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 “Privacy Policy” page notes that, as a British site, it operates under the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is quite strict about how personal information is to be handled. The “Terms of use” are pretty standard, including a warning that any use of AI is not permitted on the site and the author of any works found to have used it will be asked to take it down.

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.

Absolute Write Water Cooler

Visitors to the site can read what’s posted in the forums but have to join to participate in the conversations. The two posts in the Newbie Guide! thread provide a lot of what a new member needs to know, as they should, but there’s also a much more extensive set of FAQs as well. Although this site is 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.

AI-written or -assisted work, forum posts, or graphics (including a member’s avatar) are strictly prohibited. Members caught using AI will be banned.

All Poetry

The sister site to StoryWrite. See its write-up elsewhere on this site.

Some full submissions can be viewed by visitors, others only by members. The FAQ page, confusingly combined with the “Contact us” page, has extensive lists of FAQs and links to other help articles. Poems created using AI may be used so long as that is revealed; failing to do so will result in a ban from the site.

The site has a “trade comments” function where members can exchange long (detailed) or short (“encouraging”) critiques. Requires each comment to include “2 suggestions and at least 1 encouragement.” An “autorank” function evaluates poems on some parts of the site that uses an algorithm to compare a submitted poem to those “closest to the kind of style you’d find in a professional poetry journal.” It’s not clear how members or the site use this tool.

Members may run contests, but the moderators and administrators do not closely monitor them to make sure their rules are being followed.

The site hosts nearly 60 member-run groups centered around whatever the founder wanted. There are also half a dozen free, self-paced courses.

The site has an extensive Terms of Use and a thorough privacy policy.

Critique Circle

Most information about the site is available only to members, with one exception. The FAQs (also called the knowledge base) are very extensive and include five excellent tutorial videos, including three for new members. Other helpful videos are placed in topic areas in the Knowledge Base. 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 one week, from Wednesday to the following Tuesday at midnight UTC (Greenwich, England, Time). 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.

Free members can submit only after earning enough credits. Credits earned for critiquing a piece are based on the length of the critique, but all critiques are expected to be at least 300 words long.

AI-generated content—as a submission, critique, or forum post—is prohibited and grounds for immediate termination of a member’s account.

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

The material on the About (https://www.critique.org/c/about.ht), Rules (https://www.critique.org/c/rules.ht), Critter Diplomacy (https://www.critters.org/c/diplomacy.ht), and FAQ (https://www.critique.org/c/faq.ht) pages is extensive and informative (maybe overwhelmingly so), but the FAQs haven’t been updated since 2021 and have some antiquated references (such as to Netscape). Accepts submissions and critiques only via email, but with very specific format requirements.

The “workshops” for each genre or category have their own submission queues, credit scoring and tracking, etc. In addition to the fiction genres listed below, there are workshops for nonfiction, including creative nonfiction; scripts/screenplays/stage plays; video/film; music/audio (including podcasts); photography; art/painting/drawing; apps/software/games; website design

Members receive lists of submissions for review by email and on a password-protected web page every Wednesday; they choose which to review. Submissions may wait 3–4 weeks before becoming available for review.

Submissions are open for critique for only one week. Critiques will start to arrive late in the week when they’re available. Members are told to expect an average of 15–20 reviews.

All material runs through one individual, which raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of the site.

Eratosphere

This is a forum-based site. The extensive FAQs cover what members need to know about using the forums and threads, creating and maintaining a user profile, and reading and posting messages. Not only are submissions to the site not archived, they’re “pruned” approximately every two months.

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

Faith Writers

The primary purpose of this site is to provide a place for Christian writers to publish their work and promote their books.

While the site does feature a “Critique Circle” (not to be confused with the website of the same name), it appears to be a very secondary feature and is accessible only through the site map or the help link—both of which are in the footer—rather than from the home page menu.

The information on how to submit work or critiques, and how to give and receive critiques is available only in pop-up windows and is fairly basic. The site does allow and encourage authors to ask questions of their critiquers if they don’t understand a comment.

The pages of the “tour” of the “Critique Circle” also appears in a pop-up window that is very small and hard to read, and cannot be made larger.

The FAQ thread in the forum covers over 40 topics relating to the site, but the most recent one dates to 2012 and the separate FAQ page in the “Help For Writers” section is accessible only through a link buried in the footer.

Paid members may receive one critique from a professional author for free, and all members can pay $3.00 per page for them. Interactive training courses are available at no cost: two to Silver (free) members, six to Gold tier members, and all 12 to Platinum members. Courses may be purchased individually for $19.95 each.

The site also provides contacts with professional editors.

Members may submit 150 to 750 word responses to weekly “challenges” at levels from “Beginner” to “Master.”

The site offers a way to hire Christian writers and editors, and is willing to cross-promote “established Christian website, blog or print magazine with decent traffic.”

Inked Voices

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. Each listing indicates how many members the group wants to have, ranging from 3 to 200 (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, others are only for “accountability,” that is, keeping their members on track. An optional credit system can be set up by each group to help ensure all members are critiquing as well as submitting.

