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If I missed this in the documentation somewhere, sorry. But could
someone tell me what the difference is between the "Enter New Review"
and Enter New Author Review" links on the voting site? Thanks.

On 16 Jun 2005, at 15:15, picara_embustera wrote:

> If I missed this in the documentation somewhere, sorry. But could
> someone tell me what the difference is between the "Enter New Review"
> and Enter New Author Review" links on the voting site? Thanks.
>

Hi Picara,

Author reviews are where you comment on the author as a whole. They can
be specific to a certain category, or you can write one for a given
author and use it to vote in certain categories. Each category has an
author subcategory, where you can vote for all the authors who had
stories entered into the category. You can even bring in other pieces
that you have read by the author, but that aren't nominated for this
year's awards.

"Enter new review" is where you're voting for a specific story. (Or
poem, or essay, or whatever.) Praise what you like about the piece, but
don't bring in other pieces by the author.

I can only really see the difference by examples. Here are two of my
reviews from last year. The first one is an author review I wrote about
Nessime in the Rohan subcategory. The second one is a story review I
wrote for "Promises to Keep", the only story Nessime had in that
category.

*****
[Nessime] Nessime clearly loves Middle-earth, but I can't help but
think that the Riddermark has a special place in her heart. Her use of
details and her apt storytelling skills bring the land alive, making
men out of myths. She also has a real skill with minor characters;
Edrys and Gárulf fit right in with how Tolkien described Rohan, and
offer us an interesting glimpse of a fascinating character. No wonder
she pulls the same off with Hasufel!

[Promises to Keep] The author says, in her notes, that she could not
improve on the Master's dialog in this scene. That may very well be
true, but the same can't be said for the scene as a whole. As much as I
love the scene in Tolkien's original, seeing it retold from Hasufel's
perspective *does* improve it. In Rohan culture (at least as portrayed
in this story) everyone has a place and a job to do - and this includes
the horses. They are living, thinking parts of the world, with doubts
and fears all their own. Hasufel's grief at losing Garulf is very real:
"Could I have saved him? To know the answer to that question is
something I both long for and fear." These are not the thoughts of a
dumb brute! This unique perspective, a glimpse of the depth of even the
horses, breathed new breath into a scene I've read a dozen times.
*****

I hope you can see the difference. In one I was focusing on Nessime's
skill as an author; in the other one I was writing about a specific
story.

Last year our author reviews *had* to be genre-specific. That meant
when I was writing this author review, it had to be about Nessime's
skills when writing the Rohirrim. this year, if I was reviewing
Nessime, I would probably bring in how much I liked her use of cultural
details in other pieces -- the ones set in the Shire and Numenor, for
example, and how it seemed like they were all so well researched. You
can be even broader than I was in this one.

If it helps further, you can see all of last year's comments at
http://home.earthlink.net/~ainae/mefa/ . Scroll down to the bottom of
the list of sections and click on "Read the comments" (or something
like that). Click on the author's name to see the authors comments, or
on the story's name for the story comments.

Marta
*****
Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. - St. Francis
of Assisi


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