Jordan M.

I have come away feeling incredibly disillusioned with this website, and would warn anybody who thinks that they will 'improve' their writing and meet serious, professional people on this website to enrol in a writing course at an institute or university instead. I was primarily attracted to this website for its writing contests and the hope of encountering some good writing, but soon discovered its ugly side. Although the site claims that contests can be entered "for free", this is false and misleading. The site runs on a little capitalist system, where its members each have an account made up of a virtual currency - called "member dollars". These dollars can be earned by writing reviews on newly-posted stories or poems from other users, with new content paying a larger amount of currency to the reviewer (as an incentive for their input) in comparison to an older poem, which pays almost nothing and is thus pointless to review. This is how the 'five-minute feedback' promise by the website is achieved, but I find it utterly exploitative - reviewers of new content are motivated by the amount of currency they will be paid, and will hastily write a comment, often vague, positive and offering no real criticism, in order to earn the proffered amount of currency so they can pay the fees required to submit entries to contests or 'promote' their writing on the website. Thus, they are not actually reviewing the material for its merit, but for the virtual money it pays. The amount earned by a user in reviewing a piece, whether old or new, is disproportionately low in comparison to the fees required to enter a contest - a review will pay around 40-70 member cents, for example, but an entry fee for a contest will typically be around 5.00 member dollars for more. This means that you'll be reviewing other people's work more than what you'd paid your membership fee to do - writing and sharing your own work, and thus the membership becomes more of a job or responsibility than a source of fun or satisfaction. The only alternative to reviewing is to buy virtual currency over PayPal with real money, which should ring alarm bells about the nature this website.
The content I was made to review to earn a decent amount of currency was almost always poor or downright atrocious, and I often felt embarrassed and slightly sickened to be reading it. Many poems I read that had won contests were often clichéd and lame, and would not merit publication or praise in any decent or professional literary circle. The website also appeared largely composed of retirees or housewives who wanted to dabble in writing, rather than improve their craft or write on serious subjects, producing repetitive and boring poetry preoccupied with subjects such as fields of flowers, the ocean, loving embraces, ad infinitum... it is definitely not a place that will produce the next Sylvia Plath or Robert Frost! I made a comment on my profile complaining of the poor quality of the writing on the website and the positive reviews it got, only to be firmly reproved by one user who invoked the example of Dan Brown as proof that "one man's trash can be another's treasure". Be that as it may, it still provided no excuse as to why many writers on the website were using improper grammar and clichéd, sentimental themes. Other users agreed with thIS user's claims of the subjectivity of writing. However, I still think my concerns were founded and well-evidenced and that Dan Brown is complete rubbish, not serious literature.
To conclude, I must say that this website completely violates the creative spirit of writing - it will try to claim a profit from its users regardless of the quality or merit of their work. While FanStory sounds like a nice idea, it still has all the faults of a business firm - exploitation of its members (who effectively get sucked in to become workers), those who are willing to spend money have the most power and benefits etc. Even though you will pay quite a hefty membership fee considering what you get out of the website, it requires you to give back time and effort in doing something you didn't pay to do. As an example, it's like if YouTube suddenly required its users to review random videos from others, in order for us to be allowed to post our own videos. Wouldn't that encourage people to leave vacuous and pointless comments when reviewing, such as "This is good", as they are forced to watch content they are not interested in in order to make a personal gain? This is exactly what happens on FanStory - things are reviewed for the profit, not because a user likes a poem and wants to review it on its own merit.
All in all, it is a business designed to extract maximum profit from its users with little concern for creative merit or quality of writing. It's features may sound attractive and it may sound like a website genuinely interested in helping writers and making a collaborative community, but it completely hides the fact that it is a profit-making scheme.