For some reason (chuckle?) people have been talking to me about giving critique lately, and the main thing I keep hearing is "I don't know where to start". This is closely followed by, "I'm not a critic!" or "But that's just my opinion!"

I'd like to address the smaller complaint first:

Every critique is an opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. It's an opinion formed through personal taste and preference, and through experience reading and writing. Mostly though, it's simply a matter of knowing what you like and dislike, what does and does not work for you.

However... to make it easier to give critique, and to answer that question of "Where to start?" it can help to have a list of questions or general areas to work from. I'd like to give you a short list as a template for where to start.

Throughout the list I might reference your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd pass. This is because you should read through the piece a few times before making comments.

My first pass I read just to get a feel for the story. Just reading the way you would read a book.

On the second pass, as I read, I make notes, or in-line comments, concerning specific issues and problem areas.

On the 3rd read, I read through the whole story, making notes of overarching problems, and looking for examples of those problems. I usually do this as I am writing the critique.

If you need to read through again, that's fine too. Sometimes you'll miss something that becomes clear on re-reading. Make a note of that. That's good critique.

GENERAL REMARKS

In this area, it's good to write your first, overarching impression of the piece. It can also be a place to say what you thought the story was about, or how well the message came through. This is where you say you liked the story, or you did not like it.

MECHANICS

Title, hook, sentence structure, weird writing habits... this section is solely for how the bits and pieces of the story work (or don't work).

Sample questions:

Did the title fit the story?

Was the title interesting?

Was the title too long, too short, or reminiscent of another story?

What did the title tell you, if anything, about the genre and tone of the story?

Was there a hook?

Was the hook done well?

Did it come too late? Maybe the hook should have been the first line but was 4 paragraphs in?

Were the sentences easy to read?

Were they too long, or too short?

Too many adverbs? Too few?

Were words used correctly? Did they give you the right feelings for what the piece was trying to express?

SETTING

Where does the story take place? This could be as broad as "planet earth" or as specific as a certain bedroom in a tiny house in Bangor, Maine, USA.

If it was a fantasy setting, where you aware that it was a fantasy setting from the start? When did you realize where you were?

Was the setting clear? Could you visualize it, or was it over-described?

Did the setting affect the story? If so, how?

Was the setting portrayed accurately through the characters? Did the southern belle have an English accent? Anything that made it seem unrealistic?

STAGING

This section is supposed to be about defining characters through action/items. How they move, carry things in the environment.

Did the characters interact with items in the environment at all? This could be anything from the specific way they hold a gun or sword to the way they scuff their feet on the swing, to falling against a tree or looking around at the landscape.

A large part of the way we determine the moods or personalities of others is through their interaction with the environment. Things like slamming doors, or dreamily holding a single flower mean very specific things to people.

Did the characters have any distinguishing tics or habits?

Did they react realistically, physically, with the things around them?

CHARACTER

Who were the characters in the story?

Did they each have distinct personalities and voices?

Did the characters interact realistically with each other?

Were you clear on each characters' role?

Did the roles seem more important than the characters? (The "Adventurer". The "Bad Guy". Etc)

Were the characters believable?

What did the characters want? Need? Fear?

HEART

The heart of the story is basically its message. Some stories will have a moral. Some might have a theme or a motif. Some will express an opinion about society or humanity or taxes.

What did you think the story was trying to say, if anything? Did it succeed?

PLOT

What was the goal of the story?

What actions lead from the starting point to the goal?

Was the MC's goal achieved? If not, did that work for you?

Were any of the characters changed during the story? Was the world changed?

If not, did you feel cheated?

Did the plot seem too obvious? Too vague?

If you can't find the plot, say that.

Were there any gaping plot holes?

Did the plot work for you? Did it seem steps were missing, or that chunks of the story didn't advance the plot?

PACING

Did the story drag on in places?

Move too fast?

Did you miss things that should have been clarified?

Did the characters seem to be moving on fastforward or in slow motion?

Was the story long enough for the plot? Too long?

DESCRIPTION

Where did the description seem to go on too long?

Where were descriptions missing?

Did the story have more description than action?

Did it ever seem repetitive?

POV

What is the POV for the story? Was it consistent?

Who is the POV character (the character the story follows)?

Did the POV seem appropriate for the story? Would another POV or POV character have worked better?

DIALOGUE

Was there too much dialogue?

Not enough?

Did the words seem natural/believable?

Could you distinguish between the speaking characters without dialogue tags (he said/Marsha shouted)?

Did the dialogue seem stilted?

Did the characters say things that didn't move the story along?

GRAMMAR AND SPELLING

This should be one of the shortest areas in the critique. This is for overall spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization errors.

For individual mistakes, use in-line comments. Here it's more for:

Was a certain word always misspelled?

Was the document riddled with errors?

Is a hyphen used where it should be an ellipsis? Too many parentheses? Commas?

CLOSING COMMENTS:

Anything else you have to say regarding your opinions/thoughts on the story go in the closing comments.

OTHER

I've started using these as a ten point scale for scoring. You can do the same, or you can use the things I haven't outlined above as additional areas of discussion for your critique.

Clarity

Believability

Characterization

Description

Dialogue

Emotional Engagement

Grammar/Spelling

Imagery

Intellectual Engagement

Pacing

Plot

Point of View

Publishability

Readability

Overall Rating :

Please keep in mind that a good critique doesn't need to touch on all of these areas. It doesn't need to be in this format, either. A critique is simply a way to share your opinions. How the piece of writing worked for you (or didn't).

With that in mind, a critique should always be focused on the writing, not the writer.

Never the writer.

This list is to serve as a place to begin. Ideas to get the discussion started. Remember, the more detailed your critique is, the more information will be available to help the writer.

Good luck, guys, and be good to each other. (But not too good).

Lmao they said we'd die in three months. Said our mod team was trash. Those users probably aren't even on reddit anymore. We still chillen 😎

It’s been so long since I posted, but the long hours have been worth it, and I’m finally able to present my masterpiece. Years of toiling at the keyboard until my fingertips were bloody appendages has paid off and I expect to leave all you dweebs behind once the world of publishing realizes my awesomeness. Shouldn’t take more'n a few weeks according to my husband and mom.

Here is a link to the full magnum opus. Please peruse with an entire bottle of fine Merlot. (According to my husband, the drunker he gets, the better I write!)

I won't thank anyone for reading this; instead, I'm sure you'll want to thank me for (finally!) introducing some truly expert writing into this sub.

Going forward, "users" who submit trash "critiques" written by algorithms will be banned and it will not be appealable. These comments are spam and waste everyone's time. We've seen maybe three or four idiots wasting everyone's time recently with this rubbish.

You're welcome to use chat gpt, and other similar gimmick predictive algorithm freeware "AI" garbage, but if AI writes even 10% of the critique, your account will be permanently blocked from posting to this sub reddit.

Keep your eyes out for suspect comments.

https://gptzero.me/ --- A tool to see if its spam.

