I’m trying get back to writing and I’d love a place online I could get feedback and bounce ideas around. Does anybody know of a good community dedicated to writing? If it makes a difference, I do scifi / fantasy type stuff. With excessive amounts of world-building that never show up in the story.
The only one I’ve found at all useful is Critique Circle.
You do have to sign up, but it is free and they don’t send you any junk mail. They have a point system - you earn a certain number for every critique you do, depending on the length and the length of the piece you were reading, and can spend the points on posting your own work for critique. I haven’t used it a huge amount (too many other projects going on!) but the majority of the users seem helpful and the point system prevents it being endlessly full of selfish people who want help without giving any.
It’s divided up into categories depending on what genre you’re writing, and has a forum where people’s work can be discussed openly (though it doesn’t seem to be well used).
Like any site you do get some people who are snippy/immature, but just about every story seems to get a decent number of critiques so it makes it worthwhile.
Let me know if you sign up so I can read what you submit!
Oh I forgot to add - National Novel Writing Month - not really useful for feedback on what you have written, but the plot realism forum can sometimes answer a few question in the idea stage. It gets mad busy in November when they actually run the competition, but the forums are up year-round.
I’m not sure if zoetrope is still around, but they were pretty hardcore in the day, not really for the casual writer.
Excellent net resource on writing filled with people who really know the writing field quite well.
Came in to add Absolute Write - I’m new to writing and it’s been a fantastic place to find out all sorts of information. I found Critique Circle too, which sounds awesome - I just don’t have the guts to submit any of my work, yet, and I suspect I’m too new to writing to be able to sensibly critique others’ work. One day…
Good luck to you!
Thanks everyone. I knew about NaNoWriMo - I did it one year, been too busy to for the past couple, would like to this year.