FanStory

I read recently that Fanstory can be a teacher, a mentor and a motivator. I agree! It is a teacher because you get reviews for everything you write. These reviews often point out areas where you can improve your writing. There are published authors looking for writers to mentor. And it's very nice to get immediate feedback for something you write. The motivation part comes in play by being part of a community writers.

Fanstory provides an outlet for the self-doubting writer, an outlet that keeps you anonymous (if you want) so you can have the courage to post your writing. And don't worry about sharing your writing online. Your can copyright your writing at the time you post it.

The site is run by a megalomaniac and, unless you're ga-ga, wealthy or have oodles of time to spare (mayhaps doing porridge) or all three, is to be avoided!
Referring to a post by Aaron F earlier in this thread, regarding 'eats, shoots and leaves', i was banned for two days for bringing this blatant plagiarism to the attention of the aforementioned megalomaniac, Tom Ens, and, as Indie S. Said in a previous post, the little hitlerite makes the rules as he goes along, wringing his hands all the way to the bank. It is obvious to an amoeba's braincell he has no interest in poetry and writing. He's a moneygrabbing egoist. But, if you simply want a good ego trip and have the money but no talent, then, go for it!
Mind, having now dredged several writing sites, they're all pretty much the same, and should be avoided if you wish to improve as a writer.
Instead, why not send me £20! It'll save you lots of money and you'll be able to write like what i do and be as good as i do in know thyme a tall! Whoop-whoop!

I'd like to express my thanks to Fanstory for all that I've learned in the 3 years. I highly recommend Fanstory to anyone that is looking to improve their writing skills. Since joining I have found that I am much more serious about writing. I attribute that to the reviewers on Fanstory that are helping me improve. Since joining I have been improving. There are many excellent writers and reviewers that are available to help writers improve.

I have been on Fan Story for only six weeks and love it. It is a great way to express yourself and improves skills. As for the negative reviews, member can either be reviews either by purchasing member dollars or earn them by doing reviews. Like life it is full of choices. It is not a "magic pill" to a Pulitzer. It is what it claims to be. As for all member's being older, untrue. One thing I admire about it is that it is an artistic forum where people of all ages can participate. If you try it and do not like it - go away and do your own thing.

Fan Story is everything it says it is - nothing more - nothing less.

Fanstory provides a place for a writer to share their writing anonymously for critique. You share your writing and have it reviewed. Other writers, many of great ability, read your writing and offer advice. The site has a large number of poets and novelist. That includes a surprising number of published authors.

FanStory can teach and also be a tool to get motivated. I have met some fantastic writers and look forward to their feedback. I have received over 100 reviews on poetry I shared at Fanstory. I have over 30 fans. This has opened doors for me - doors that would be closed without Fanstory.

For poets and writers of stories or books, I think Fanstory is a must. This website is a place for writers to help each other improve. It is very useful to get feedback and, yes, encouragement from other authors. I found found that writer's with more experience are ineresting in helping me. Joining Fanstory, was the best thing I could have done for my writing career. I am now looking at getting published while before I was struggling to get motivated.

I just want to share how glad I am that I found Fanstory. It has helped me greatly. I've always wanted to write, but have always struggled finishing what I started. The feedback that I have received has helped my writing improve. I have fans since I have started that provide me the motivation to continue my book and finish my book chapters Yes, I actually finished them and received good feedback. This has boosted my confidence. My writing has improved too. Fanstory is a fantastic website that helps writers because of a community atmosphere of writers helping writers.

I enjoy FanStory. It provides poets, short story writers and writers of novels a place to get feedback for what they write. I find the site to be very easy to use. The support staff very helpful and friendly. It's easy to understand how to post your work and get feedback. I enjoy the daily writing prompt challenges. Each day they challenge me to write something different. The people that participate are primarily adult writers that write for enjoyment. Some are looking to be published (and many have). The site does a great job of helping author's improve. Try it - you won't be disappointed.

FanStory is a large and popular writing site. At Fanstory you can share your poetry or stories with other writers. It's sort of the Facebook of the writing world. But with many more features geared towards the more professional minded writer. You can also enter writing contests with cash prizes. You also get an online profile that you can use to connect with other writers, publishers, and individuals. I know Fanstory has a lot of writers that have gone on to be published traditionally through connections made not his site.