Commonly, AI comments will include some or all of the following: "random definitions", like why is it telling me what Australia is? I know what Australia is. Why is it giving me the definition of the Netherlands or Skulkark and Zordland...no one even used that word in text??

Why is it listing advice like "go back and read carefully, and try to add detail"? Absolutely useless generalized writing advice pladgerism spam.

Is the grammar absolutely flawless, but completely mundane contentless fluff?

Have other users on reddit already down voted previous comments left by "user"? Probably a shit poster.

Does it list things with numbers that are almost completely not necessary or/and incoherent? Almost certainly, it's GPT spam.

With the rise of AI, we've had to add a very simple new rule to counter the technology from being abused and wasting everyone's time. And trust us, it really does waste time. People actually have to read the critique and process whether what they're reading is even written by a human. That alone is a waste. Worse, if they cannot figure out the gimmick, then it equates to trolling and shit posting...

Our first thoughts for RDR months back when we learned of it and tried it (long before public really had open beta) was to allow it in good faith, but we have yet to see it used in good faith. Especially since the public can now access their shit-tier freeware beta, it's become a cultural nucence we're going to nip in the bud before it blossoms into a full blown revolution of spam.

Therefore starting immediately, and to be retroactively enforced:

A human must write the critique. If a bot has assisted, the user must disclose that assistance. The criteria for a human critique is that no more than 10% should be algorithm generated.

Again, to be very clear, all bot comments will be removed and the accounts permanently banned, the same way they are banned in old school runescape - permanently and without appeal. These aren't people, and they won't be treated as such.

Thanks.

I can't find it, but that is a quote from the original thread from when RDR was first created and posted to /r/writing. Shouts out to the haters who doubted that a vicious 4chan user like me could helm this project. Shout outs to the former mod of the now dead writing feedback sub, /r/shutupandwrite for banning me. It has always been my biggest motivator to obliterate incompetent narcissistic competition, and steam roll haters. And last shout out to the previous and current mods here. Thanks for helping!!

Anyway,

Happy 5th year birthday RDR 😎.

  [YOUR TEXT HERE](#RAINBOW)

WE OUT HERE TRAINING WOOLOO NOW BOI

[Text here](#G2B)

   [](#t)  type this to make the thinking emoji

  [](#wooloo) this is also case sensitive

Dear Destructive Readers Community:

Do you remember the salad days of this community? When we were all white, middle class, males? I know I do. And I can’t wait to be back to those days of insular critiques, where any random dick joke would be upvoted through the roof (that’s what she said!)

Just kidding, of course.

What I am actually writing for is to give a bit of perspective regarding critiques on this sub – with a suggestion (read, iron-clad rule) to make them better. So, with that in mind, let us delve into this following rock-hard ramble (that’s what she said!)

Who are critiques for?

When you critique a work, there are two people involved.

1. The person who’s work you are critiquing

2. Yourself.

Your critique should strive to benefit both of these people. How do you do that? Put in some ‘high effort.’

What do I mean by high effort??

Well, we have a full-on wiki about this. But let me just simplify this for you: ‘High effort’ means not just doing the minimum. It means not just doing what is comfortable, either. It means pushing yourself. Thinking about what makes a story work, and then express these thoughts to the writer. There are many aspects of storytelling (prose, plot, character, setting, imagery, message, etc.), and a good critique will comment on more than 1 of these. But the commentary of each of these is roughly the same.

1. Choose which aspect of storytelling you want to comment on.

2. Identify a piece of the writing that you think does either a good or a bad job of implementing this aspect of storytelling.

3. Tell the writer that you did, or did not like it.

4. Try your hardest to explain why you think it is either good or bad.

It is step #4 that is the critical part here. Step #4 is the one that lets YOU learn. It is also the step that helps the writer understand why you did or did not like it. It helps them assess if they think it really does need a change or not. Without step #4, your critique is useless. We might as well be a part of 4chan.

Example:

Hey dude, so, like your use of imagery sux.

This is bad. We all know this. But what about this…

Hey dude, so I read your piece and the imagery just isn’t working for me. Like that part, where you described how the flower that wilted recovered. I don’t know. There is something about it that just doesn’t work for me, you know. Maybe try some different imagery.

The second example is much LONGER, but just as worthless. Though it brings up specifics, it misses step #4.

So, instead, how about:

Hey dude. So, I get that imagery is important in prose. But when you try to bring in the wilted flower to describe Hercules. To me, the paring of the delicate flower and the massive hero didn’t work. While I think that juxtaposition can be powerful, in this case it is a miss for me. Mostly this is because it drew too much attention to itself. It brought me out of the story. I think that if you used a more traditionally masculine metaphor (that’s what she said!), then it would maintain the flow better. Maybe, like the re-forging of a spear?

You see the difference? Here, the critique is trying to express not only what isn’t working, but WHY. The writer now knows that the reason the reader didn’t like the imagery is because it drew him out of the story. This is important, because if the writer was TRYING to bring the reader out of the story, then the mission was accomplished and he might choose to ignore the critique. However, if the writer thought this would flow well, then he as some valuable insight that he might choose to act upon.

Another thing that happened in this example is that a suggestion was offered for a fix. In general, offering fixes is less helpful to the writer. They mostly won’t like taking another person’s suggestions, and it is unlikely that you have enough of a grasp of what the writer is trying to do that your suggestion is going to be perfect. However, that doesn’t mean that making suggestions is worthless! Indeed, recall that critiques are meant to be helpful to both the writer and the critiquer. Thus, the exercise of thinking about what is wrong with a piece, and then how to fix it, can be useful for the critiquer.

Anyway, the point here is that good, ‘high effort’ critiques should have at least steps 1-4 above.

This brings us to an important point:

On their own, line-edits are low effort.

That is right. If all you are going to do is copy the author’s words, and then make stupid 1-line suggestions, this will no longer count as ‘high effort’ – even if you do it for the whole piece. I know this ends up looking impressive, because you fill up a lot of room, but it is not that great – because it is not forcing anyone to think hard.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO JUST GIVE A 1-SENTENCE LINE-EDIT, LEAVE THAT WEAK-ASS SHIT IN THE GOOGLE DOC

Note: this doesn’t mean that we won’t accept critiques that walk through a piece. Indeed, we have had
some
[masterful] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4vp1cp/1491_two_shepherds_and_the_colossus/d60cvu5)
[demonstrations] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4p74mm/683_chapter_1_middlegrade/d4io978)
[of] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4p0tiq/996_choices/d4hcj2p)
[this] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4rli0d/1874_birthstones_book_1_ruby_chapter_1/d52m6i5)
[type] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4qefm8/3702_the_unavoidable_and_suffocating_happiness/d4shwii)
of
critique.
However, if you read all of these examples, you will notice that these critquers offer reasons WHY things are not working, as they work through the piece, line-by-line.

In other words, they are fulfilling step #4 from the list above.

You should do that.

Henceforth critiques that do not offer some rationale for their like/dislike will be considered low-effort.

