What is the best site to have people critique my fiction?

October 14, 2007 9:32 AM

I've written some fiction. Now I want to see if it's any good.

I've been looking for a large community on the Web that critiques fiction and short stories. I write mostly literary fiction, so the sci-fi and romance writing critique groups seem to be out.

I want to have several people just leave comments about it. I don't necessarily need to have people edit the story extensively; I just want them to comment on it and let me know what their impression of it is.

Are there any such sites that I've missed? I've Googled several times to try and find such a site.

P.S. I think I found a good critique site before, and saved it on del.icio.us. But, I don't seem to be able to see it now. I remember the site having a basic look, but there were thousands of stories from every different genre posted. It was sort of like a MeFi for stories. The author would post his story and then below would be comments from people about the story. If anyone knows which site I'm talking about, please let me know in the comments.

posted by reenum to media & arts (7 comments total)

Lit.org
posted by craven_morhead at 9:34 AM on October 14, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks, that seems to be the site I was looking for. Now does anyone else have other suggestions where the community has given constructive feedback?
posted by reenum at 10:24 AM on October 14, 2007

I haven't logged in there in years & years, but Zoetrope used to be good for this kind of thing.
posted by muckster at 10:31 AM on October 14, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

Maybe you should find a writers group? Depending on what area you are in, there may be one or many. You have to find one that's sort of at your level (or a little above, that's the ideal).

I never can hack that kind of thing but if you want critique that's probably the way to do it.

Also a writing class with an established writer (if you are in a college town).

You have to realize though that most people have no idea what they are talking about and their critique is more or less worthless. People will tell you all kinds of stupid stuff. I think oftentimes it's less than useless.

I went to breadloaf once and that was a pretty good experience. You'll meet a lot of people. I didn't keep up with my writing but if I had I made a lot of good connections (people I still keep in touch with 4 years later even though we're not talking about writing very much).
posted by sully75 at 10:38 AM on October 14, 2007

urbis.com is good. The simple fact that you have to review others in order to earn points to unlock your own reviews means that a high majority of feedback is of value.

I think its userbase is starting to skew a bit but give it a go!
posted by Glum at 2:10 PM on October 14, 2007

I found 1000Keyboards while browsing one day - it's a site for short stories of any genre.
posted by jacalata at 2:15 PM on October 14, 2007

Zoetrope.com is where I started out with online critiques, and still the only one I've used. I still use the site mainly for some private offices, and so I haven't been on the main site in ages, but there was a time I used it quite a bit. There's a lot of good people on there (and of course, a lot of everyone else too). Give it a try, at least.
posted by mdbell79 at 7:21 PM on October 14, 2007