Scribophile.com

If you’re a writer who needs someone to beta your rough/first/second drafts, but you don’t want to rely on friends or family to read your unpolished works, then this is a writing group for you.

Scribophile is an online writing community where you can post up your rough works for constructive critiques and comments in return for leaving your own critiques and comments on the works of others.

When you first join, you cannot post a piece of your own until you review several pieces written by others and gain “karma points”.  Once you’ve acquired enough points, you spend them to post your work for review.

Your are pretty much guaranteed at least three detailed (long) reviews.  Scribophile has a policy where if a piece has not gotten any reviews after a set amount of time, it gets put in a “spotlight” review section.  The story then remains in the spotlight section until it receives at least three long/detailed reviews.  Readers are also encouraged to review these “spotlight” pieces because doing so gains them more karma points.

There is a free version as well as a premium version of Scribophile.  While there are definite benefits to being a premium member, the free version works just fine if you’re a budding writer needing constructive criticism to polish the stories you’re working on.

If this kind of community appeals to you, then by all means go and sign up.  Once there, if you’d like to follow my own works, you can find me under the handle of C.R. Scott.