I love writing. Sharing my writing with friends and family was not something I felt comfortable doing. FanStory gave me the opportunity to create a pen name, share my writing with strangers, and get honest feedback. I have found the feedback very helpful. Sometimes reviewers are a little too brief. But generally I find that the reviewers are professional, courteous, and often very helpful. They generally seem interested in providing me with help and give me thoughtful feedback. It's a very valuable tool for any writer to have. And it's available on the internet. Highly recommended.

I recommend this webiste. Fanstory is hypnotizing. I find myself obsessed as I spend my free time, even late at night, reviewing poems and stories. I've never read so many creative people in my life. I enjoy reviewing greatly. And what is nice is in return, I get feedback. The more time you spend on Fanstory the more you get out of it. It's wonderful to write a poem and get 50+ readers that will tell you what they think of it. It's a unique experience. I highly recommend this website. What a wonderful group of people.

I just LOVE Fan Story. The website has really boosted my self-esteem, my pride, and joy. I have learned how to become a better writer by reviewing the writings of my fellow poets. Joining contests, pulls out my gift of writing from inside me, and lets me express my joys and pain. FanStory is such a beautiful place. I finally get to meet people who think like me, literary people who relate to me, understand me, and are poets like me. It has helped me improve greatly.

I have come away feeling incredibly disillusioned with this website, and would warn anybody who thinks that they will 'improve' their writing and meet serious, professional people on this website to enrol in a writing course at an institute or university instead. I was primarily attracted to this website for its writing contests and the hope of encountering some good writing, but soon discovered its ugly side. Although the site claims that contests can be entered "for free", this is false and misleading. The site runs on a little capitalist system, where its members each have an account made up of a virtual currency - called "member dollars". These dollars can be earned by writing reviews on newly-posted stories or poems from other users, with new content paying a larger amount of currency to the reviewer (as an incentive for their input) in comparison to an older poem, which pays almost nothing and is thus pointless to review. This is how the 'five-minute feedback' promise by the website is achieved, but I find it utterly exploitative - reviewers of new content are motivated by the amount of currency they will be paid, and will hastily write a comment, often vague, positive and offering no real criticism, in order to earn the proffered amount of currency so they can pay the fees required to submit entries to contests or 'promote' their writing on the website. Thus, they are not actually reviewing the material for its merit, but for the virtual money it pays. The amount earned by a user in reviewing a piece, whether old or new, is disproportionately low in comparison to the fees required to enter a contest - a review will pay around 40-70 member cents, for example, but an entry fee for a contest will typically be around 5.00 member dollars for more. This means that you'll be reviewing other people's work more than what you'd paid your membership fee to do - writing and sharing your own work, and thus the membership becomes more of a job or responsibility than a source of fun or satisfaction. The only alternative to reviewing is to buy virtual currency over PayPal with real money, which should ring alarm bells about the nature this website.
The content I was made to review to earn a decent amount of currency was almost always poor or downright atrocious, and I often felt embarrassed and slightly sickened to be reading it. Many poems I read that had won contests were often clichéd and lame, and would not merit publication or praise in any decent or professional literary circle. The website also appeared largely composed of retirees or housewives who wanted to dabble in writing, rather than improve their craft or write on serious subjects, producing repetitive and boring poetry preoccupied with subjects such as fields of flowers, the ocean, loving embraces, ad infinitum... it is definitely not a place that will produce the next Sylvia Plath or Robert Frost! I made a comment on my profile complaining of the poor quality of the writing on the website and the positive reviews it got, only to be firmly reproved by one user who invoked the example of Dan Brown as proof that "one man's trash can be another's treasure". Be that as it may, it still provided no excuse as to why many writers on the website were using improper grammar and clichéd, sentimental themes. Other users agreed with thIS user's claims of the subjectivity of writing. However, I still think my concerns were founded and well-evidenced and that Dan Brown is complete rubbish, not serious literature.
To conclude, I must say that this website completely violates the creative spirit of writing - it will try to claim a profit from its users regardless of the quality or merit of their work. While FanStory sounds like a nice idea, it still has all the faults of a business firm - exploitation of its members (who effectively get sucked in to become workers), those who are willing to spend money have the most power and benefits etc. Even though you will pay quite a hefty membership fee considering what you get out of the website, it requires you to give back time and effort in doing something you didn't pay to do. As an example, it's like if YouTube suddenly required its users to review random videos from others, in order for us to be allowed to post our own videos. Wouldn't that encourage people to leave vacuous and pointless comments when reviewing, such as "This is good", as they are forced to watch content they are not interested in in order to make a personal gain? This is exactly what happens on FanStory - things are reviewed for the profit, not because a user likes a poem and wants to review it on its own merit.
All in all, it is a business designed to extract maximum profit from its users with little concern for creative merit or quality of writing. It's features may sound attractive and it may sound like a website genuinely interested in helping writers and making a collaborative community, but it completely hides the fact that it is a profit-making scheme.

