Online Critique Sites

ABCTales

What little public information there is on how to submit reviews is generic and buried in a sticky post on how to use the “Discuss writing from ABCtales.com” forum. The FAQs are limited and fairly basic, which is consistent with the site itself. The “Code of Conduct” page is actually a privacy policy statement.

This is a discussion site more than a critique site. The discussion forum has six major topic areas and some have a very large number of sub-topics and posts in them. Each story must have an age rating based on the UK film and video classification standards, which are described in the FAQs. The site also offers weekly writing prompts and occasional in-house contests.

Absolute Write Water Cooler

Potential members must join the site to get any information, including on how to share work. Primarily intended as a discussion forum for writers, editors, and agents. There is a password-protected “Share Your Work” forum where members can post work to be critiqued but they have to have written 50 posts elsewhere on the site.

Must critique before submitting? Yes, after posting 50 comments in the discussion forums.

All Poetry

The sister site to StoryWrite. See its write-up below. Some full submissions can be viewed by visitors, others only by members. Has a “trade comments” function where members can exchange critiques. Requires each comment to include “2 suggestions and at least 1 encouragement.”

Critique Circle

A 2021 site redesign hid almost all of the information that used to be publicly available. Now a potential member must sign up before finding out more about the site.

Guaranteed number of critiques: 5 (in the “Newbie Queue” only).

Most information about the site appears to be available only to members, however the following links do work whether you’re a member or not. The FAQs (also called the “knowledge base”) are very extensive and include three excellent tutorial videos. There is a separate rules page and an “introductory letter.”

Submissions are put in a queue and can take as long as two weeks before they’re available to be critiqued. New members’ works become available on the Wednesday after they’re submitted. All submissions are only available to be reviewed for a week, from Wednesday to Wednesday. The author will be told when the piece will become available for review. Once the week has passed, members can read the critiques that were submitted.

AI-generated content–either as a submission or a critique–is prohibited and grounds for immediate termination of a member’s account.

Credits earned for critiquing a piece is based on the length of the work, not on the length of the critique but all critiques are expected to be at least 300 words long.

New members are expected to begin participating in the first week. If they don’t, their name is removed from the member list, although the membership is not canceled.

Critique.org

Extensive and informative (maybe overwhelmingly so) About, Rules, and FAQ pages. Accepts submissions and critiques only via e-mail, but with very specific format requirements. Members receive submissions for review by e-mail and on a password-protected web page; they choose which to review. It may take a month or more to receive critiques. All material runs through one individual, which raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of the site. Members are told to expect an average 15-20 reviews.

Eratosphere

The FAQs cover the basics of using the forums, creating and maintaining a user profile, and reading and posting messages.

The site is part of the Able Muse online and print magazine and primarily focuses on poetry, although there’s a limited space for fiction also. Members have the ability to keep Google or other search engines from indexing a post, which prevents over-zealous contests from claiming the piece has already been published.

Faith Writers

The information on how to submit work or critiques is limited. There is also a “tour” of the site but these pages open in new windows that are very small and hard to read, and cannot be made larger.

Paid members may receive one critique from a professional author for free, and all members can pay $3.00 per page for them. Training courses are also available under the paid memberships. Provides contacts with professional editors.

Inked Voices

A four-minute video on the home page summarizes the processes of finding and joining a group, submitting work, and receiving critiques. The FAQ page goes into more detail on these and other subjects. There’s also a Code of Conduct page.

This site is unusual in that it is intended exclusively to support critique groups, both ones that already exist and ones formed within the site. A listing of groups looking for members is available but a bit hard to find (click here). Members can also create a group if they don’t find any to their liking. Each listing indicates how many members the group wants to have (ranging from 3 to 100, which seems highly impractical) as well as how many they already have. Members can also create a group if they don’t find any to their liking.

Some self-formed groups do critiques, other are only for “accountability.” Discounts are available for existing critique groups (15%, first year only) and full-time students (30%, must prove enrollment). Workshops and recorded lectures are available for members and non-members on a wide variety of topics, plus free information on how to start and run a critique group and a two-page “critique cheat sheet.”

Literotica

There are 17 separate FAQ pages on pretty much every aspect of the site. The Literotica Content Guidelines and Terms of Service pages are especially important. A special FAQ page details legal limitations on submissions.

All work will be reviewed by an editor before it appears on the site. If a piece is rejected, the editors will provide information on why so the author can try to fix it and resubmit. There is a “story feedback” forum but only a group of volunteer editors provide critique. This submission and feedback process occurs via e-mail and is not on the main site, beyond finding an editor to contact. Readers can make comments on a piece but this does not necessarily constitute critique. Readers can rate pieces on a 1-5 scale, called “voting.” These scores are used to identify the most popular pieces.

