Knowledge Base

Each time you send a critique, the author is asked to rate it. When you have completed at least five critiques, you will be able to see your overall Critique Grade on My Page. By clicking on your grade you can see your average score against each of the seven statements. You will not see how an individual author rated your critique but the average grade will help you to see whether there are areas of your critiques that you might be able to strengthen.

Your grade will be updated each time you have five more critiques graded by authors. By default, the grade shown is calculated on the last cumulative multiple of five — for example, if you have 12 critiques graded by authors then you see a grade calculated on 10 critiques. You can see how your grade has changed over time by choosing a different number from the drop-down box — for example, the first 10 critiques or the first 25 critiques.

The grade scale is from 1 to 5 stars.

The message "Return the favour" appears in your reminder box on the front page and indicates that an author that has critiqued your story now has a story himself in the the queue.



If you click on "Return the favour" you should be taken to his story so that you can critique it.

A Super Critter is someone who makes an outstanding contribution to CC through their critiquing activity. You will see them marked in their member page and in the Story Queue with a star.

To become a Super Critter you must write at least 12,000 words in critiques in a single month. Once you achieve this you will get a Super Critter star next to your name until the end of the next month (this means that if you reach the threshold in the middle of the month you will have the star for one and a half months).

On your dashboard you can see your Super Critter progress.

Autosaving is a feature on CC which automatically saves your critique every 30 seconds, but only if something has been written in that time. This feature is turned on by default and should always be used unless there are some technical reasons not to.

When autosave is on, you will see the text Autosaving is enabled above your critique window when you start a crit and the autosave icon is light blue.

Saved critiques are stored in your Critiques in Progress page and are accessible any time so that you can continue writing your critique at any time.

Padding is when the critter adds extended unrelated commentary, nonsensical words/phrases, cut and pasted material from other sources that has no bearing on the story or pontificates excessive flattery with the sole purpose of 'adding' to word count in order to gain credits.

A short greeting or explanation of a critting style is not padding. However, a standard, 'cut and paste' extended greeting or breakdown of critique style in the opening notes will be consider padding if it does not accompany standard helpful feedback that is of an expected critique length.

Padding is not allowed at CC, and critiques will be rejected (and credits removed) in all cases.

It is possible for a story author to hide a critique, choose the critique you want to hide by going to Stories: My Critiques and find the critique you want to hide. On the critique page there is a box on the right side, marked Story Author. One of the option is to Hide Crit.

If you have already hidden the critique but want to unhide it, go to the same box and this time choose Unhide crit.

In case you do not see the critique you want to unhide when you go to Stories: My Critiques, please click on hidden crits (picture below). By clicking on this option, you are able to see hidden crits as well.

Note: If you receive destructive or inappropriate critique, please notify the Moderators by using the Report crit button on the critique page.

The best way to get critiques is to critique actively. It's common practice to return the crit if someone crits you, and although not everyone return all crits, many people do. The best way to establish critique partners where both of you consistently critique each other's work is to search for authors whose writing and critiquing style fits your own, and then to consistently critique their stories by providing meaningful crits.

Soliciting critiques in the forums (e.g. posting a link to your story and asking other members to crit it) is not permitted. This is to prevent the forums from being inundated with threads of that nature.