I know, this sounds hard. But this is destructive readers. If both the authors and the critiquers are not sweating from the exertion of the critique, then we are not doing it right.

Now, go out there and be awesome!

All use of AI is hereby permanently banished

We're done. It's so frustrating. Every single day now we remove at least 1 shit post fake critique.

We used to have it where we would allow AI to help organize and fix critique grammar. This was a mistake, or at least I believe was not a mistake to experiment, but the experiment has failed. We have seen absolutely no evidence that Ai is even capable of doing anything helpful, without heavily modifying, or adding in garbage. This includes "translation" help.

This is probably not a technical limitation of the function of LLM/AI itself, but a restriction by the Ai website/API plug in, in order to create a tiered system where the freeware is purposely worse than their paid subscriptive version.

With that said if we can tell the work was assisted by AI in any capacity going forward the post in question will be removed and the user will be shadowbanned.

We've been getting a lot of English is not my first language submissions. It's not that we're unwelcoming to these people, it's that we are an English only subreddit.

If we can tell that a non-native speaker wrote the critique that's still fine. If we can tell that the critique has been translated, or that the submission itself has been plugged into Ai and then translated and then critiqued and then plugged back into Ai and then submitted as a critique, we will not allow this. AI is not an accurate tool for translation.

To be very clear,

We have modified our rules to completely discard, and disallow any and all use of AI tools

This isn't really a change—mostly just an announcement of what has already been happening to update the curious. We've changed the sidebar to reflect the new public attitude towards this crap.

We originally said you can use tool assistance for 10% of the critique—but no one did that...thus, we've reworked the rules to completely disallow it. If you're using chat GPT to modify a pre-written human critique for grammar, organizing, spelling, then we wouldn't even necessarily notice. However, the flagrant copy-paste spam is very obviously an abuse of this community. These "critiques" literally offer nothing. No insight or depth, and what they do offer is a waste of time. We discussed this months ago when were feeling out whether to allow it or not, and I personally took a conservative view of allowing GPT/AI in sparse use to assist–but after fishing through the AUTO REMOVED SPAM list for this sub, it's become obvious that this rule isn't necessary and it will be better off to just permanently disallow accounts from abusing tool "assistance" (spam).

It was a fun experiment, but it's become very obvious that AI cannot replace human insight in any regard.

This matter isn't really up for debate, and is being posted as a warning, and also an assurance to our community that we are paying attention and the mods are actively working to suppress spam. Thanks

A few months ago, I submitted a story for critique here called The Seed Heist, set in a post-crash society and featuring a duo of corporate agents traveling across the Arctic Circle to break into a rival corporation’s seed vault. After navigating my way around the leeching tag, the posts ended up with a number of very honest and helpful critiques. These allowed me to do a deep soul-searching edit, after which the new draft was much stronger than the original.

I submitted that story to Tractor Beam, a quarterly publication dedicated to what they call “soilpunk” i.e. soil-based climate fiction. I know, I know, the “-punk” suffix has been overused so much, that it basically means nothing now, but if you read any of their stories, you’ll quickly realize that they do in fact capture that radically subversive “punk” feel, tinged with a good dose of stubborn, hardnosed optimism. 

Anyways, a few weeks after submitting, I heard back that my piece had been accepted! 

Several rounds of additional edits later, and that piece has finally been published in Tractor Beam’s Winter 2025 Edition “Thaw” as Mustard Seed, alongside excellent art from Anuj Shrestha (who has done illustration work for the New York Times and The Economist) as well as a forward by author Jeff Vandermeer. 

Not to mention that I got paid a flat $1,000 for my accepted submission, which also means that I instantly qualify for SFWA membership. All in all, not a bad result. 

It goes without saying that this story could not have made it to this point without the lovingly destructive feedback that this subreddit provides. And I hope that this success story is an encouragement to everyone on this site that thoughtful feedback accepted with humility and a lack of defensiveness can do wonders for a work of art.

Thank you all again,

James Longine Yu

P.S. Special shoutouts to the following users for their destructively stellar critiques:

u/umlaut

u/A_C_Shock

u/kataklysmos_

u/PeteyPopgun

u/Willing_Childhood_17

u/desolate_cotton

u/weforgettolive

P.P.S. Please don’t actually post a critique on this piece. I highly doubt the mods would let that slide.

Lately, we've been seeing a drop in the quality of critiques. Here are examples of shitty critiques.

This may be downvoted for being positive but... I liked it. Absolutely brilliant. Maybe there are ways you could tweak it, but it kept me engaged. It was what it was, and I thought it was good. And I loved the font. Reminds me of my typewriter.

Pretty good! Didn't really captivate me with the story, but the writing itself was very good.

Not a bad prologue but reads a bit like True Detective crossed with Sherlock Holmes crossed with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It needs an extra bit of something to set it apart from the pack.

First of all, your sentence structure is choppy. It doesn’t flow. All of the sentences are around the same length so they are not too engaging. To remedy this common writing pitfall, read your piece out loud, and make adjustments as necessary. Use colorful and varied words, maybe more description.

Also, this is entirely up to you, but the piece doesn’t feel like it should be in the present tense. It feels more like a past tense story. I can’t really put my finger on the reason why, but something about it sounds awkward.

I do like how the intruder is kind of an ambiguous figure, but it would have helped to have access to the first chapter of the novel so that I would be in the right state to relate to the characters.

Right at the beginning, your stream of consciousness narration style and vivid, creative imagery catches my attention. Awesome aspects of your writing.

I think the last paragraph about the old man is pointless, and takes away from the story’s meaning. My advice? Cut it out and replace it with something else, or just end it without that paragraph.

I was writing up this massive commentary, but saw the time and then decided, "fuck it". This is a good piece. You keep your sentences sweet and simple, you've punchy dialogue, pruned adverbs, you don't needlessly use synonyms for "said"... I like it. It's good writing, and you should keep writing.

I'm sorry I can't offer constructive criticism, but I just wanted to compliment you.

I found the part about "taking tokes on a joint" to be kind of silly. You don't take tokes on a joint, you take hits off a joint.

I did a number of line edits to make the piece flow faster, and really, the point of view for telling the tale has gotta be consistent. As a beginning the piece is extreeeemly slow, and uninteresting to me. Get to the pigeon. Is that bland character ever gonna wake up and pigeonate. Its a snore.

I also read the query letter, and stopped at the phrase "euphoric killer" asking how those two words can live together. On the whole, the letter demonstrates in an unkind way, what the first read is probably gonna be like. I would decline to spend valuable company time reading the 90,000 words if the writing sample in the query is so inept.

I really liked it until the plot twist came in to play. Then I groaned and feared it would turn in to the Walking Toaster. It really saddened me that one reader didn't understand that the LIBRARY is what people used before Google. That alone makes me believe that you really ought to put this story out there, for the sake of anyone born after 2000. I read it thinking this would probably be a snippet used by liberal arts college English lit teachers about getting in to the mind of someone with a mental disorder until the evacuation was mentioned. That being said, I would rather read this kind of thing than World War Z. It has genuine depth outside of the cliche monster horror.