Discounts are available for existing critique groups (15 percent for the first year only) and full-time students (30 percent, must prove enrollment). Workshops and recorded lectures are available for members and non-members on a wide variety of topics. A multi-page Writing Groups 101 section provides a great deal of useful information on how to form and successfully run a critique group (whether on Inked Voices or not). A two-page “critique cheat sheet” doesn’t seem to be available via the site, although the link still works.

Literotica

Their 17 separate FAQ pages cover pretty much every aspect of the site. The Literotica Content Guidelines, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy (last two buried in the footer) pages are especially important. In addition to the content guidelines, there are publishing guidelines for stories, audio (written pieces read aloud), and artwork, including comics.

The site’s undated AI Policy does not prohibit using AI tools for things like checking spelling and grammar, but discourages the use of AI-generated work, including text rewritten by AI software. The policy also bans using work posted on the site to train AIs.

All work will be reviewed by an editor before it appears on the site. If a piece is sent back to the author, the editor will provide information on why so the author can try to fix it and resubmit. While they have a “story feedback” forum, only a group of volunteer editors provides critique.

This submission and feedback process with an editor occurs via email 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.

Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror

This site seems to be focused primarily on writing and reviewing short stories, so there’s extremely limited information on how to submit a longer work, like a novella, or chapters from a novel.

The site has extensive FAQ and How to Review pages but they’re very hard to find. The Member Agreement and Privacy Policy pages are accessible from the footer. The Writer’s Resources page also has a very extensive list of information sources on just about everything an SF/F/H writer would want to know. Unfortunately, it too is hard to find.

Members may have up to three pieces available for review at any one time. Submissions remain available for review for three months. They can still be read after that, but not reviewed. “Adult” content is permitted “up to the point that would reasonably appear in a book shelved in the fantasy/SF/horror section at a bookstore.” Reviewers may also add a rating on a 1 (“Doesn’t Work”) to 5 (“Excellent”) scale, in each of five writing-related categories. What these categories are, and the full explanation of the rating scale is buried on the “How to Review” page.

Members can make “lists” of preferred reviewers, but it doesn’t appear they can limit reviews to just them. Lists can be used for many other purposes too. 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” (currently three professional authors) pick one submission in each of four categories which they review in a monthly newsletter.

Scholarships are available for members experiencing financial hardship or have other problems paying the fee.

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 speculative fiction.” To join, potential members must first open an account on groups.io, then apply for membership in the site.

It’s hard to judge how active the site is, given that all submissions and critiques are hidden behind a membership wall. While the site’s groups.io page indicates there are only 32 members, there were roughly 77 archived messages posted per month in 2025. Fewer than 100 total have been posted in 2026 to the date of this update. It’s unclear whether these “messages” were submissions, critiques, or something else, or what archiving entails. Failure to participate at all in the first two months will result in the membership being cancelled.

A long Genres page explains what science fiction, science fantasy, and fantasy are, and the differences between them, and provides links to deeper explanations of 18 subgenres. The Rules page provides essential but basic information on how to submit and critique, but it hasn’t been updated since January 2016, so among the recommended submission formats is .doc but not .docx.

The Workshops page provides five long articles on critiquing their way, including a nearly 3,000-word “Basics of Critiquing” one and another one on how to avoid a shortcrit. Shortcrits are based on content, not length, and do not give the reviewer critique credit. A “high-crit” (high-scoring) review can count as credit for several months’ participation. The extensive Links page mentions many agents, publishers, and more, but none of the links are live for visitors. Spot checks of some of the magazines and publishers indicated many had gone out of business.

SFF Chronicles

The guidance on how to give and receive critique, written in 2010, is fairly generic, but it suggests work posted here may be considered to be published, which is inconsistent with what other sites post. An additional post for those new to critiquing provides more, and more useful, information. The Help section is buried in the footer but includes basic terms and rules, a privacy policy, and an extensive listing of BB codes, which is what submitters must use to control the appearance of their submissions. The site uses the StopForumSpam database, which means a user banned from this site may be banned from many others as well.

This forum is just one part of the larger SFF Chronicles discussion site. The Writing Forums section includes, in addition to the forum for critique discussed here, forums on discussions about writing, writing challenges, publishing, grammar and spelling, and writing resources.

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 based 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 of 2025 but most date to 2022 or earlier. Critiques consist of reviews posted as comments after each submitted poem. The site hosts occasional contests but the last one ran in 2021. Most of the recent discussion posts are spam that hasn’t been removed in over two years.

Scribophile

The site has multiple, overlapping, and cross-linked FAQs and a “Codes of Conduct” page, writing advice articles, and over 200 free tutorials written by published authors, editors, or professors as part of the “writing academy.” The “Getting Started Guide” is well laid out, with many screen grabs, to help new members get comfortable with the site. Webinars that are free for “Premium” members (no information on price for “Basic” members or non-members) are also available. Members may sign up for writing workshops.

Works posted to the “Main Spotlight” earn the most karma points, but a piece may have to wait a while to appear there because the spotlight is broken into genre-based “divisions” that can hold only eight works at a time. Once a piece receives three long critiques, it leaves this spotlight but is still available for review. Personal and “Beta Read” spotlights limit who may see and critique a work.