Mibba

Potential members should read the terms of service carefully. They may find some of the terms regarding how posted material may be used by the site staff unacceptable. The extensive information on how to create “layouts”, which is how work is posted, as well as other guidelines and FAQs, is buried in a “Knowledge Base” section.

Members come from all over the world, most were 30 or younger at the time they posted their profiles, and many write fan fiction. While new material is being posted, much of it is from years ago. Members may also post the text of unpublished books they’re sharing with all other readers. One such book on the site had, at the time of this writing, 229 chapters and over 394,000 words!

Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror

There are extensive FAQ, “How to Review,” and Member Agreement pages but they’re very hard to find.

Members may have up to three pieces available for review at any one time. Members can make “lists” of preferred reviewers but it’s not clear if they can limit reviews to just them. Groups of members can create temporary “focus groups” which operate like small workshops. Agents and editors may become professional members but need to pass a screening first. “Resident editors” (professional authors) pick four selections which they review in a monthly newsletter.

Must critique before submitting? Yes, to earn 4 points (usually 4 critiques)

Other Worlds Writers’ Workshop

The site calls itself “The best SF and fantasy genre online writing workshop on the web” and says it’s “for serious writers of fantasy and science fiction.” To join, potential members must first open an account on groups.io, then apply for membership in the site.

The site provides a nearly 3,000 word “Basics of Critiquing” article and another one on how to avoid a “shortcrit,” which is based on content, not length, and does not give the reviewer critique credit. The extensive “Links” page mentions many agents, publishers, and more, but none of the links are live for visitors.

Expected critique rate: twice a month and two critiques for every submission. A “high-crit” (high-scoring) review can count as credit for several months’ participation.

Screech Poetry Magazine UK

Guidance on how to post and review a poem is limited but easy to find. A welcome post provides more, but still generic, information.
This is a small, minimally active, free, forum-based site located in the United Kingdom. Although it calls itself a magazine, there does not appear to be any effort to create regular collections of poems in even something like an online chapbook. The latest post to any of the non-contest forums was in March 2021. Critiques consist of reviews posted as comments after each submitted poem.

Must critique before submitting? Yes, two critiques

Scribophile

Free “Reader” members may not post work for critique.

There are multiple, overlapping, and cross-linked FAQs and a “Codes of Conduct” page, writing advice articles, and roughly 150 free tutorials as part of the “writing academy.” The site also offers webinars that are free for “Writer” members (no information on price for “Reader” members or non-members).

Reviewers are expected to use certain critique templates. Some require quoting from the work. Members can form groups within the site and can post work there for review only by the other group members.

Novels may be posted in a special “Beta Read” spotlight. There’s also a way to identify individual posts as being part of a novel without using the “Beta Read” spotlight.

Must critique before submitting? Yes, to earn 5 “karma points.”

Guaranteed number of critiques: 3 “long” critiques (over 125 words) if the work is placed in one of several “spotlights.”

SFF Chronicles

The guidance on how to give and receive critique is fairly generic.
This discussion site has a “Critiques” thread in the “Writing Forums” section in which members can post work for critique. Unlike many other sites, members are warned that anything they post here could be considered “published.”

Must critique before submitting? Yes, 30 comments

storywrite.com

Must critique before submitting? Yes, 2 comments (may be as short as 50 characters)

A very extensive list of FAQs is available from “Help” links, but they confusingly refer to AllPoetry, a sister site, not to StoryWrite. These sites are interconnected. Over 60 “detailed help tutorials” are available through a sidebar on the FAQ page, but all were posted in 2017. There are an extensive set of legal terms of use and a privacy policy. There are almost two dozen free courses available, but only a few are about something other than poetry.

Members may form or join groups to exchange ideas, limit who may comment on their work, etc. Members may participate in contests but they’re run by other members, not by the site’s administrators and moderators.

Talentville

While the link to the FAQ section is buried in a “Useful Links” box in the left sidebar, it’s extensive and thorough. There are also separate Terms of Use and Submission Upload Agreements that prospective members should read closely. The “University” contains over 160 articles plus recordings of half a dozen webinars.