It's funny. Left some comments. You've got awkward phrasing sprinkled throughout, and clearly want to show off your vocabulary.

Is Dave the kind of guy who would use the words "ignominious" or "enmity"? Sounds like he's a programmer. The programmers I know don't tend to use words that can easily lead to confusion. They're practical, and considered.

The above critiques are considered LOW LEVEL. These critiques provide LITTLE TO NO insight into the writing. They are SHITTY CRITIQUES AND THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE THEM SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES.

In contrast, take a look at these high level critiques.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3q487u/1000_goblins/cwj4i3t

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3pvok6/2513_a_requiem_for_a_mouse/cwa4xk6

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3e82h7/1759_cricket/ctcrh7v

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3optgm/2780_joshua_2016/cvzkcww

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/30gqw9/2256_chapter_1_of_my_novel_series/cpsgc9e

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3g3c9t/668_southern_crime_round_4/ctujry8

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3gtfab/1793_impending_doom_prologue/cu1sk6h

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3t78sk/1074_cold_cold_winter/cx5iwsx

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3tia0r/2484_the_cost_of_living/cx6kr2a

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3u3ecm/4676_on_the_shores_of_home_part_1/cxbjr4z

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3uiie3/1998_this_foolish_heart_of_mine/cxhmzkn

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3xlbft/2475_44k_and_out_of_luck/cy5qu1e

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3xv7zy/4300_infatuation/cy89cn4

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/420adj/204_at_sea/cz6mw6j

They all go deep into detail about things the writer did right and wrong, and what things could be improved. The the low quality critiques contain literally nothing of value. Also notice that if I copied and pasted the contents of the high-level critiques into this metapost, they wouldn't fit. In general, the more you write in your critique, the higher the quality.

Welcome to the second ever Destructive Readers short story contest!##

Accepted themes are pandemics, quarantine, isolation, and/or murder hornets.

Prizes

1st Place#

The prestigious right to call yourself the Winner of the 2020 Destructive Readers Quintessential Literary Award for Best Thematic Short Story, a $30 amazon gift card, custom bookmark, and Reddit platinum.

2nd Place

A $25 amazon gift card, custom bookmark, and Reddit gold.

3rd Place

Custom bookmark and Reddit gold.

Honorable Mentions

Reddit silver

Contest Rules

1. Submit one previously unpublished work of fiction no longer than 1500 words. Double-space your work and use a serif font (e.g. TNR or Georgia.)

2. Post a Google Docs link in next week’s RDR contest thread with a <100-word description of your story. Only Google Doc submissions will be accepted for judging. Be aware Google Docs links to your Google account. Please create a throwaway Gmail if you're concerned with anonymity.

3. Three contest judges are members of the RDR community: u/shuflearn, u/Gentleman_101, and u/the_stuck. Two judges are RDR moderators: u/flashypurplepatches and u/SootyCalliope. RDR mods cannot participate in the contest.

4. Public participation is encouraged! If you like a story, leave a positive comment in the thread. (Please do not critique the submission.) Comments will be taken into consideration by the judges’ panel.

5. Reddit sitewide rules apply.

6. Submissions open in 1 week (5/17/20) and close the following Sunday (5/24/20.) The contest is limited to 40 entrants (subject to change based on interest.) Judges will announce the winners 2 weeks after the submission window closes.

7. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners must disclose personal information (email and/or address) to the mods to receive their awards.

8. All SFW genres are welcome (e.g. horror, YA, fantasy, sci-fi, lit fic, etc.)

9. Grammar and punctuation count. We don’t expect perfection, but stories with egregious or repeated errors will not win prizes.

10. Critiques are not required to enter the contest.

11. Please do not submit your story to RDR for critique until the contest is over (at which time, all sub rules apply.) This contest is meant to test your skill as a writer.

In the tradition of all great writers, I lifted most of this text from u/snarky_but_honest, u/MKola, /u/SootyCalliope, and the Halloween contest.

Use this thread to ask questions or to discuss whatever!

Edit: fixed a comma that was driving me crazy.

I think I have permission for this from the mods, but I just wanted to make a post about a flash piece that started out on Destructive Readers and got picked up. Check it out here,

https://flashfictionmagazine.com/blog/2019/07/26/the-day-it-snowed-wishes/

Thanks to everyone who took a look when I posted the piece and special thanks to u/writingforreddit who pushed me to pump more life into the piece.

🎉 10,000 members strong! 🎉

10,002 at the time of this post. We made it! Can't believe how far we've come. I for one am unscrewing a bottle of wine (corks can suck it) and toasting everyone on this sub, especially /u/ldonthaveaname for all their hard work in getting us where we are.

I swear I've said this dozens of times but we always gotta keep it fresh.

If the mods match your account (it happens few and far between) to your vandalism, even if you meant well, you're gonna get a stern smack and possibly loss of submission rights. We don't view it as a productive aspect of our community, it's actually the opposite.

We need everyone to refamiliarize with our tutorials from time to time and seems that time is now.

The basics of Google doc protocol:

MINIMALISM IS DEMANDED

We've been doing this a long time and our work flow is the way it is for a reason. When you break from that flow, you distract and annoying us. We demand that commentary in document (it doesn't count for critique BTW) is done in a minimalist capacity.

This means:

• mark as much as you want - but keep the marks themselves minimal and preferably out of attention drawing areas like the middle of sentences (unless you don't have a choice - but you usually do)

Example:

• you like a paragraph? Cool. Highlight the period or single word at the end of that paragraph and make the comment "I like this paragraph".

• do NOT highlight the entire freaking paragraph.

This is the problem we see so often and it's caused by assuming the op is too stupid to know what you're talking about. Trust that op will be.

This is the same for dialogue, and sentences. You can highlight a bit more liberal for this, but be careful not to scatter your stupid piss color high light marks everywhere.

• do NOT strike function and replace subjective edits.

Just because you think it reads better, even if you're correct, doesn't mean we allow this. It's a pain in the ass because only the DOC owner can remove this shit posting and it makes the document so hard to read for everyone else - including the op.

when commenting in docs with doc functions, treat it like you would a library book.

Thank you. And welcome to our chronic set of new users.

This is the first part of a sequel to a story I wrote a few years ago that was kind-of popular: If you're armed and at the Glenmont metro, please shoot me. In this sequel, I'm trying to link the universe of the original "Glenmont" story with my fictional universe that spans a self-published novella and a few short stories. In other words, I'm trying to retcon this sequel into both the original Glenmont story and my fictional universe. My goal in linking the original, stand-alone Glenmont short story with my other material is to entice people to buy my self-published book. So, yeah, I'm kind-of going back to the well to see if I can capitalize on the popularity of the original story.

The first venue for this "eight million years" sequel is reddit's r/nosleep. So it has to be scary and creepy.