Reviewers are expected to use certain critique templates. Some require quoting from the work. Critiquers earn karma points based on the number of words in the critique, minus any quoted words, and by having other members “like” or react to the critique. Members can form groups within the site and can post work there to receive reviews only from other group members.

The site also has writing forums, but there are over 185,000 discussion threads.

StoryWrite

A list of FAQs is available from the Help link, but they confusingly refer to AllPoetry, a sister site, not to StoryWrite. The “FAQ’s Frequently Asked Questions” link in the “Detailed Help Columns” sidebar goes to a discussion forum, not another set of FAQs. These sites are interconnected. While over 60 “detailed help tutorials” are available through a sidebar on the FAQ page, they were posted in 2017. There is an extensive set of legal terms of use and a privacy policy. Eighteen free courses are also available, but only a few are about something other than poetry.

Paid 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.

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

This site is primarily for screenwriters and for “movie & television professionals” looking for new talent or a script to produce. The site CEO developed the FinalDraft™ script-writing software.

The extensive and thorough FAQs can be accessed through a “Useful Links” box in the left sidebar or an information icon at the top right of the screen. The site also has separate Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Submission Upload Agreements that prospective members should read closely. The “University” contains over 160 articles and fourteen videos that even guests can watch, plus recordings of over two dozen webinars.

Unlike other sites, members “buy” reviews with “talent dollars.” A script will not be reviewed until those reviews have been “purchased.” Once the review is purchased, it will either be assigned to a member or a “Citizen” may pick it. It may take time before the piece is reviewed. There are formulas for how many “talent dollars” each review may earn and how much each review will cost.

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. Assignments are not totally random; members can control which genre and script type the assignment will come from. Only one member can review a script at a time. 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.

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 email programs to send messages in plain text rather than HTML, but several of the email programs listed no longer exist. 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. Content warnings are required in the subject line of the submission email for sexual or violent content, among others.

In addition to meeting minimum submission and critique requirements on the critique lists, members are also expected to post at least once every three or six months to the discussion list they signed up for. Members who fail to meet the comment, submission, or critique requirements will be warned, then removed if they still fail to comply.

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 one of eight critique lists and one of three discussion lists. Some participation rules, such as demanding that members destroy printed copies and delete electronic copies of a work that’s been critiqued, seem unreasonable and unenforceable. The writing advice articles were written in 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

While the URL for the discussion and critique forum is http://www.everypoet.org/pffa, it can only be accessed through the link above.This is also true of the links below.

There are two sets of FAQs—this one (https://www.everypoet.org/pffa/faq.php), and this one, called the “Hot & Sexy Posting Guidelines” (https://www.everypoet.org/pffa/faq.html). The first one contains three forums with many threads. The second one is a shorter web document that is similar to threads elsewhere on the site. In addition, a “Blurbs of Wisdom” forum (https://www.everypoet.org/pffa/forumdisplay.php?34-Blurbs-of-Wisdom) contains “handy snippets of poetry and such,” but few of these threads have been updated in the past 10 years. Some forums have their own guidelines as well.

The “Newbie Stretching Room” forum (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/forumdisplay.php?26-Newbie-Stretching-Room) includes a “Things every PFFA Newbie needs to know” (https://www.everypoet.org/pffa/forumdisplay.php?87-Things-every-PFFA-Newbie-needs-to-know) subforum containing nine instructional posts. The “PFFA Recommended Reading Lists” post (https://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?75765-PFFA-Recommended-Reading-Lists) 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, this is the only post in this thread, and it 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

This is primarily a networking site for women’s fiction writers. Potential members must sign up before they can gain a full understanding of what the site has to offer. Critique is a small portion of what the site offers. This video, which is no longer publicly accessible and may not be accurate, covers three options for receiving critiques:

• A members-only Facebook group primarily for shorter works: loglines, query letters, or excerpts from longer works. Entire manuscripts may be exchanged one time with one other writer within the group; each reads and critiques the other’s work.
• Stand-alone critique groups members apply for. They’ll be matched with three to five other members to create or be added to an existing group. Registration for these groups is only available three times a year for one month at a time.
• Members may also apply for a mentorship relationship with a published women’s fiction author.

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 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. These classes may only be available to members; when tested, each of them produced a “Not Found” page.

The site provides three helpful tutorial videos, but they were all posted in 2013. The privacy policy covers the basics. The copyright policy is very clear about what is and isn’t acceptable, how to report material that appears to infringe on a copyright, and what the site will do in response.

Authors are required to assign a content rating to each “item” (submission). The “E” (everyone) rating requires the piece have “absolutely no” references to sex (except gender), drugs, alcohol, violence, cursing (even implied), or derogatory names. The “Non-E” rating is broken down into six subcategories based on potential reader age or “graphic” content. The site’s staff may adjust an assigned rating if they feel a higher rating is needed.

Overall, the site is the most expensive for the upper tiers of all the sites considered and makes some unsupported claims about itself, such as that “hundreds of new members” are joining daily. A very complex site, which could be intimidating for potential members.