Scribophile: The Holy Grail of Online Writing Communities

Friends, I have struck GOLD.

My savior has descended from the clouds and its name is Scribophile.

Alright, I might be exaggerating the divine nature of this recent discovery, but it IS pretty amazing and it's helped me a lot, so naturally, I wanted to share it with you all in the hopes that it improves your writing life too!

By the way, in case you were wondering, Scribophile isn't giving me money or anything to do this. I'm just sharing out of the goodness of my heart.😘

I shall start with the basics. What is Scribophile?

So I'm still figuring out how it works, but basically, Scribophile is a place where writers can post chapters to be critiqued by their peers. It's pretty much an online community of beta readers. Oh, and guess what. I should probably mention, IT'S FREE.

You get on, make an account, fluff up your profile, and post your first chapter to be critiqued.

Except hold up, you can't. You aren't allowed to post your first chapter yet because you don't have enough POINTS. You might think, well that's frustrating. But the point system is actually my favorite thing about Scribophile.

The point system is genius because it's essentially what keeps people writing, not just critiques, but GOOD critiques. The way it works is, you need about five points to post one of your chapters. To earn those points, you don't have to spend money or watch ads or anything dumb like that. No. You earn points by critiquing other works!

The super awesome thing is, you get to pick which works you critique! If you're like me and not that into nonfiction, great, don't critique nonfiction chapters. There's a handy dandy search bar that lets you type in what genre you want to critique, and then you can even read the chapter's little blurb before committing to a critique to see if it's something you would enjoy.

The points you earn are based on a combination of the word count in your critique, and how helpful the author finds your comments. If he/she loves your corrections and words of encouragement, they can give you a thumbs up and boost your points!

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this very well, but the result of the point system is that you get a handful of really well thought out, helpful, line-by-line critiques on every chapter you post. So far I've posted my first three chapters and the critiques have been LIFE CHANGING.

There's a lot of other cool stuff going on in the site too, but I haven't had time to explore too much. I do know there are opportunities to enter contests, join groups, and so much more!

I would definitely recommend giving Scribophile a chance. The environment is just so professional, encouraging, and easy to use.

Oh, I almost forgot! The other thing I love about Scribophile is there aren't any time requirements. If you post your first chapter, and then it takes you a year to post the second one, who cares?  It's the perfect site for a writer with a busy schedule!

Does anyone else use Scribophile? Do you love it? Do you hate it? I'm still learning, so let me know in the comments what your thoughts are. Thanks!

Update: Scribophile and I are NO LONGER on Speaking Terms

That's right friends, I've been through a bad breakup. I want to let you all know what went down so you don't make the same mistakes I did.

First of all, this is not meant to bash Scribophile. Well, maybe a little, since I am genuinely frustrated. But just because it didn't work for me, doesn't mean it won't work for you.

Basically, my issue is that Scribophile won't let you post more than one chapter at a time.

For most people, this probably isn't a big deal, but for someone like me who enjoys writing chapters that are only 2-3 pages long, the system doesn't work in my favor.

So each post has a suggested word limit of about 3,000 words.

I thought that would be perfect for me since it meant I could include about three chapters per post and still be well under the word limit.

Excited to receive feedback, I put up my first post and waited for the magic to happen.

It didn't quite turn out the way I thought it would.

Within minutes, I received a notification from Scribophile management.

Here is what they said:

Hi there, I noticed that you recently posted more than one chapter in a post. As you may know, at the top of the "Post a work" page it states that each post must be a single unit of writing, like a single chapter. Members pay 5 karma points to get 3 critiques per chapter, not to be able to fill up a post with anything up to the word count maximum.

Can you please edit your post so that it only includes the first chapter, thus respects our rules and guidelines? Our members all work hard to respect those guidelines, and when they see that other members appear to be ignoring them, they get understandably upset and then I start getting angry emails.

Sometimes when I ask this of people, they try to be sneaky and just remove the chapter numbers, leaving the post almost unchanged. This is not what I mean--please don't do that.

Please edit your work now to correct this. You can post the chapters you've now removed at a later time, whenever you're ready. Thanks!

Here is what I said back:

I'm so sorry! I wasn't aware of this rule. I have deleted the post. I will say though, and this is not directed personally at you in any way, that this rule discourages me from posting in the future. I write very brief chapters and have exactly a hundred of these short chapters in my completed novel. I have been posting them in chunks of three because, after making time to do enough critiques to earn five Karma points, It feels wasteful to post a single, five-hundred-word chapter. At this rate, it feels like it would take an eternity to have my whole book posted, which was my initial hope. I wish I had more time to devote to critiquing and earning points, but unfortunately that just isn't realistic for me. I understand that rules need to be maintained in the pursuit of fairness, but I don't see how posting multiple short chapters is any different than the people I see posting collections of multiple poems. Since the word count is shorter, it just makes logical sense to try and keep it under 3,000 words instead of following the single-chapter rule. Again, I'm not trying to rant or cause trouble. I just wanted to let you know where I am coming from and why I would find this discouraging. Sorry again for not paying closer attention to the rules!

I DID NOT GET A RESPONSE

Needless to say, Scribophile officially lost my business that day.