If I'm lucky, at least one reviewer here will already be familiar with the original story. I have a question about how a reader of the original story views what I'm creating in this sequel. If you've happened to have read the original "Glenmont," my question to you is:

• Do you get a bad sense that this sequel is just a low-quality money-grab to get people to buy my book? Like, say, the way many reviewers thought Alien vs. Predator was "made with one goal on it's mind, to profit. It lures in fans of both franchises, in the hope of something great, but what we get is a mess, a Gore dependent movie with no reason at all. This movie is an insult to both franchises..."

I am trying to have this sequel stand on its own, without requiring a reader to go back and read the original work, or even have any knowledge of it. So, whether you've read the original story or not, here's what I want to know:

• Is the writing tight, exciting and interesting? Is it fast-paced enough to keep you reading, yet slow enough to dwell on the stuff that you want to know more about?

• If you haven't read the original story (which I assume will be most reviewers), was the recap of what happened prior to this sequel detailed and interesting enough to stand on its own? Or did you get the feeling that you've jumped into the middle of something and missed the beginning. Like if you started reading Harry Potter at book 4, skipping books 1-3 - you've missed plenty of stuff and are lost immediately?

• And the ultimate question: would you keep reading?

Thanks for reading all of this preliminary material. Here is the link to the story for review

My patient spent eight million years under a bench at the Glenmont metro

And my offering of previous reviews is here:

[3697] Chapter 1: The Extraction

Welcome to RDR!

Before posting, please familiarize yourself with our rules, located in the sidebar. New users overlook this one the most:

We ask for a 1:1 word count ratio before you submit your own writing. If you leave ~1,000 words, you should critique a ~1,000+ word story, with high effort.

Basically, before you post a story that’s 1500 words long, critique stories whose word counts total to 1500+ words. (Critique a 1500 word story, or a 500 word story and a 1000 word story, etc.) If you don’t follow this rule, your post will be marked as a leech post. And if your leech post has been up for 24 hours without any new critiques from you, it will be removed.

Critiquing

What’s a high-effort critique? Check out this page.

Not quite sure how to go about critiquing? Our wiki page on critiquing should help. We also have a template for critiquing here and a more in-depth version here.

Please note that, per our rules, we only count the critiques you leave as comments on RDR--we do not count any edits or comments you may give on Google docs.

For an overview of what a high-effort critique is and how you can write one, scroll down a bit to Writey’s tutorial.

Community Guidelines for Google Docs

If you're also providing line edits on Google docs, please make sure you read our community guidelines for editing in Google Docs. TL;DR: Be courteous and make sure you leave the doc readable for other Destructive Readers.

A Couple Other Details

All done with your critiques and ready to submit? Make sure you look at our guidelines and format your post correctly. The title of your post should be “[Word count] My Awesome Title.” If your title does not follow this format, your post will be removed. And we suggest posting fewer than 2.5k words, as posts with very high word counts (especially over 4k words) tend to get less attention. Finally, we prefer Google docs for ease of use. More information and step-by-step picture tutorials can be found on our wiki page for submitters.

Have any other questions?

Take a look at the wiki and FAQ, or send the mods a message via modmail. We hope you stick around!

If you’re still a little confused about what kind of critiques we’re looking for, or how to critique, read on for u/Write-y_McGee’s helpful tutorial. At the end, there are links to critiques we consider high-effort, as some examples.

/u/Write-y_McGee's High-Effort Critique Tutorial

Who are critiques for?

When you critique a work, there are two people involved.

1. The person who’s work you are critiquing

2. Yourself.

Your critique should strive to benefit both of these people. How do you do that? Put in some ‘high effort.’

What do I mean by high effort??

Well, we have a full-on wiki about this. But let me just simplify this for you: ‘High effort’ means not just doing the minimum. It means not just doing what is comfortable, either. It means pushing yourself. Thinking about what makes a story work, and then express these thoughts to the writer. There are many aspects of storytelling (prose, plot, character, setting, imagery, message, etc.), and a good critique will comment on more than 1 of these. But the commentary of each of these is roughly the same.

1. Choose which aspect of storytelling you want to comment on.

2. Identify a piece of the writing that you think does either a good or a bad job of implementing this aspect of storytelling.

3. Tell the writer that you did, or did not like it.

4. Try your hardest to explain why you think it is either good or bad.

It is step #4 that is the critical part here. Step #4 is the one that lets YOU learn. It is also the step that helps the writer understand why you did or did not like it. It helps them assess if they think it really does need a change or not. Without step #4, your critique is useless. We might as well be a part of 4chan.

Example:

Hey dude, so, like your use of imagery sux.

This is bad. We all know this. But what about this…

Hey dude, so I read your piece and the imagery just isn’t working for me. Like that part, where you described how the flower that wilted recovered. I don’t know. There is something about it that just doesn’t work for me, you know. Maybe try some different imagery.

The second example is much LONGER, but just as worthless. Though it brings up specifics, it misses step #4.

So, instead, how about:

Hey dude. So, I get that imagery is important in prose. But when you try to bring in the wilted flower to describe Hercules. To me, the pairing of the delicate flower and the massive hero didn’t work. While I think that juxtaposition can be powerful, in this case it is a miss for me. Mostly this is because it drew too much attention to itself. It brought me out of the story. I think that if you used a more traditionally masculine metaphor (that’s what she said!), then it would maintain the flow better. Maybe, like the re-forging of a spear?

You see the difference? Here, the critique is trying to express not only what isn’t working, but WHY. The writer now knows that the reason the reader didn’t like the imagery is because it drew him out of the story. This is important, because if the writer was TRYING to bring the reader out of the story, then the mission was accomplished and he might choose to ignore the critique. However, if the writer thought this would flow well, then he as some valuable insight that he might choose to act upon.

Another thing that happened in this example is that a suggestion was offered for a fix. In general, offering fixes is less helpful to the writer. They mostly won’t like taking another person’s suggestions, and it is unlikely that you have enough of a grasp of what the writer is trying to do that your suggestion is going to be perfect. However, that doesn’t mean that making suggestions is worthless! Indeed, recall that critiques are meant to be helpful to both the writer and the critiquer. Thus, the exercise of thinking about what is wrong with a piece, and then how to fix it, can be useful for the critiquer.

Anyway, the point here is that good, ‘high effort’ critiques should have at least steps 1-4 above.

This brings us to an important point:

On their own, line-edits are low effort.

That is right. If all you are going to do is copy the author’s words, and then make stupid 1-line suggestions, this will no longer count as ‘high effort’ – even if you do it for the whole piece. I know this ends up looking impressive, because you fill up a lot of room, but it is not that great – because it is not forcing anyone to think hard.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO JUST GIVE A 1-SENTENCE LINE-EDIT, LEAVE THAT WEAK-ASS SHIT IN THE GOOGLE DOC

Note: this doesn’t mean that we won’t accept critiques that walk through a piece. Indeed, we have had
some
[masterful] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4vp1cp/1491_two_shepherds_and_the_colossus/d60cvu5)
[demonstrations] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4p74mm/683_chapter_1_middlegrade/d4io978)
[of] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4p0tiq/996_choices/d4hcj2p)
[this] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4rli0d/1874_birthstones_book_1_ruby_chapter_1/d52m6i5)
[type] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/4qefm8/3702_the_unavoidable_and_suffocating_happiness/d4shwii)
of
critique.
However, if you read all of these examples, you will notice that these critquers offer reasons WHY things are not working, as they work through the piece, line-by-line.

