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Writing critique

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Aura | 17:45 Sun 23rd Apr 2006 | Arts & Literature
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I write fiction and I would like to get an oppinion on it without having to pay a fortune for it. Do you know where I can get this done? Many thanks.
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Ask your mates. seriously, its the way i always analyse my work.
There are websites that you can post peices up on, and other writers will rate it and give opinions, but i recon its too risky, nothing stopping the old copy-n-pasters!

Get a selection of friends, different ages, and characters etc to read the work and give you an honest opinion in the form of a write-up. You can also work out which target audience your work is going to appeal to best.

If you copyright the work first, you can submit it to some schools and colleges, they're always looking for work for students to analyse, but i think thats mostly short stories.



Asking your mates, you probably won't get an objective opinion - no matter how honest you ask then to be, they won't want to upset you. Chances are they won't know enough about the ins and outs of good writing to give you a fair critique either.

There are lots of websites that you can sign up to and get a fair crit from other people in your line, so to speak. Posting to these sites actually gives you an extra layer of protection for your work. Once you post then there's a record of you doing so, which means you can prove when you wrote it. And actually, in the two years I've been posting, I've not seen a single instance of plagiarism.

My personal preference is at www.writersdock.co.uk You can have a look around the forums there before signing up, if you're not sure.
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Writers dock, can they help copyright your work? As I'm worried it going to get stolen.
The copyright to your work, providing you've not plagiarised it, is automatically yours. That's the law. Clearly it helps if you can prove when you wrote it, which you can usually do if you work on a computer anyway. With Writers Dock, as with any other reputable website, you have the added protection of backup from the site's logs. Unfortunately there is no copyright on ideas, hence the fiasco that was the recent Da Vinci Code case.

Whilst sites like WD can't physically help you in matters of copyright (but read back what I've just said), they often have have published writers and journalists, as well as publishing professionals among their members, so you can usually draw on someone's experience to get you through.

You will find that decent sites (both WD and Critique Circle have been listed in the Writers Digest 101 Best Sites list) are communities of dedicated writers with plenty of respect for ownership and rights. No writer worth their reputation would deliberately rip off someone else's work.
Use spell check before showing your work to people. Bad spelling can often be distracting.
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What does plagiarised mean please?
Fair point saxyjag, yeh I'm with writersdock too. x
To plagiarise = to copy and pass off as your own.
Question Author
whats the best way to stop this?
Well other than putting your work onto pc, so that you've got a log of it, you can't. However, if you can prove the work was yours to start with, then you can take the guilty party to court.

I know songwriters who put tapes and lyrics etc into envelopes and post them to themselves but leave them unopened after delivery. Hence the postmark is proof of when you created the work.

Basically, in law, the copyright is yours as soon as you've created the work - no argument.
If you are looking for a place to get writing practice, read modern fiction and build up a fanbase, Glitterbug chat stories is a good place to start. It’s an android app and it’s totally free to use. There are character naming generators to come up with lots of random names for characters!
You can also get ratings and feedback from readers
You can read almost a 100 different original chat stories for free using this app as well as writing your own!
You can write a chat story for free using Glitterbug chat stories and publish it for all of the readers to view. As the app is relatively new, there are less than 5 contributing writers (as of 21/09/17), making it an excellent time to get involved and get your writing out there for readers to enjoy.
It’s totally free and our top writing carousel is organized by submission date giving new writers a chance to shine.
Glitterbug Chat Stories - a texting story app - Android Apps on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=ie.glitterbug.gcs)

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