Before signing up, I had a serious look at this site and was frankly horrified. I came away thinking there had to be some reason this guy is still in business. After a quick look at Alexa, I see that the majority of members are older people who have somehow been tricked into thinking writers should pay to publish their work. No, no, no. Sites like this are using people. They are NOT doing you a favor by publishing your work. If you want to learn how to write, you shouldn't be listening to reviews from others with no idea. If you want to be a writer, take a real course, learn your craft, and get paid for your work. If you don't care about quality and want people to stroke your ego for bad work, then maybe this is the site for you but it's going to cost you plenty in time and dollars.

I came here placed some of my work, and to find that the only way to move up your work is to pay for it with Member dollars or CASH, this poet will not pay to have his poetry read.

I've removed my work and I'm done here. Waste of my time and membership fee! I should have read more of the Negative reviews about this site before I dropped my dollars here, but lesson learned. I couldn't believe that one has to build up member dollars, which can take ages and to read lots of poorly written poetry. Now of course they are hoping that you will be bored with that so you can pay REAL CASH dollars to buy what they call member dollars to pump your views up on their ladder, I wonder how much REAL CASH had to be paid to be in the top 10 on their list. After reading much of their top ten poets? I found much of the poetry substandard to say the least. I've asked for a refund and would caution everyone to read about them first, they say FREE, yes FREE TO REGISTER only then you have to pay their monthly membership fee. Very misleading indeed. Stay away REAL WRITERS.

This is an example of the kind of writing that gets all time best rating:
http://www.fanstory.com/displaystory.jsp?id=*******

It is from an author defending himself about not copying a joke that he called an original piece.

In a "ten word story" he used 6 of the following words: Panda Bear Eats shoots and leaves
If you Google those 6 words you will find thousands of jokes using those words.
Well, that top-ranked Fanstory writer tried to pull off that joke as his own original work.
This joker had a "story" that has the same setting, same character, same conflict and actions, same theme. Yet dares to call it original. I would more likely question if it is downright plagiarism.
The site owner made a big deal about it not being a violation of a copyright. That's true because jokes are public domain. However, what about a violation of ethics, integrity, originality? Those things don't seem to matter to the site owner. If a person went on FanStory and posted a jokes every day, they could become a top ranked author in a hurry. There are a few reviewers with integrity that would question that practice, but unfortunately not enough. Then guess what, if you start to question it, the site owner will punish you.
If you think the FanStory is honest competition, think again. That almost incoherent essay above earned an award as one of the sites All Time Best. What's worse is that author is the one of the site's highest authors.
The way to "earn" your way to the top is to give everything you read 5 stars, so everyone else you read gives you 5 stars. It has nothing to quality of writing (as the above example shows) it has more to do with quantity of reviewing and writing that you do. More 5 stars given, the more 5 stars received because you will be able to buy your way to the top of the ratings.
Reviewers are peer pressured into to giving 5 stars to everything. There are very few honest reviewers on the site.
Also, a review is not like a movie review where you can tell that you didn't like the movie because it was boring. Say that and you will get punished because honesty will not be tolerated by the site owner. No, a review must always be a sugar coated pat on the back, or else the site members or even the site owner will attack you.
If you like a tribe of average writers that will give you a pat on the back then it might be the place for you. It is a very difficult place to rise above being average. It is not a good place for above average writers, which is too bad because it has the potential to be. However, an above average writer will get discouraged to see their piece get all 5 stars, but it will be along side the tale with a punctuation error every paragraph and tells (not even shows) a boring story also getting 5 stars.

I've been using fanstory for almost six months now and I'm very heappy with it. It has really helped me a lot. I've joined many websites hoping they would give me a place to improve my writing and get in touch with publishers and authors. I was disappointed. But I found fanstory perfect for the job. The site is easy to use. The community is wonderful - so anxious to offer writers help. The contests are fun but also challenge you to try something different. Frankly, I'm a little addicted! But I'm writing more then I have ever before. I'm finding a new passion in my writing.