In other words, they are fulfilling step #4 from the list above.

You should do that.

Henceforth critiques that do not offer some rationale for their like/dislike will be considered low-effort.

I know, this sounds hard. But this is Destructive Readers. If both the authors and the critiquers are not sweating from the exertion of the critique, then we are not doing it right.

Now, go out there and be awesome!

Some examples of high-effort critiques:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3q487u/1000_goblins/cwj4i3t https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3pvok6/2513_a_requiem_for_a_mouse/cwa4xk6 https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3e82h7/1759_cricket/ctcrh7v https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3optgm/2780_joshua_2016/cvzkcww https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/30gqw9/2256_chapter_1_of_my_novel_series/cpsgc9e https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3g3c9t/668_southern_crime_round_4/ctujry8 https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3gtfab/1793_impending_doom_prologue/cu1sk6h https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3t78sk/1074_cold_cold_winter/cx5iwsx https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3tia0r/2484_the_cost_of_living/cx6kr2a https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3u3ecm/4676_on_the_shores_of_home_part_1/cxbjr4z https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3uiie3/1998_this_foolish_heart_of_mine/cxhmzkn https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3xlbft/2475_44k_and_out_of_luck/cy5qu1e https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3xv7zy/4300_infatuation/cy89cn4 https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/420adj/204_at_sea/cz6mw6j

🐉🐙

Thank you dearly for your dedication. Your energy here grew as deeply as the foundational roots. Thank you for helping me build and giving so much structure to this place.

Arrigato--

Welcome to RDR!

Before posting, please familiarize yourself with our rules, located in the sidebar. New users overlook this one the most:

We ask for a 1:1 word count ratio before you submit your own writing. If you leave ~1,000 words, you should critique a ~1,000+ word story, with high effort.

Basically, before you post a story that’s 1500 words long, critique stories whose word counts total to 1500+ words. (Critique a 1500 word story, or a 500 word story and a 1000 word story, etc.) If you don’t follow this rule, your post will be marked as a leech post. And if your leech post has been up for 24 hours without any new critiques from you, it will be removed.

What’s a high-effort critique? Check out this page.

Not quite sure how to go about critiquing? Our wiki page on critiquing should help. We also have a template for critiquing here and a more in-depth version here. On a basic level, though, try to comment on:

• Prose. Do you like the word choices? Is the grammar correct? Do the sentences read awkwardly? Why?

• Setting. Is it missing? Is there too much detail? Why?

• Plot. Is the plot present early enough in the piece? How’s the pacing? Is the plot interesting? Confusing? Jumping around way too much? Why?

• Character. Do you like the characters? Do they feel like real people? Do you want to keep reading about them? Why?

If you're also providing line edits on Google Docs, please make sure you read our community guidelines for editing in Google Docs. TL;DR: Be courteous and make sure you leave the doc readable for other Destructive Readers.

All done with your first critique and ready to submit? Make sure you look at our guidelines and format your post correctly. The title of your post should be “[Word count] My Awesome Title.” And we suggest posting fewer than 2.5k words, as posts with very high word counts (especially over 4k words) tend to get less attention. Finally, we prefer Google Docs for ease of use. More information and step-by-step picture tutorials can be found on our wiki page for submitters.

Have any other questions? Take a look at the wiki and FAQ, or send the mods a message. We hope you stick around!

Our PSA on what constitutes good and bad critiques has now been consolidated into this post, and can be found below:

Lately, we've been seeing a drop in the quality of critiques. Here are examples of shitty critiques.

This may be downvoted for being positive but... I liked it. Absolutely brilliant. Maybe there are ways you could tweak it, but it kept me engaged. It was what it was, and I thought it was good. And I loved the font. Reminds me of my typewriter.

...

Pretty good! Didn't really captivate me with the story, but the writing itself was very good.

...

Not a bad prologue but reads a bit like True Detective crossed with Sherlock Holmes crossed with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It needs an extra bit of something to set it apart from the pack.

...

First of all, your sentence structure is choppy. It doesn’t flow. All of the sentences are around the same length so they are not too engaging. To remedy this common writing pitfall, read your piece out loud, and make adjustments as necessary. Use colorful and varied words, maybe more description.

Also, this is entirely up to you, but the piece doesn’t feel like it should be in the present tense. It feels more like a past tense story. I can’t really put my finger on the reason why, but something about it sounds awkward.

I do like how the intruder is kind of an ambiguous figure, but it would have helped to have access to the first chapter of the novel so that I would be in the right state to relate to the characters.

...

Right at the beginning, your stream of consciousness narration style and vivid, creative imagery catches my attention. Awesome aspects of your writing.

I think the last paragraph about the old man is pointless, and takes away from the story’s meaning. My advice? Cut it out and replace it with something else, or just end it without that paragraph.

...

I was writing up this massive commentary, but saw the time and then decided, "fuck it". This is a good piece. You keep your sentences sweet and simple, you've punchy dialogue, pruned adverbs, you don't needlessly use synonyms for "said"... I like it. It's good writing, and you should keep writing.

I'm sorry I can't offer constructive criticism, but I just wanted to compliment you.

...

I found the part about "taking tokes on a joint" to be kind of silly. You don't take tokes on a joint, you take hits off a joint. I did a number of line edits to make the piece flow faster, and really, the point of view for telling the tale has gotta be consistent. As a beginning the piece is extreeeemly slow, and uninteresting to me. Get to the pigeon. Is that bland character ever gonna wake up and pigeonate. Its a snore.

...

I also read the query letter, and stopped at the phrase "euphoric killer" asking how those two words can live together. On the whole, the letter demonstrates in an unkind way, what the first read is probably gonna be like. I would decline to spend valuable company time reading the 90,000 words if the writing sample in the query is so inept.

...

I really liked it until the plot twist came in to play. Then I groaned and feared it would turn in to the Walking Toaster. It really saddened me that one reader didn't understand that the LIBRARY is what people used before Google. That alone makes me believe that you really ought to put this story out there, for the sake of anyone born after 2000. I read it thinking this would probably be a snippet used by liberal arts college English lit teachers about getting in to the mind of someone with a mental disorder until the evacuation was mentioned. That being said, I would rather read this kind of thing than World War Z. It has genuine depth outside of the cliche monster horror.

...

It's funny. Left some comments. You've got awkward phrasing sprinkled throughout, and clearly want to show off your vocabulary.

Is Dave the kind of guy who would use the words "ignominious" or "enmity"? Sounds like he's a programmer. The programmers I know don't tend to use words that can easily lead to confusion. They're practical, and considered.

