In novel, you should create catergories of books by genre example: Mystery section: Scifi/fan section: and so on, That way, it would make it easier and make the forum look more organized. i hope this doesn't offend, and if it does, please remove this post, alvin123, thanks,
From what I've seen with the Short Stories, it's a fair amount of work without much benefit. My estimate is that well over 3/4 of the Short Stories end up under General Fiction anyway, and Novels would probably be even more skewed. Since you have brought up the Novels forum, I'm more concerned with the trend of people posting more and more for each novel, despite the caveat that we discourage the posting of entire novels. The intent is that people should post an excerpt large enough to exhibit trouble spots and plot/character development trends, but small enough that it can be effectively critiqued. An increasing number of members either miss the point of the Review Room as a writing workshop, or choose to ignore it, particularly in the Novels section.
What i was trying to say was like make sections such as making NOvel have sub-forums, or something like that, One sub-forum for a genre of a book. And i'm sure ,hopefully, no one would post their entire novel, But, i see your point, it might create disoder, thanks for answering, alvin123
One of the problems that I think may arise from having sepereate sub-sections, and I think does to some extent in the short story section, is that certain sectians will become overlooked. I know personally, it is extremelly rare that I take a look at the romance section or the childrens stories, and am more likely to look at scary ones, or general fiction. I think it works just fine without sub-sections personally. Heather
I believe I read as much in the rules about not posting large sections of novels. However it was not so much a rule as a suggestion. Perhaps rather then making it a suggestion for the safety of the forum and it's members perhaps this should become a forum rule. Another way could be to have a section which advertises members looking for crit partners. That way the members would be able to do this privatly via email once they find a partner
As a rule, we would have to define it more precisely. However, perhaps the forum description could be strengthened to say we strongly discourage posting more than novel excerpts for review (and also ask members to keep try to keep multiple excerpts in the same thread). As for crit partners, I think it's a very bad idea to create a section for that. Members will come to their own agreements with other members via PM where that may be appropriate, but we have had problems with newcomers harassing members for free editing (not even just critiquing!) of entire novels.
Fair enough, what works for one forum won't work for every other. Even strongly discourage isn't enough to stop some members from posts as such. I guess sometimes people need to learn the hard way. Sad yet true
Yeah, but what they don't realize is if they dump too much into the Review Room, members will ignore the excess anyway, and move on to reviewing someone new. They're only shooting themselves in the foot. So to a degree, it's self regulating.
