Writing and Assessment

Assessing Your Writing

Quality assessment is now one of the most important strategies in education. Good assessment techniques are in play from the start of every course or project undertaken by students. And the intention behind this is to promote learning rather than to demoralise by testing before a student is ready.

To explore what benefits this could bring to writers, consider the methods of assessment commonly in use and see how some might help improve technique and time management.

Decide on the Criteria.

This may be self assessment but we need standards to aim for, standards to attain.

Goal setting for writers usually focuses on words per day. If the focus is moved to the standards you want your book to reach, you can create SMART targets (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound) to ensure improvement scene by scene, chapter by chapter, book by book.

The SMART target could be to cut down subject-verb sentences by two per chapter.

Try varying sentence structure till it becomes automatic not to start too many sentences with he did, she did subject-verb sentences. 

I'm a participle starter...love my -ings lol. Realising this is one of my many defects, I try not to do it too often. Let's hope that's the last example in this blog.

Yes, writing tricks and habits may be part of your author's voice, but repeated too often they bore the reader through familiarity.

How many authors did you once love but now don't follow? Ask yourself why.

Question and Answer

Fiction writers use question Q&A from the start when creating their characters' biographies, when asking "what if....?" to move their plot points forward.

In the main, the questions are closed--asking and expecting straightforward answers...Where was the hero born? What is the inciting incident?

But if you read through the day's work and ask more open-ended questions, then stronger solutions may appear.

What is the underlying theme of the scene? And make no mistake, each scene should be locking on to one of the themes of your book.

What other possible outcomes could there be? Take time. Ensure you have the best possible outcome.

How is this scene similar to the ones before? Vary the scenario,vary the emotional tempo, the pacing if you like. Vary the outcome to give an unexpected player the upper hand.



Key Principles

With so many e-books now outsourced to ghostwriters, your book will have the advantage of authenticity. If you've adhered to your self-imposed targets, it will be valid in assessment terms. But is it sufficient?

In education-speak, this means it covers all the assessment criteria. In reader-speak, this means it tells the story, the whole story and nothing but the story.


In today's fast-read world, there is no advantage to padding out books unnecessarily. Prune viciously. Harlequin and many other romance publishers look for novels around 55,000 words. They're still in business. They know what sells.
 

 Anne Duguid is a senior content editor with MuseItUp Publishing and   her New Year's Resolution was to blog with helpful writing,editing and publishing tips at Slow and Steady Writers far more regularly than she managed in 2011. Could do better--much better. :-(

Would You Make a Good Reviewer?

There are so many reasons for becoming a reviewer, but for writers it's almost mandatory. While you probably won’t make a fortune writing reviews, you can earn reasonable money doing it, it is an excellent way to hone your writing skills, increase your understanding of what makes for good  writing if you are that way inclined, it adds depth to your own pleasure to evaluate what you would be reading, listening to or using anyway, and you can get a whole raft of high quality review copies including autographed first editions, galleys, pre-publication releases, and promotional material.  In addition, it is both enjoyable and valuable from a publicity point of view to have an impact on the choices other people make. In other words, if you’re a top reviewer, you will be the ‘go-to’ resource for information on what is and what isn’t worth buying, and therefore gain credibility and visibility for your other projects.

There are some qualities which differentiate a good reviewer from a not so good one.  The following qualities are the key to being a good reviewer. 

•  Do you have the ability to follow through? This is critical.  If you agree to review something, or request a review copy, you have to produce through or you will rapidly lose credibility. Even if the book is awful, or virtually unreadable, or the product difficult to use, you must produce some form of review, or at least return the item with a polite note, clearly explaining why no review will be forthcoming.  This doesn’t apply to items sent to you on spec.  If you haven’t agreed, or requested an item, you aren’t obligated to review it, although a polite response is always appreciated. 
• Can you work quickly? Reviews generally need to be timely. In most cases, they relate to recently released items, and if a review isn’t produced shortly after release, or after a performance, etc, your readers may not be as interested and the value tends to diminish. No one wants to read old news. That said, there is always a call for reviews of classic or quality material. 
•  Can you write well? Regardless of what you are reviewing, a review is a piece of writing in itself. It needs to be clear, concise, entertaining, informative, critical, and well written. 
• Are you critical? You have to be able to accurately assess the value of an item you are reviewing and that may include digging deeply into the work. If you are too nice to say anything critical, or reluctant to probe, your reviews won’t provide readers with the information they need to determine whether a work is for them. 
•  Are you constructive? The ability to write with tact is important for a reviewer. A nasty review with no constructive comments or examples of where something can be improved is worse than a lukewarm review which is not critical.  Immature vindictive does not make for a good review and isn’t helpful to either the author or the reader. A reviewer needs to be able to express both positive and negative aspects of a work in a professional, thoughtful, and specific way, without causing libel or being ungenerous. 
•  Are you confident? Do you have the courage to make a clear judgment, and to back up that judgment with specific instances.  
•  Are you knowledgeable about the particular subject you are reviewing? As a reviewer you will need to know a reasonable amount about the class of items you’re reviewing. For a book reviewer, that will mean having a reasonable awareness of literature and particularly the genre you’re reviewing in. For a reviewer of children’s items, you will need to know something about that age group and their capability. Music reviewers need a reasonably broad and extensive awareness of music. Without this general knowledge, your assessment won’t come with the weight of experience that makes your judgment so valuable to others.  
• Are you honest? Honesty is one of the most important qualities for a reviewer. You must be honest in your writing, in your judgments, in your criticisms. Honesty is a reviewer’s stock-in-trade – it’s the backbone of what you do when you look closely at something and begin exploring why it is of value. 

If you have the above qualities, there's no reason no reason not to begin adding reviews to your websites, blogs, or even just on Amazon (with a link back to your own book of course).  

The piece above has been excerpted from my newly revised (now in its second printing) book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything. Grab a copy now for the full kit on becoming a well-respected reviewer.  I'll look forward to reading your reviews!

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of a number of books including Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust and Sleep Before Evening. Find out more at www.magdalenaball.com