I posted in the topic on CoG. But work has really been shitty lately and I've not felt like writing as really knackered. So missed out on an update for my game and this contest. So I won't be entering as not done enough for it. I wish everyone luck.

Sorry I couldn't submit anything. I'll still probably try and finish it next month if work calms down a bit.

Thank you. 42,000 words is impressive I'm sure you can finish it, just keep writing! :-)

I'm more annoyed than anything else. I decided to take part in this and another competition all while trying to work on a main project, I've stupidly overloaded myself.

Hopefully as I was planning this to be a short CYOA I'll still have time to finish it.

I've had to scrap my idea as it just wasn't working for me. So will be working on a brand new story. Hope everyone is having better luck than me!

That's very true. I think its because it's easier to accept someone liking something than it is to accept someone doesn't like your work.

I wrote this in Mar 2015 but still think most of it is relevant

Reviews.

As an author one of the scariest things you will have to deal with are the reviews. It is already daunting enough to put in the time, effort and love required to craft a story. A story can take years to write yet it can only take one bad review (most written in less than 5-10 minutes) to make you doubt yourself.

Every writer wants everyone who reads their stories to fall completely in love with their world. However, it doesn’t matter how interesting, well written or exciting your story is, you WILL at some point get a review that is negative.

I’ve been writing for over 20 years now and have seen my fair share of reviews over the years. Some were from forums a few were even from reviewers I have sent my stuff to. Take my latest work Unnatural for example; it has received a lot of five and four star reviews but also has received the odd three, two and even one star reviews.

I think the key to dealing with reviews is to realising that reviews don’t just fall into good or bad but actually there is a third type. You also need to accept you cannot and will not please everybody. Below I’ll explain in a bit more detail each of the types of review with an example so you can see what I mean.

Firstly there is the Good Review, these are the ones of course you want to receive. They tend to praise you and generally make you feel happy. An example would be something like this…
This game was awesome, the story drew me in from start to finish. I loved it.

Secondly there is the Bad review, these are the ones you don’t want to receive. Also don’t get me wrong I don’t include critiques in this group because in my experience there is no such thing as a “Bad Review” only “Bad Reviewers”. While not everyone will like your work, for the time and effort put into writing we can at least try and point out WHY we think a work isn’t very good. A proper bad review will make you doubt yourself telling you how bad a story is without even attempting to say why. An example would be something like this…
I think this game really sucks. Don’t buy it!

Finally we have the Critique, while a few authors will consider these types of review as bad ones, they are really there to help you. Don’t treat this as the reviewer disliking your work, but more they like it enough to take the time and effort to help you. These can point out the flaws, parts they disliked but they also tend to say why, some even go as far as giving suggestions on how they think you can fix it. An example would be…
While the story was interesting the lack of meaningful choices let it down. The characters were cool but a few more scenes where we learn about their backgrounds would make them even better.

Overall writing is about having fun and enjoying yourself. Reviews are part of the experience so enjoy the good reviews, ignore the bad and always consider the critiques. It is through feedback that our writing, our worlds and our characters define themselves.

Thank you for reading.

Very well written and I agree with a lot of what you've said but I also think it is useful to distinguish between a critique and a bad review. In my experience a lot of younger author tend to take bad and critical reviews as the same thing and some even see it as a personal attack on themselves.

I actually wrote a bit about dealing with unhelpful critiques/reviews and the difference imo between a bad review and a critique.  It's posted on the CoG forum but I don't mind reposting it here if people would like to read it.

I got into interactive fiction initially in primary school thanks to a combination of the old fighting fantasy books and also the odd text adventure game on the Commodore (Marvello's Tower iirc). I then focused more on console gaming for the next several years and mostly wrote short stories or fan-fiction. Then I stumbled upon CoG thanks to Choice of the Dragon and Choice of the Vampire which I enjoyed and Choice of Romance which wasn't. I started writing my own choicescript game back then but also began looking for other interactive fiction and found Endmaster's stuff, which I enjoyed dispite it being a lot darker than I normally liked.

I found CYS there but didn't join at first as was busy focusing on choicescript and the CoG forums. I have since released my game a few years back and am still working on the follow up as well as several other concepts that have stuttered and suffering a few personal issues which really knocked my writing.

I finally joined CYS thanks to Gower's competition and wanting to be cordial with fellow writers and increasing the pool of IF writers I can discuss things with can only be a good thing,

Thanks!

Although I intend to submit my entry on the CoG side. I was thinking about sharing it on these forums. I'm thinking of getting two sets of feedback as both CoG and CYS have different ideas where it comes to IF so there would be twice as much useful feedback. That isn't against the rules is it?