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You're not going to get lots of reviews on this web site. I know what you're thinking--with the 130,000+ who troll here, there should be many, and you are right. But therein, ma'am, lies the proverbial rub. There is a lot of fanfiction on this site, provided free by the writers. People log on, sift through the melee, read a few fics, one or two they might really get a kick out of, and then promptly move on to Facebook, or another site. No reviews, and why not? Because tomorrow night when they repeat the process there will be *gasp* even more fics to sift through. Writers are taken for granted here, regardless of how good a writer they are. And to be fair, the really good writers are at a dearth. Their stuff is hiding amongst the stuff written by the minors who have lied about their age in their profile and are writing crap to get attention. Writers seem to consider a review the holy grail here. I am a writer and I do not concur with this. I get precious few reviews for what I write and I consider my writing to be both well-written and entertaining. But I don't write what I think someone will review. I write what I would want to read if I were here trolling at 11PM (like I was when I first found this site). And no, the two are most certainly not the same. As writers posting our work on AFF, I think it's important that we do two things: one that we don't take the readers too seriously. You know the lion's share of them are minors with too much time on their hands. Your concept of a good fic and theirs are probably light years away from each other. Two, we don't take ourselves too seriously. This is a web site touting adult fan fiction, for crying out loud. If you are looking for genuine honest feedback on your writing skills, you're in the wrong place. If you're here to win a popularity contest, then you need to figure out what minors with too much time on their hands are willing to review and write lots and lots of it. I have had four different people do a lot of fan art for my fan fiction. To me, that is the holy grail. I think fan art created by someone who read my work and was inspired by it is the kindest compliment--and the best review--that I could receive.

I'm guilty of not leaving reviews after I read something. I do it for a variety of reasons (all of which are excuses). Sometimes the author already has, like, nine-ba-jillion reviews -these stories are usually my guilty pleasure stories, those stories that the author seems to crank out like they're nothing, usually quite well written, but all following the same basic plot with new characters. I try not to do the whole wait-to-see-where-the-story-is-going thing. Mostly because I think this is kind of bogus. I mean, if people did it with my story, I could be nine chapters into it before people start reviewing -and I would have wanted to pull the story six chapters prior because I thought no one cared enough to leave a review (currently experiencing this phenomenon. Lots of hits, four reviews ). If I like the story from the beginning, I at least try to leave an "I'm interested in seeing where you take this" review. I always tell myself right before I post a new story that I'm not doing it for the reviews, but I'm a total liar. I want to hear what people have to say -good or bad- that's kind of the whole point of me posting. If I didn't care about what people thought, or didn't want to have anyone else's input, I would just write, save the stuff on my computer and be done with it. What I think is great is when you get those reviews months after you've finished a story. I think I almost love those the most.

I'll put it this way: As far as one of my stories is concerned, it gets a huge number of reviews on FF but few here. I much prefer the reviews here. Why? Because the content of each review is worth a good read. I've always been a firm believer of quality over quantity when it came to reviews. That's why I only post reviews when I can offer detailed concrit. I'm not exactly a fan of the "I luv it! Rite more plz! UPDATE!" reviews (no matter how well-meaning they are). That's just me. I don't write for the reviews. I write for enjoyment (but I still put serious effort into quality). The reviews are a bonus.