QUANTITY BEFORE QUALITY
I don't want to be accused of elitism. Who am I to say that quality must come before quantity? Many users disagree, and can I neglect them when I give advice? The answer is NO.
Now, if you feel that churning is your thing, do it well at least. Even in that field ... Read review
Advantages: might help you Disadvantages: might not help you
QUANTITY BEFORE QUALITY
I don't want to be accused of elitism. Who am I to say that quality must come before quantity? Many users disagree, and can I neglect them when I give advice? The answer is NO.
Now, if you feel that churning is your thing, do it well at least. Even in that field some rules should be followed.
Even the minimalist op must be divided into 1) beginning 2) middle 3) end.
Don't ... ...of your op so that the structure is clear. Structure is good, believe me.
1) beginning
Collect some sentences of the kind: A friend told me about 'name of book' (from now on: NoB) and recommended it highly / I had to read NoB for A levels / Yesterday I passed a bookshop and saw NoB / I've had NoB on my bookshelf for years
2) middle
You might think it a good idea to copy at least one blurb of the cover, ... more
QUANTITY BEFORE QUALITY
I don't want to be accused of elitism. Who am I to say that quality must come before quantity? Many users disagree, and can I neglect them when I give advice? The answer is NO.
Now, if you feel that churning is your thing, do it well at least. Even in that field some rules should be followed.
Even the minimalist op must be divided into 1) beginning 2) middle 3) end. Don't forget to leave two lines free between the three parts of your op so that the structure is clear. Structure is good, believe me.
1) beginning Collect some sentences of the kind: A friend told me about 'name of book' (from now on: NoB) and recommended it highly / I had to read NoB for A levels / Yesterday I passed a bookshop and saw NoB / I've had NoB on my bookshelf for years
2) middle You might think it a good idea to copy at least one blurb of the cover, but I must warn you: the blurb might contain a hint at the content of the book, but your No.1 crap op should be absolutely content-free so that you can recycle it interminably.
Collect some sentences of the kind: NoB is a fascinating read / When I had started reading NoB, I couldn't stop / NoB is an unputdownable page turner / NoB is interesting to read / I hadn't thought that NoB would be so thrilling
3) end Collect some sentences of the kind: So /Therefore I strongly advise you to read NoB / Don't wait, buy NoB / I love NoB and you'll love it, too / If you're going to read only one book this year, it should be NoB
What you have to do is clear: combine the sentences so that you get a text of 120 words (Don't forget to count while writing). In case you don't reach this sum, sprinkle some adverbs such as very/ rather/ quite/pretty/ really/extraordinarily over the text.
The only thing I can't help you with is the title. Find a snappy / witty / funny / highly intellectual one so that people will fall into your trap.
QUALITY BEFORE QUANTITY
Strangely enough there are people (masochists!) who work hard on an op even if it's not sure that there will be a financial reward, they produce 1000 and more words just for the fun of it. If you feel you belong to this species, read on:
If you're bored by foreplay, you can jump immediately into medias res, that's Latin meaning 'the middle of things'. Or you can see the introduction as a kind of invitation, 'Come on in, relax, feel yourself at home'. A little ranting is permissible here if you don't get carried away by it.
You set the tone of your op, the readers get to know what to expect in the following text. One advice which will be eternally funny for me is 'Put some humour in!'. Where should it come from? Does it rain like manna from heaven? Can one buy it somewhere or order from a catalogue? Either you've got it or you haven't. If you're a dry customer, write in a dry way, at least you're genuine, and then, there're also non-humourous readers about, maybe they're grateful for the way you write and enjoy not having to endure artificial merriment.
How do you lead your readers into a book review? You can tell them how the book has come into your possession, this can make for a funny or absurd paragraph. Or you can start with a short summary of a review you've disliked and can promise to set things straight in your op. Another possibility is to describe what the book has done to you in a positive or negative way, describe your rapture or your disillusion, from there you can go on to prove that the sensation you've experienced is the only logical one (in your opinion, and all this is about opinions, isn't it?).
In case you suffer from horror vacui, Latin again, meaning here: horror in front of the empty page/screen, you can write the introduction later, maybe it'll come naturally when the rest of the op has been written.
You can use subheadings and print them in a special way to draw the readers' attention to them: THE AUTHOR, THE PLOT, THE STYLE. Some people like this, others don't. It doesn't matter really if you use this device or not, the important thing is that your op has a structure and you don't jump around and back and forth. I think a book review should deal with the author, the plot and the style, the order in which you do this is up to you.
Let's begin with the author. You don't know anything about him/her, you just read the book and saw the name for the first time and therefore can't write anything? This apology can't be accepted, sorry. You know how to use the internet, don't know? Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't read this. Hop over to google, fill in the author's name and, hey, presto, the number of entries will knock you off your chair!
It's not forbidden to use the internet, you just shouldn't copy, you can even state that you got the info there. Rewrite what you find so that it fits stylistically into the rest of your text.
Don't be so daft as one of my students whose English is on the level of Basic Pidgin and who gave me a homework appropriate for a Ph. D. exam. What he didn't expect was that his old, old teacher knew about the existence of computers, to say nothing of the internet.
Story or plot? What's the difference? Let's listen to E. M. Forster who wrote in his book 'Aspects of the Novel' 'We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. 'The king died and then the queen died', is a story. 'The king died, and then the queen died of grief', is a plot...If it is in a story we say 'and then'. If it is in a plot we ask 'why?' It's up to you if you want to tell your readers the story or the plot.
How much should you tell? I've been accused of writing too much and also of writing too little. The right way, as so often, lies in the middle. More interesting then the mere 'and then, and then' is, of course, what the book is really about. If you've found it out, you should mention and elaborate on the theme proper.
