BE NICE" doesn't work, either. Nor does "FLAMES WILL BE USED TO POWER MY STOVE" or something similar (I've seen things like that, too).

Flame Rising is a retired flamer, he hasn't been on this website in two years, but I hung out on his forum a lot. This is his criteria for flaming:

1. You can't f*cking spell and/or you know less grammar than a six year old.
2. You try to blind your readers by bolding or italicizing every f*cking word.
3. You are too f*cking retarded to use the enter key.
4. You think people give two squirts of dog cr*p about your emotastic life.
5. You wh*re for reviews.
6. You fancy yourself God's gift to poetry because you can rhyme sh*t.
7. You have A/Ns longer than the story, and they include conversations with your other f*cked up personalities that no one gives two sh*ts about.
8. You think your readers are so stupid that you constantly have to announce point of view changes with the words "-Insert Character Name's- POV".
9. Your summary includes something along the lines of this: "NO FLAMEZ OR ELSE MIKICHU WILL EATZ U!1!!11!"
10. You violate the site's TOS and/or Guidelines. (My personal favorite, kiddos.)

I censored it. XD But I always consider his criteria when I write, because he was one of the harshest flamers on this site, I think. His forum, goodness, there were at least three threads of people coming in to yell at him for "daring" to flame them. And they got chewed up and spit out within minutes.

...Not that flamers are mean. Some of them are nice when they're not flaming you. :)

If you guys hate all flamers... -ducks tomatoes-

Vividus
Advice!

Quality over Quantity: Your Reviews

Do not gauge the quality of your writing by the number of reviews, but by the quality of the reviews themselves.

Kikurukina Bal Des'cagel
Advice!

Authors, you may have a lot of reviews on your review page for your fanfiction, but having a lot of reviews doesn't mean you have a good story.

If some of your reviews happen to look in any way like the following...

• "BWAHAHAHA!!!!! keep up the good work!!! teehee ya just ignore those flamerz! but UR GONNA WRITE MORE RITE?!!! well g2g! bye! ~*~*~ CHIBI-SAN ~*~*~"
• "WAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! you should rite a sequal!!! that rocked!! YOU HAVE TO FINISH THIS!!! DRACO IS HOTT --UR BIGEST FAN!!"
• "lololol!!! update soon plz!!! wat a sad story :( :( :(!! UR GONNA WRITE MORE RITE?!!! OMFG!! --.o0 me 0o."

You may need to re-evaluate what your reviewers are telling you, indirectly.

Think about it. Are any of your reviewers telling you anything that can help you improve as a writer? Who do your reviewers seem to be? Are they just people who eat your stories up as much as Twilighters eat Stephanie Meyer's books? (And you probably know how severely bashed the Twilight series is for its writing.)

If they are and you have a desire to improve, you may need to get outside help, such as contacting a beta reader or talking to the one reviewer who took the time to write an essay about how bad your story was.

Having a lot of reviews probably gives you a lot of confidence, and it can give you a lot of false confidence as well. As the saying goes: "Quality over quantity..."