Pen of the Gryphon

Reviewers and their ways...

October 12, 2006 ~ Tuesday

Okay, this has been niggling at me for some time now… Why is it that cliché-d romantic fantasies that are essentially a copy of a million other works just like it out there get the reviews, while the more intelligent works with an engaging plot and mind-blowing characters with minimal or nil romance gets hardly a mention?

Now granted, I am most definitely a “quality vs. quantity” type of person when it comes to reviews; I would much rather reach three people who enjoy the story and leave meaningful reviews that are well though out and actually relevant to the content than a hundred of “OMG!! i luv it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! plz update soon!!!! ;)” But hey! I have two very different stories on my Fictionpress.com account. One is quite obviously a romance written by a very inexperienced teenage girl with ideals that were no where near reality and had no idea how to work a plot. I have yet to even consider finishing that work. However, for the 7 chapters that it contains, there are something like 35 reviews. (Not exactly an astronomical figure, but consider that there are like 10’s of 1000’s of works on FP.) Granted, most of these are at least decent reviews and I am truly grateful to have all of them. But then go to my focus work, a considerably more serious and complex story, and I have 2 currently, both from the same person and both of which are the best reviews I have ever gotten in my writing career.

Is this typical everywhere? I have seen stories that have hundreds of reviews (I kid you not, 100’s) and they are all “i luv this. Jake is sooooooooooooooooo hot!!!!! update soon plz!!!!!!!!!” Now, these stories may or may not be all that great, but they still get the reviews. (I have, I will say, read some truly brilliant works where all the author has is the sort of reviews I have shown as examples. They are not all mediocre.)  Meanwhile there are some great stories nearby that have next to nothing. Why is this?

I have noticed a tendency of these stories being romances, mostly boy-meet-girl, boy-get-girl, boy-lose-girl, boy-get-girl-again plot lines. Maybe it is just the appeal of romance, but still, there are more intelligent works out there…

Ah well, I suppose I shall just take the good reviews as they come, shrug off the occasional flame and tolerate all those screaming fans as best I can, even with their uncapitalized sentences, acronyms, random symbols, misspelllings (ha ha, I crack myself up) and excessive punctuation, as well as having nothing useful to say about the story, characters or prose at all…

*sigh* Such is the life of a writer…