You can use quotations if you feel that the author's words are more precise than your paraphrase, but don't overdo it, we're not in a university course here.
What is there to say about the style of a book? Style has to do with choice of words and sentence structure. Is there a lot of direct speech or do descriptions predominate? Does the author use the first or the third person perspective, are the protagonists characterised directly or indirectly? Is the book an easy read, 'one of the kind you leave behind you on a plane', or must you concentrate to understand its meaning? I for one am interested in such details.
This leads us directly to your own style, dear writer of book reviews (and other ops as well, of course). The above mentioned remark 'Put some humour in' makes me laugh, the equally widespread remark 'Mind your grammar, spelling and punctuation' makes me cry. Why do so many writers not follow this advice? It's not that the English language is the most difficult on the planet, it can be learnt, believe me.
When you've come to the end of your op, don't finish abruptly, a conclusive sentence rounds it off. State again your appraisal or damnation, if you've argued logically the reader will now understand your point of view. Btw, a hatchet job can make for an entertaining read.
When you've followed me up to here, you may think 'This is just another piece of blabla and grey theory as all the other ops on the same subject'. Ah, no, not being German you wouldn't think 'grey' theory, we do that because of a quotation from 'Faust' by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, our greatest playwright and poet ever: 'Grey, dear friend, is all theory...' I'm really only interested in crowns (dooyoo) and diamonds (ciao), what about them? If I follow this advice, will I get one? Well, I know someone who has (followed) and has (got crowns and a diamond). - Who's that?
Advantages: varied products, something for everyone Disadvantages: could add more sub-categories perhaps
The Entertainment section of Ciao is probably the one I use most, being very keen on both reading and writing opinions in this category. It has quite a wide brief, as it includes eight main sections - Films, Books, Music, TV, Radio, DVDs, Videos, Newspapers and Magazines. Each of these then has a number of sub-categories, meaning that hopefully, everyone can find something of interest.
For example, the Books category is divided into Fiction, Non-Fiction, ... ...work.
The other two entertainment categories I most enjoy are TV and Music. I have quite a wide range of taste in both subjects myself, so I am just as likely to read a review on Bad Girls as Popstars, but with a huge dose of 1970s sitcoms in-between; I'm as likely to read or write a review of a Pink Floyd album or the latest offering by Kylie or Steps. These categories let me hop between my interests easily, being very straight-forward to navigate.
...
KarenUK 26.01.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Entertainment
Advantages: Huge number of products, great variety in styles of writing, constant evolution of products, competitions regularly Disadvantages: Opinions don't always agree with yours
Entertainment has to be one of my specialist subjects on ciao. I have always been a great fan of TV, Film and Music especially, since I write my own plays and music and watch as many films as possible. Since there is so much available in the entertainment area on ciao, and there is such a wide variety of things to read and write about, it's a category that I often find myself visiting, to catch up with what I've missed and any new releases (or old ... ...reason why I find the entertainment area so great is that the opinions that are written in it vary so much in style. When you compare a few Nokia phone reviews together, you see they all (or mostly all) say something along the lines of: 'I love this phone. Here are the features, it's cheap, it has lots of games, go and buy it!', whilst in a typical album review there can be many different opinions on the artists in general, the mood of the music ...
craigy_baby_2000 03.02.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Entertainment
Advantages: Well maintained and plenty of good ops available Disadvantages: Some glaring omissions in the books category
...in the somewhat more competitive entertainment category. Time to test myself against the big guns.
The first thing to note about the entertainment section is that there is such a wide berth of products available, from films to videos, computer games to restaurants, books to days out. You can find it all in this section. When you actually look into the sections you will soon find why it it so popular. These are the products that most people want ... ...and want to get right, so reading an op on the place before going is only common sense. Because of this the opinions tend to get more reads. By far the most popular topics in here are the latest film releases. People just seem to love seeing a film and coming straight back to write an op about it. Some are obviously better than others but if you read based on the list rankings then you cant go far wrong. The sheer volume of opinions means you will ...
robsgirl 14.06.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Entertainment
Advantages: good writing talent, relevant to me, good variety Disadvantages: beware the churners, no teletext
...the low down on the entertainment section, yesireee!
For those of you that have had the misfortune to encounter my work prior to this moment, you may have noticed, being the mandible that I am, that my opinions rarely stray from that which is the ENTERTAINMENT section. Why is this? Well, TV, games, music, books are a huuuge chunk of my life, and I really need to get out more. Being the evercretin that I happen to be, I tend to only read opinions ... ...probably not that often. Entertainment is of course a large part of many people's lives, so I reckon(yes, I'm wrong about this) that a large chunk of Ciaos ops are placed under this header. But what does Ciao define as entertainment, I hear you ask. Well, for those of you too lazy to look(or too busy reading this op), I'll do the work for you. Under entertainment people, you can find:
Books
DVDS
Films
Music
Radio
TV
Videos
Newspapers and ...
arcadionseyes 14.08.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Entertainment
I’m a great fan of quiz shows, especially when they demand from their participants, a certain amount of knowledge – and when there’s a possibility of winning a great deal of money.
And THE VAULT is such a quiz show.
It’s on at 8 o’clock on Tuesday nights – prime time TV. Presented by the former model, turned TV presenter Melanie Sykes (maybe you’ll remember her from the Boddington’s beer commercial) ... ...person, putting the contestants at thier ease.
THE FORMAT.
The format is quite simple.
10 contestants are involved in each programme. They start by choosing a four number code and the one’s who’s numbers are nearest to a pre-selected number, are the contestants for the contest. The five, who’s numbers are furthest, are the pre-selected code, are used as ‘Studio brokers’ and they are able to sell their knowledge to ...
pat175 02.06.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Entertainment
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