Thanks to Sam Wiebe for the photo suggestion.
Last week, I've discussed my distaste for authors begging for reviews on social media without writing their own. I still stand by my words. The best way to inspire people to leave reviews is to write your own fucking reviews, something I've been doing incessantly for close to seven years now. I've written more than 1,000 books, movies and music reviews for Dead End Follies. I'm not even counting the occasional pieces of television criticism I wrote here and there or the handful of reviews I've written for other sites.
Nobody holds the universal truth about anything, so there is no one way to write reviews, no matter what academics will tell you. These guys are dinosaurs anyway. I might've learned a thing or two over the years though, establishing a relationship of trust with readers and sharing my opinions in an entertaining way. I thought maybe you'd be interested in reading them. Better yet, that it would prompt you to start writing them and loving it.
"Always aim high," Bruce Lee said. Or maybe that was my mom. "And maybe you won't get too disappointed."
Rule #1 - Don't even try to be objective.
Nobody holds the universal truth about anything, remember? Author and digital age philosopher Kyle Minor once said: "It’s not possible for anyone to be an objective reader. Reading is an exercise in subjectivity. Writing, too, and also thinking." He was 100% right. It's not because you say it that it's necessarily true, so it's important to give readers a good idea of who you are as a person. I try to share as much of myself as I can in my reviews. It's probably difficult to get the complete picture unless you read a couple pieces, but it's important for me to do this. If I want to establish any credibility, readers need to figure out if our interests are similar.
The reasons why readers seek reviews is to form their own ideas about something. Personally, I always make a point of reading one and two stars reviews on Amazon before buying anything, to see if the complaints about the product are warranted. Negative reviews that can't give me one coherent reason to avoid something is not going to fly with me. Everybody in this day and age can start a blog or hit review sites and write whatever they want about anything. The content of a review only matters if you can trust the person writing it.
Rule #2 - Talk about the fucking thing.
Of course you need to give a summary or else your readers won't know what the hell you're talking about. It's not what I'm talking about though. Summaries are the easy part. The tough part about writing reviews is articulating coherent thoughts about what you just read and too many reviewers take the easy road and use what I call hollow terms: the characters were well-defined, the narrative voice was arresting, the camera work was uninspired and the absolute worst it just didn't work for me. If you don't back up comments like these with actual examples, you can literally say them about any freakin' novel/movies. Therefore your review has no value whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, it's tough. I don't always develop coherent and entertaining thoughts about everything I watch/read. I think I did a good job in my review of Will Viharo's novel Hard-Boiled Heart though. I mentioned Viharo's tremendous narrative voice indeed, but immediately compared him to Raymond Chandler, which is self-evident only if you read the book and managed to explain why I thought his protagonist Vic Valentine was an interesting guy. Never make blank statements without references to the book/movie/album/product you're reviewing. A review has no value if you don't discuss specifics.
Rule #3 - Have Opinions.
Now that you've established an identity baseline and you understand how important it is to actually refer to specifics about the object of your review, you're ready for the fun part: stating your opinions like they're made out of the fabric of democracy. I try to discuss what I liked/disliked about the book/movie in order without going overboard about my personal feelings. I try to let the best/worst aspect of the art I'm reviewing speak for themselves. Because what I choose to discuss in a review is subjective enough, you know?
Whenever I really love something it's possible that I lose my shit during my review, but I normally try to map the positive and the negative about anything. It earned me a reputation of a tough, but fair reviewer even if I feel that I like most of what I subject myself to. I'm a good audience, but nothing's really perfect even if sometimes the good outweighs the bad so much I lose my bearings. Make sure to mention why the reviewed product is worth picking up and why some people might be disappointed. Your opinions are your own, but your perception and subjective appreciation can both sell a novel/movie or your talent as a reviewer.
Rule #4 - Be Honest.
Being completely honest is the toughest thing to do when reviewing and it's where most reviewers fail to do their job properly. I've been as guilty of that as others in the past. Books in particular are a relationship business and it's difficult for the majority of authors to sell over a hundred copies, so it's easy to feel a sense of duty to an author who contacts you directly to offer you an advance review copy. It's probably even worse when you actually REQUESTED the review copy, right? I feel your pain, reviewer. It's something I still struggle with, but like they say in the twelve steps program: the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging there is one.
Here's what I suggest: be 100% honest, but don't be a dick. It means you can say whatever you want about the book, but that you're now allowed to crack jokes about it, belittle it or make fun of the author. It's something I've learned the hard way, believe me. A honest review is worth more to both the audience and the artist than a bullshit positive one. Everybody can write blindly positive stuff about anything, but not everybody can have critical distance. A negative review can hurt an author's feelings sure, but it's also unfiltered feedback about his work and that's worth much more than insincere compliments. If it rings a few people's bells, all the better.
Here you go, reader. These are my 4 cardinal rules for reviewing. Don't hesitate to leave any questions in the comment section or on Facebook. If you have any rule of your own, I'd love to know them!