Most Common Writing Errors ✔️

Review Shops

Read the disclaimer if you haven't already.

This chapter features things I dislike about review shops.

I mentioned before that I dislike a majority of review shops for a variety of reasons, but these reasons are my personal preference. So if you host a review shop and do these things, don't take it personally or like I'm saying you shouldn't do it. It's your shop, run it how you want to. This is just my take on review shops and why I run mine the way I do.

I run a review shop and sheesh is it a busy one. I figured since many participants in my review shop read this book, I'd give my take on other shops so you can better understand what type of reviewer I am.

Please note that I'm talking about English review shops. I don't have any experience with review shops in other languages, so I'm not commenting on them.

Also, keep in mind I'm not writing this to imply my review shop is perfect or like I'm a perfect reviewer. I'm sure many have had issues with my shop, and that's fine. The purpose of this chapter is to share my personal beliefs about review shops, not elevate my own or say I'm a better reviewer than those who do the things I list below. Some might love these types of review shops that I'm about to mention, and that's okay. This is purely my opinion.

1) Rating Out Of 10

I never felt rating a book out of 10 was an accurate way to give feedback. I, in general, don't think art can be effectively judged by number scales since much of it is subjective.

There's so much that goes into writing a book that whenever I give something a number score, it feels a bit unfair. Reducing an author's work to a certain number out of 10 feels a bit silly to me. 

If you're a long-time reader of mine or you've read my bio, you'll know I don't like it when people add my books to rating out of ten libraries, even if the number is a 10/10. I don't like having my works rated since I don't write them for that purpose, and again, I don't think art can be accurately rated with a number scale.

For a contest, I'm fine with it since it's supposed to be based on a scoring system, but for review shops, it feels counterproductive.

I may be an English major, but my mom majored in psych and I took a college-level psych course. I'm no expert, but based on what I know, I know we tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positives. Not always, obviously, but if you get five compliments and one insult, you're more likely to remember the insult.

I feel like the same applies to number scores. If you score an 8/10 in plot but a 2/10 in grammar, you're going to focus so much on the grammar that you don't recognize the positives in the piece, which are just as important as the negatives. Of course you should pay attention to the 2/10, but not to the point where it becomes all you take out of a review.

Along with that, I feel like a number score brings an illusion of objectivity. By that I mean, the score feels more definitive than simply saying your opinion. I always thought of review shops as a way to constructively give feedback without it feeling objective or set in stone. Reviews are opinions; nothing more, nothing less.

My favorite film reviewers don't give scores to things, and that's why I like them. They talk about what they like and dislike since that is a far more effective conversation than slapping a number or letter grade on something and calling it a day, y'know? (in my opinion)

This is just a me thing, but I always felt number scores in casual review shops felt a bit pretentious. I understand for some people number scores helps keep them organized, and that's fine. That's the reason why I use them for my contests. But sometimes I feel like reviewers are only doing it cause they feel they have to.