This site is primarily for screenwriters and for “movie professionals” looking for new talent or a script to produce. The site CEO developed the FinalDraft™ script-writing software. Members in the lower two categories are assigned scripts to review and have a limited time (5-7 days) to complete and return the review once they accept the assignment. Reviews are expected to cover half a dozen topic areas plus an overall evaluation, including a 1-10 numerical rating (10 is highest). “Tourist” and “Preferred” members are allowed only one or three (respectively) script uploads, but it’s unclear over what timeframe: per month, per year, forever, or after earning a certain number of “talent dollars” for giving reviews. Members may join groups for networking and peer critiques.

Must critique before submitting? No to submit but yes to earn enough “talent dollars” to get submissions reviewed. There are formulas for how many “talent dollars” each review may earn and how much each review will cost.

The Desk Drawer

Since this is a forum-based site, the FAQs deal largely with how to work within it. The privacy policy covers the basics.

Members are expected to submit three times per month; a mix of two critiques and one submission is “preferred.” Candidate members must submit a 100-250 word writing sample in response to a specific exercise. Repeated failure to spell-check submissions or critiques is grounds for removal from the site!

The Internet Writing Workshop

The site provides a long list of links for guidance on how to get various e-mail programs to send messages in plain text rather than HTML. The FAQs are fairly generic but do address the unique aspects of the site, since it is still based on a listserv (an email list server) rather than a forum or typical website.

Hosted by Pennsylvania State University. Members must be 18 or older, but the only proof required is a statement that they are. If accepted, members must join 1 of 8 critique lists and 1 of 3 discussion lists. Critique lists have monthly participation requirements. Some participation rules in the short story critique list seem unreasonable and unenforceable. The writing advice articles date to 2007 and 2008.

The Next Big Writer

The Help item on the menu bar provides relatively easy access to information, including helpful video tutorials, plus links to still more information. The set of FAQs is fairly extensive and includes a member agreement page and a hard to find copyright policy page.

This is a slickly-produced site that makes lots of promises, including that your health will improve (because, quoting from a New York Times article cited on the site, “writing about oneself and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, … reduce doctor visits, [etc.]”). “Basic” members are assigned to one critique group within the site. “Premium” members can join up to nine others or form their own. Only about a dozen groups are listed publicly, with two being the “Basic” and “Premium” groups all members are assigned to. Work can be made visible just to group members.

The Poetry Free-for-All

There’s a thorough set of posting guidelines (FAQs), although some forums have their own guidelines as well. There are also a “Newbie Stretching Room” forum and “New posters’ orientation–please read before posting” threads. The “PFFA Recommended Reading Lists” post contains a substantial list of craft books, poem collections from many different English-speaking countries and for many different poetic forms, and posts from a couple of forums on the site. However, the post was added in 2011. These multiple layers of guidance may be more confusing or overwhelming than helpful.

There are quite a few other discussion and information forums. A notice in red text at the top of the home page—“WARNING! We’re mean. We’re nasty. We’re merciless….”—is, one hopes, tongue in cheek. (Further reading within the site suggests it is.) Still, it could be off-putting to more timid potential members.

Must critique before submitting? Yes, 3 in the same forum (16 forums available, some with subforums)

Women’s Fiction Writers Association

Writer’s Café

The hard-to-find FAQs contain the suggestion to keep submissions below 20 pages. Potential members should read the Terms of Service closely.

There are many reasons to be very cautious about this site. Some of the self-publishing resources listed are outdated (CreateSpace versus KDP Print), have received very poor reviews, or are even subject to scam warnings, while other, reputable companies are not included. The 2,000 “courses”—most of which are 5 to 10-plus years old—were created by other site members. The listing includes items that are unrelated to writing and may even be scam links, like phone numbers ostensibly to Microsoft Office or TurboTax customer support. It’s concerning that these have not been removed.

Site members may create contests which may offer cash prizes, although it’s not clear where the money for the prizes comes from. Other “contests” are really ways to generate content for a book or magazine unrelated to the site.

The site allows members to form groups within the site, and fully 2,000 are listed, many with thousands of members claimed. It’s hard to determine how active these groups actually are.

Writing.com

A helpful but perhaps overwhelming table shows the vast number of the features and capabilities available to members at each level. In addition, a very extensive set of FAQs and a “Writing.com 101” page (also referred to as a “Getting Started” page) provide a lot of information, including how to provide reviews and suggestions on what each rating “star” should mean, but much of it is “nested,” with links taking the reader from page to page. Summaries of, and links to ten online (paid) writing courses are available through a Writing Classes link that’s buried in the footer and in a “Writing Resources” item in the left sidebar.

Overall, the site is the most expensive for the upper tiers of all the sites considered and makes some claims about itself that it doesn’t provide any support for, such as that “hundreds of new members” are joining daily. A very complex site, which could be intimidating for potential members.