Do You Write Short Stories or Poems?

I want to point you to a site (www.FanStory.com) that you may find of great interest, especially if you write poems and short stories. It has piqued my interest enough that I will probably join them (registration is free) before the end of the holidays. I’m curious to see how bad people think my writing really is.

Think of FanStory.com as a place where you can deposit your writings (poems, short stories, book chapters, etc) for others to review and rate. Their membership base is pretty big (they’ve been in business for five years), so you’ll probably start getting reviews soon after you upload your work.

Here are some key points about this site (if you’re interested):

• You get to keep all rights to your material.
• The site owners are pretty much positive that whatever work you upload will be reviewed.
• The ranking system allows you to see how you’re ranked with other writers of your level.
• You’ll receive comments from readers.
• They hold multiple contests with cash prizes for different works. You can check the listing of contests here: http://www.fanstory.com/contests.jsp
• One great benefit from this site is of course the fact that you get feedback on that piece of writing you’ve done. This is vital for us to know how well we are doing and what we need to improve on. 

I’m sure you’ll need to take these reviews/help/suggestions/edits with a grain of salt.  I can’t tell you what quality of writers there are on the site, and whether most members are novice writers. You’ll need to decide for yourself.  The good thing (at least in my opinion) is that quite a few people will review your work. If they all agree one a particular problem, then it’s likely that the advice is good.

If you are already a member, or will be joining soon, how about dropping me a line via comments or email to let me know how you like it.

UPDATE:

Benjamin Solah of  pointed something out to me in his comment to this post. Although the site promotes that you will not lose any rights to your work, you may be wary of "First Rights" that some publishers require. This I wasn't aware of. I did a little more digging into their policy and came up with the following:

"Some publishers require what is often referred to as First North American rights for materials that they will consider for publication. If you are concerned about these rights we recommend checking with the publisher to determine how they define these rights. You may want to consider using the Lock and Key certificate to post a story or book on FanStory.com that you are planning to send to a publisher."

Chalk that up to my lack of experience with their site. As far as anything constructive coming from the review process, well, I'm sure you can look at that in two different ways:

1) If you're looking for professional reviews, then this probably isn't the place and you'll need to hire yourself an editor, or someone with your success in mind.

2) If, however, you're looking for general comments, then I don't see how this could hurt (at least you won't have to ask family members or friends to read your work). Like I said earlier, take it with a grain of salt.

Comments

[1ConfusedWriter]

Very interesting. I'm not sure why they would want to change someones written works, or how often for that matter. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll have to take a look into it.

Vic

[b09boy]

I've gotten numerous offers from this site to join, but declined them all very quickly after reading their ToS. While they say you have copyright protection, they also tell you outright they are allowed to change any and all content on the site as well as the ToS any time they'd like with only a notice as warning before changes go into effect. Call me paranoid, but this seems like a ridiculous deal. The reviews and contests are tempting, but I personally refuse any chance of my work being either changed or taken without my permission.

[1ConfusedWriter]

No problem, Chelsea. If you decide to try it out, be sure to let me know. I'd be interested in what you have to say about it.

Take care,

Vic

[Chelsea fc]

Thanks for the idea, I love to write poems and short stories and think this could be fun and interesting to get feedback.