...

The above critiques are considered LOW LEVEL. These critiques provide LITTLE TO NO insight into the writing. They are SHITTY CRITIQUES AND THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE THEM SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES.

In contrast, take a look at these high level critiques.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3q487u/1000_goblins/cwj4i3t https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3pvok6/2513_a_requiem_for_a_mouse/cwa4xk6 https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3e82h7/1759_cricket/ctcrh7v https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3optgm/2780_joshua_2016/cvzkcww https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/30gqw9/2256_chapter_1_of_my_novel_series/cpsgc9e https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3g3c9t/668_southern_crime_round_4/ctujry8 https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3gtfab/1793_impending_doom_prologue/cu1sk6h https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3t78sk/1074_cold_cold_winter/cx5iwsx https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3tia0r/2484_the_cost_of_living/cx6kr2a https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3u3ecm/4676_on_the_shores_of_home_part_1/cxbjr4z https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3uiie3/1998_this_foolish_heart_of_mine/cxhmzkn https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3xlbft/2475_44k_and_out_of_luck/cy5qu1e https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/3xv7zy/4300_infatuation/cy89cn4 https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/420adj/204_at_sea/cz6mw6j

They all go deep into detail about things the writer did right and wrong, and what things could be improved. The the low quality critiques contain literally nothing of value. Also notice that if I copied and pasted the contents of the high-level critiques into this metapost, they wouldn't fit. In general, the more you write in your critique, the higher the quality.

UPDATE: Thanks for the great questions! I had a good time.

Hi, I’m redditor editor, BiffHardCheese.

I currently acquire manuscripts for a small genre publisher and sometimes edit those manuscripts. I've edited for a couple of literary journals and publishers. I've also taught workshops and judged a some awards. The longer I do this stuff, the more stuff there is to do.

But my job, really, is freelance editing.

Every day I work with two to four different manuscripts, mostly novel-length but sometimes novellas and short stories. I consult on content, break out the red pen for line-by-line edits, and even do some ghostwriting and fiction writing of my own. There’s no one genre tying me down, and I've worked on fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction – I leave the poetry to the professionals. I read queries, partials, and scrutinize whole manuscripts for potential. Basically I'm constantly reading fiction written by people trying their best to get published, and often times I get to help those people reach that goal.

I also make my way around reddit, doing as much e-good as I'm able, which is mostly as time allows. I run a . . . not-so-weekly Weekly Query Critique in which I attempt to bring up the general quality of agent queries.

I'll be in and out all day to chat and answer questions.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who has submitted so far! We're humbled and blown away by the response.

Edit 2: The story cap is raised to 50. If/once we reach 50, no more entries will be accepted.

Edit 6: We have reached 50 submissions. The contest is now closed.

Link to the original post.

IT’S SUBMISSION TIME.

This thread is the ONLY place to submit your contest entry. PM’ing a submission to the judges will result in immediate disqualification. (Other types of questions are okay.)

All first-level replies to this thread must be a story link. Anything else will be removed.

If you read a story and like it, reply to the author with a positive message. These will be taken into account. Please DO NOT critique the story (resist your instincts, Destructive Readers!) or leave negative comments.

Submitting? Here’s a quick Google Docs tutorial for those unfamiliar with the process:

1. Is your story 1500 words max? Double spaced with a serif font? Titled? Awesome! You’re ready to proceed to step 2.

2. Click the “Share” button in the upper right corner. Then click “Anyone With the Link” as VIEWER

3. Double-check that the document is set to VIEW only. (Resist your instincts again, Destructive Readers!)

4. Click “Okay,” and post the link as a reply to this thread, along with a <100-word synopsis. Include the title of your submission.

Please don’t ask a judge what he/she thinks of your story, or PM a judge asking for feedback. We cannot/will not reply to these types of requests.

Submissions will be accepted until 5/24/20, or until we reach 40 stories. Judges reserve the right to extend the submission number based on the amount of interest/how quickly we reach 40. No entries will be accepted after 5/24/20.

Once submitted, hands off for competitive integrity. Google Docs shows a “last edit” date.

Winners will be announced on 6/7/20.

Good Luck!

Edit 3: /u/SootyCalliope has graciously created a master story list.

Edit 4: We reached 40 submissions on 5/20/19 at 9:00 pm EST. Ten slots remain!

Edit 5: Seven slots remain! Submissions close on 5/24/20 at midnight (EST.)

I'm in a sour eyerolling mood, so you're all getting a sour and eyerolling response.

In response to a huge influx of new users. . . Most of which apparently aren't accustomed to critiquing and seem to be following a trend of downward quality (unlike bitcoin right now wtf why did I sell hahah). I've personally leech marked and subsequently removed 6 of these just this week. I believe this is because these people are looking what the other people (who are also doing it wrong) are doing and saying "well I'll do that too!".

In our sidebar, we explicitly state (twice) that we don't count line edits when taking into consideration the merit of a critique. These superficial (often worthless and subjective or trivial and menial) "edits" are about as low effort as possible, even if the person doing them is putting in time and effort into the careful consideration, copy-pasting, and subsequent discussion of these edits. Unfortunately, a simple red tick mark in the document is really all that is necessary and the superflous work is discounted. You've read holes? We don't care if you're dumb and used a rake to do a shovel's job -- we judge the hole!

Let's analyze an example.

Dan walked down the stare case and accidently triped on the very last step.

comment: You mispelled tripped, and stair case, and remove the word very.

Great. Only that's a bad critique and the editing job is totally worthless. Just put 3 yellow tick marks on the sentence and if OP can't figure it out, too bad.

So you disagree with a word choice or two or found a sentence structure confusing: So what? Is that actually a critique? or would you be better suited addressing the fundmentals like character, plot, pacing, setting, emotional feeling, structural integrity in aggregate, flow, etc. Or do they need to see "oh you misspelled night as nite". This includes typographical errors or a spelling errors. These types of pin-prick micro edits are easy to spot, and easily fixed. Helpful? Yes. Worthy of praise and submission approval? Not here. Better left in Google-Doc, and to be clear we don't actually (as mods) check inside these. ^{reminder to keep highlights to a minimum and try to attach comments just to the periods on the edge of the sentences you're commenting on as to not highlight the entire thing}

Similarily, copy pasting large chunks of text from what you're critiquing onto reddit is also not considered high-effort. Just because you stick it on reddit doesn't mean the mods don't know where it came from. It's like blowing normal air into a helium balloon. It won't fly here, even if it does expand how much space it takes on a page. Most people are innocently confused here, so we don't repremand users ...a few are more devious with their laziness and to those people I say this: We aren't stupid, and a robot is not the one checking critiques here - our userbase (mods) are.

If you think posting a full paragraph from the writing and saying "I don't really like this" is going to get you a submission approval here, you're naive - and you're not the type of users we're looking to attract. Even if you elaborate a bit on that micro paragraph, the summation of your critique will still amount to very little and is still considered mostly line editing.

