WHAT MAKES A GOOD REVIEW
As creators ourselves, living in a country whose comic book industry is putting in more effort to build an audience once more, we feel that one way to really get people’s attention is to be able to tell good stories. Without good stories, there’s no reason for people to leave their television sets and computers in favor of comic books. As such, we feel as though it’s our duty to do our best to try and elevate comic books here at home.
We hope, though, that in the process of writing these reviews, we don’t offend anyone, much less deter them from continuing on making comics. We’ll do our best to stay positive and constructive. We’re not out here to put anyone down, and if we do, we apologize in advance.
Our reviews will do three things:
WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO COVER 2 POINTS OF VIEW
AUTHOR
Is the author really dead? Not when it comes to studying and perfecting the craft of storytelling.
When it comes to the execution of writing a good story, we feel that it’s important to know the author’s purpose and intent. This is so we can gauge whether or not that purpose was seen through the story’s plot and characters.
To do this, we ask questions like:
Did the story have a theme/point?
Was that point evident throughout the story?
Or was the story just a hodgepodge of events?
Though the thoughts and ideas shouldn’t be the main focus of a story’s review, it still does play a role in the story’s creation. But since our main purpose for writing reviews is to see what makes a story work and not work, the author’s point of view becomes invaluable.
READER
The reader, of course, is the more important point of view of the two. How a story translates to the reader is the whole point of telling stories. If the reader doesn’t like a story, it could be because of several factors.
To find out why, then, we ask questions like:
Is this character likable?
Why is he likable?
Were the characters true to their selves?
Were the events in the story plausible?
Was the flow of events realistic?
The reader’s point of view is the most crucial of all, because the reader is at the receiving end of the story’s unfolding. It’s the reader that determines a story’s success. It’s the reader that determines if something is good enough to merit a place on his or her bookshelf. Without the reader, stories would never survive.
