My Reviewing Standards

I like to believe that one day I'll be a successful, PUBLISHED author. If you're like me, you want to know whether or not your work is publishable, right? I keep this in mind when I review.

Nothing below a rating of "4" is publishable work (in my opinion).

Here's the breakdown:

5 - I've just read Earnest Hemingway. I'm not only impressed, but stirred in my soul. This piece of writing goes beyond "Good", or even "Great"... it's important.

4.5 - I love your work, and for me, it was a perfectly good read (or "yarn", like they say on the covers of books). A "page-turner", it "crackles", may be terms I use to express this work.

4.0 - It's publishable, but I wouldn't buy it. This just means that I think it's well-written, but I think it's for someone else. Someone out there will buy it, though.

3.5 - So close... and here's why it's not publishable... I'll give this rating the most labor in constructing a review, because it's so close to being really good.

3.0 - You're losing me here. Listing the ways you should improve this work is gonna' take a while and we may need a pot of coffee. I'll probably just generalize my feedback and try to boil it down to one or two things you need to work on...

2 - 2.5 - In my opinion (the operative phrase here) your writing needs to mature a little. Keep dreaming up stories, though. Seriously... because eventually you'll make it flow. Don't burn your dictionary/thesaurus set yet.

1.0 - 1.5 - You should look into welding. Maybe one day you'll burn your retinas and give up the futile hope of ever getting published.


Of course, I've yet to give anyone a 1 (I wouldn't wish blindness on anyone!), but I've seen a lot of stuff worthy of a 2 on this site. Rating someone who's given me a good review is really hard... especially when what I'm reading from them is (in my opinion) worthy of a lower score. I hope that anyone out there who reads my stuff is as honest with their rating as I am. Of course, I will always try to give reasons for why I scored the way I did, and I hope you will review in-kind.

And if you read this and rate one of my stories according to the above standard, let me know.

Remember,

It's our writing, so it's important.