Also, to be clear: "I'm new" (as we warn in the sidebar) is not an excuse. It never will be. Neither will English as a 2nd language, or your dog dying. We don't care. RIP sparky.

To be very clear, line edits are very helpful and can boost the quality of a critique, but on their own are not a critique unto themselves (even in aggregate).

We almost fully disregard these types of critiques or get in micro spats whereby users are butthurt, and the mods roll their eyes and refer them to what they should have read before submitting i.e - our sidebar ---- and our WELCOME POST STICKY!!!

If you're at all confused about exactly what level of critique we expect here, or the definition of what a critique is supposed to be, I suggest you check out our welcome post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/5p5xon/welcome_to_destructivereaders_new_users_please/

This post has numerous examples of critiques we approved and you'll see immediately why. Our standards here are not ever going to drop, and we don't expect random new users with complaints about these standards to change our minds.

Thanks for holding out with us, and seriously go invest in bitcoin.

Welcome to /r/DestructiveReaders!

PLEASE TAKE THE RDR 2015 SURVEY

^{v2.9b: Dec. 2014}

It is assumed you have probably glanced at the sidebar. We do ask that you read it. When you finish reading, you can also think of this as the general FAQ thread.

The extreme basics go like this: Look around. You'll figure it out. If you have questions, we promise it's somewhere in the guides. We also have extra fun stuff like the glossary or writing resources that we encourage everyone to check out, even if you aren't planning to submit or critique.

This page is going to give you a very brief overview / crash (and burn) course into what we're about here, some of the unique features of this sub, how it all works, and answer some very commonly asked questions.

In no way is this basic 101 intro an exhaustive list of everything.

That can be found in our wiki, and if you plan to be an active member or submit here, you might need to refer to it.

LIST OF WIKIS

SUBMITTING? READ THIS!

CRITIQUING? READ THIS!

Grammar/usage/mechanics mistakes, plus some writing resources

Hall of Fame - Our Favorite Critiquers

Glossary of Common Problems Terms Here!

So, what is this sub?

We're the little goth scene girl sitting by herself in the cafeteria.

Put simply, this is an educational oriented place where you post a best example of your writing, and redditors will "critique" it or give line-by-line commentary / edits and tell you stuff about your writing like what they think about it, or how to improve, and unlike other similar subs, mercilessly why it sucks :) hopefully with instructions on how to improve (be warned: not always!)

Section 1: Critiquing & Not Leeching.

It is politely assumed you'll will end up reading the wiki.

What is a critique? A critique is basically commentary on someone's writing. Things like style, plot, tone, characters, grammar, etc can be pointed out. Unlike other subs, we don't demand "constructive sugarcoating". By all means, rip people apart. However, there is a very fine line between being helpful and pointing out flaws, and flaming/trolling for the sake of being edgy. If the mods/community feel you're falling into the latter category, you'll hear about it. The point isn't to be mean or show off.

There is also something relatively unique about this sub (besides the atmosphere/CSS): The Line edits.

Take a moment to go glance through some of the submissions here to get an idea of what this means. As well, we've got a few examples of how commentary works for said edits. A good 50% of the critquing here (no hyperbole) gets done directly in Google docs. You can learn a lot reading the comments in doc.

Sometimes, even our top critiquers will only write a paragraph here on reddit (with a note that says they worked off sub), but leave ten or twenty comments in document, or in /u/not_rachel and other top critiquers case's hundreds of edits and comments. These are the folks we want to attract. These are the folks that take pride in editing and use it as a tool to learn and help others.

Anyone is qualified to give their opinion as long as you follow the way of the DestructiveReader®.

Please refer back above to the critique section wiki and be sure to note:

• Check out the mods or the hall of fame for reference as to what you should aim for.

Unlike other similar subs, we value QUALITY over quantity and give more in return. Try to aim for about 4 paragraphs total--although many do far more.

Verbatim from the Under Construction sticky section 2.

Section 2: Submitting

• At minimum, read through other critiques here so you know what to expect and can preemptively make necessary edits before posting. It'll also give you a structure to follow when you critique. The higher quality your work, the higher quality the edits and feedback will be.

• As a rule of thumb, ALL CRITIQUERS should consider ANY POST 3-7 DAYS OLD JUST AS VALID as newer submissions, irrespective of the amount of feedback said posts has already received. If you're bored waiting for new stuff, consider crawling old stuff you may have missed or posting something of your own!

• "Red flair + faded opacity" == LEECHING!!!

Anyone with zero critique history, or really weak critiques will be placed in this category. There really is no reason to fall into this category and most never do :) Members are usually allowed a 24 - 48 hour grace period to critique before mods politely step in and remove the post until the problem is resolved. The community falls apart if people don't start the chain or at minimum complete it. When large numbers of users flock here, these standards might vary, as we don't believe anyone is entitled just for showing up.

Section 3: Meta Critiques (Critiquing other's critiques!)

Here are /r/DestructiveReaders we don't believe any one person has the answers, even if they see problems. We also don't agree that everything is a problem just because one person says so (grammar usually not withstanding). Everyone is encouraged (even without leaving a critique of their own!) to give commentary and discussion on other's critiques. However, please be polite and concise. Unlike a normal critique where you don't have to justify your opinion, we do ask that you justify a meta-critique (a critique of someone else's critique) politely. This assures the following:

• One person doesn't just immediately piss on everything just because they don't like it.

• One person doesn't mold the entire narrative entirely on their subjective suggestions.

• People can improve their critique skills.

• The community flourishes.

PLEASE NOTE: A meta critique does NOT COUNT as a critique in it's own rite and would not constitute full submission (non-leech) posting rights here. However, you are more than welcome to incorporate your own full critique into a meta critique and that will count. Mods aren't the police, but please be civil.

Lastly, we have the...

Hall of Fame - Our Favorite Critiquers

Please feel free to message the mods with anyone you feel deserves to be in it. We have some pretty high (secret) standards, but we also have no problem recognizing those users who make it :) It can be difficult to crawl user history here, so feel free to help us out.

And a bit of a hall-of-shame (with no usernames shown) to give an idea of what we DON'T want.

CLOSING NOTE:

Thanks for reading all of that, and we're glad you've found us! We know it's a lot to take in, a bit of effort to critique and takes a lot of guts to subject your writing to the folks here!

Now please excuse me whilst I go throw up from being this official and not using the fuck word as a comma ...

It's been a really long time since I've abused my power as sub admin and just absolutely shit posted but you guys have to check this out:

http://gawker.com/british-writer-tracks-down-teen-who-gave-his-book-a-bad-1741713016

1 hour pod cast

https://casefilepodcast.com/case-89-ella-tundra/

I recommend this podcast more than the article, which I linked only because not everyone likes pod casts. But this post is about the pod cast.

Try to imagine this guy posting on RDR lmfao

Check out Case File podcast #36 AMOK too. It's about a murder in a book...or is it just a book? Dun fun DUN!