No—you keep all rights to the work you choose to post on Scribophile. The short version is that by posting on Scribophile, you grant us the non-exclusive right to display your work (we have to display it, otherwise nobody could critique it!), and that's it. We're here to help you improve, not to cruelly steal your rights while twiddling our moustaches and cackling madly. You can read more about how you keep the rights to your work by visiting the user agreement (look under the "Use Of Content By Users" section).

Don't worry, critiquing is easy! Just write what you as a reader thought of the work. How do you think you would make it better?

There are lots of places where you can learn how to write more in-depth critiques. Here are just a few:

But I Don't Know How to Critique!, by V. Anne Arden
How to Write a Great Critique, by Scribophile
The Diplomatic Critiquer, by Andrew Burt How to Write a Critique of a Novel, by Janice E. Smith
How to Write a Poetry Critique, by eHow
How to Critique Fiction, by Victory Crayne

It's extremely important to quote correctly when writing your critique. You're required to offset quotations from the work you're critiquing by using the "quote" button in the critique editor, or by highlighting whatever you're quoting and pressing ctrl+shift+q.

How many karma points you earn for a critique depends on how many words are in your critique. When you quote correctly, the system ignores words within the quotation when calculating the karma you earn.

If you forget to quote, then you'll be unfairly awarded extra karma, because the system will think that the words you pasted in from the work are in fact your critique. That's not fair to you or to the work author.

If you're having trouble quoting, read the critique and work editor FAQ for help.

To post your work on Scribophile, just head on over to your Dashboard and click Post a Work on the left-hand toolbar.

You'll find that you need to have enough karma points before you can post a work. There are lots of ways to get more karma points—you can read about them here. Every time you post a work, you use up some of your karma points. This system helps ensure that everyone gets useful critiques and keeps the comments and critiques flowing!

Once you have enough karma points to post, just can type your work directly into the Scribophile editor, or you can type it up in a program like Word and then paste it in. Follow the prompts and voila! You've just posted your first work!

Yes! However, if you plan on posting any work with excessive violence, language, or any erotic content, you must do the following:

1. Post the work with the "restricted" view setting.
2. Include the tag "adult" when posting the work.

That's it!

Karma is how Scribophile ensures that everyone who posts a work gets great feedback. Your karma point amount is a reflection of how many works you've posted versus how you've contributed to the Scribophile community. Posting a work on Scribophile uses a certain amount of karma points from your total—you can't post until you have enough karma points!

There are lots of ways to earn karma points. You earn karma points whenever you do any of the following:

• Critique other works. The longer your critique is and the longer the work you're critiquing, the more points you earn. You earn much more karma for critiquing works on a review queue. You can still critique works that aren't on a review queue, but you'll earn less karma for those critiques. There's no maximum to how much karma you can earn for a critique.
• Having your critiques "liked" by other authors. When other authors "like" your critiques by clicking the "like" button (the little thumbs-up symbol at the bottom of your critique), that means that your critique was a good one, and deserving of some extra karma. You're rewarded accordingly!
• Rating the works and critiques of others. By rating works and liking critiques on Scribophile, you provide valuable feedback to your fellow authors, and help maintain a standard of quality in the Scribophile community. You earn a little karma each time you rate a work or like a critique something.

You earn the most karma points by writing long critiques for long works—these take the most effort. You earn the least karma points by rating works and liking critiques.

Check out our handy review queue FAQ page to learn all about how the queues work.

"Likes" are a way of letting someone know they've written a good critique. If you think someone wrote a great critique, click the thumbs-up icon at the bottom right of the critique to "like" it. You'll earn 0.02 karma points for liking a critique, and the critiquer will earn 0.02 karma points, plus 0.02 karma points for each like the critique has received before yours. So for example, if you like a critique that 3 other people have already liked, the critiquer will earn 0.06 karma points when you like it. The critiquer will get a note in their info feed letting them know that you've liked their critique.

That's your reputation on the site. Your reputation is a way to keep track of where you stand in the Scribophile community. Everyone starts at 0. As you post works, write comments and critiques, post in the forums, and so on, your reputation increases. If people rate your comments low, your reputation decreases—so make sure to write helpful comments! Almost everything you do on the site affects your reputation somehow.

Scribophile gifts are virtual gifts that you can send to any other Scribophile member. You can purchase gifts with your karma points. You can send them privately, anonymously, or with a personal message. Give them to say "thanks" for a helpful review, to let a member know that you're thinking of them, to a favorite author of yours, or to a supportive fan. Give a Scribophile gift to anyone!

Writer's Circles are groups within Scribophile made up of writers with similar interests. Think of a writing circles in the good old days... authors would get together now and then, read their work aloud, get feedback from their fellows, and have a lively discussion. Scribophile circles are like that—they're for meeting other writers, sharing your works with them, and discussing whatever you feel like talking about. Each circle has its own message board and collection of works that its authors have submitted. Create one or join one to start meeting other authors!

Go to the Manage Works page in your Dashboard. Each of your works has stars in the lower right corner. These stars represent the average rating that other users have given your work.

The red stripe denotes members who've upgraded to a Premium membership. It's just another little way for us to say "Thanks" for supporting Scribophile.

After a work leaves a review queue, it can be critiqued or commented on for 30 more days. After 30 days, the work is archived. This means that you'll still be able to read the work and any critiques and comments it has received, but you won't be able to critique it.

Archiving older works encourage authors to spend time critiquing newer material and leaves a more focused selection of works to review.

You can always re-post a work that has been archived. Re-posting a work gives it another round on the main review queue and lets it stick around for 30 more days. To re-post, just find your work in your Dashboard and click the "re-post" option.

Tags are how Scribophile categorizes works. They're short, one or two words, and should accurately describe your work. Scribophile has several pre-made tags for common genres that you can use to categorize your work, but if it doesn't fit in our categorizations, just go ahead and make up your own tag!