Why do people leave reviews after reading just the first chapter?

Wolfbane

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Does anyone else feel like the reviews are often lacklustre? When is it even a good time to post a review?
 

Immortal_17

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Only post a review when you are able to determine the pace of the story, the relationships between characters, how characters grow(if any growth happens at all), how the MC changes after experiencing a lot of the things that happened, etc...

People who review first chapters or even ten chapters in are just trying to bring you down or be a complete jerk. I'd say try a volume first before reviewing a story since you would have sufficient enough material to review instead of just saying "I saw rape, instant one star because I'm offended" or something like that after reading a few chapters.
 

BEETLESME

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Occasionally, they commented on the first chapter if its first chapter has some grammatical errors… Since some new novel now are from new authors which English are their second language. like me hehe
 

Anon2024

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Just look at the author’s name. That’s enough to post a review.
 

lnv

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Does anyone else feel like the reviews are often lacklustre? When is it even a good time to post a review?
I think some people post reviews on first chapter because the longer your review exists the more likely your review gets a like. The more likes it gets, the more likely it is to be on top
 

hijauKuning

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There are too many random reasons anyway, so it's impossible to know. It's internet---so it's the best way to encounter weird people. I don't believe someone giving 1 star because they're being a general jerk is really as common as people believe. If you can call it stupid, don't go as far as calling it malice. Sometimes, someone's just being illogical by venting their emotions because of a bad day. This, by no mean a good justification.

The ratio of people randomly giving 5 star even though they only read 1 chapter is higher than 1 star-1 chapter anyway. So that's that.

ALSO CLAIRVOYANCE. There are many people here with this ability. You can already foresee if a story was simply bad just by reading its first chapter.
 
D

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Some are trying to be a pretentious literary critic, others are just plain assholes, while there's a few whose review style is enough only for the first chapter.

In any case, take only what you need, and throw away the useless ones.
 

Shard

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Like greyblob said, sometimes you may not have updated the bookmark feature, so it says you are on chapter 1, sometimes people follow an author from another site where they already read more and are just reposting a review, sometimes it is just so bad you don't need to read more than one chapter. Lots of possibilities. But I'd say most are just asshats.
 

miyoga

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A lot of literary critics/judges (for awards) don't even read the entire first chapter. In fact, there's a large group of them that only read the first 4-8 lines. Their idea is that you can get a sense of where the writer is going to go with the story, the pacing of it, of course the grammar and general writing ability and all the other stuff that professional writers/editors look for. As a reader, I can't say that I haven't done the same thing and stopped reading a story after the first few lines. Sometimes it was because I literally couldn't read it the grammar was that bad, other times it was just that the story wasn't for me. I'd agree that a review after the first chapter is unfair since that's usually very different from what will come, but I can see a certain logic to the review itself (not the 1-star rating, though).
 

AuntieMaysLittleCousin

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I usually wait until the first arc is out to put my thoughts together and review a story. Sure, you can go ahead and say somehting like 'It's promising', but a review is about judging the content of the book, not it's cover.
 

Theirl

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well 90% of time u can get to know if the novel will be a bad experience in the 1º chapter
 

K5Rakitan

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of course the grammar and general writing ability and all the other stuff that professional writers/editors look for.
Yes. We editors expect to make some corrections, but if we don't even enjoy how the story starts, we copy/paste a standard rejection email and pull another manuscript from the slush pile.

As to why civilians give a review after only reading the first chapter, that seems like a highly personal choice to me. Some people feel better about themselves after they poop on someone else's creativity, particularly people from LA. I've seen it happen at a book festival. A few art snobs came by and wanted to poop on our covers. One guy seemed to think that would be a good strategy to convince us to hire him.

If it makes you feel any better, I gladly accept one-star reviews on my story! You can read the first chapter or just the first few sentences. Come by and do your worst :)
 

RaizarP

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You get a review after 1 chapter bro? I only got silent 1 star rating without any feedback. You're still lucky
 

Tsuru

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Does anyone else feel like the reviews are often lacklustre? When is it even a good time to post a review?
Like the chineses does : "The golden 3 chapters"
or after 5chaps.
Max probably 15 chapters.

For info, not sure if you know but the quality of internet people worsened at a crazy pace since 2018.
So what would have a chapter getting dozens of comments would be now having 3-5, and most of them would be short and/or barely useful.

Now the kind people, are : or busy with life or somewhere else because too much content OR learned it's pointless to talk as you often get douchebags that target you so they shut up. Sadly i am stupid and can't stop talking.
For example, giving an advice, you can get a stfu in the game, telling a typo and the author whatsawhizzer acted like a dick against us as if we were fckers that should learn our places of closing our mouths as free readers that don't pay him a dime.
 
D

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You get a review after 1 chapter bro? I only got silent 1 star rating without any feedback. You're still lucky
Silent 1* with only a single chapter up and with decent grammar and style are usually troll ratings. Yep, this happens in SH a lot, especially in its earlier years.
 
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