Recently, I’ve been looking at online writing communities and what they have to offer. I’ve been a member of a few sites in the past, but as the years go by, new sites replace old ones. I’ll be making the rounds to take a look at what the internet writing community has to offer! For the time being, I’ve visited two of the larger writing communities out there: Scribophile and Figment. I’ve reviewed the simpler of the two here.
Figment began back in 2010 and has grown exponentially to over 300,000 users. They merged with Inkpop (Harper Collin’s teen writing site) in 2012, and in 2013, Random House Children’s Group acquired Figment.
Like Inkpop, Figment is mainly geared towards teens (13+ only). Its site layout is easy on the eyes and very simple to follow. All genres are included, including fanfiction. Their most popular tags are love, romance, poetry, fantasy, and drama. You can achieve quite a few badges for your profile page based on your publishing, commenting, reviewing, or reading stats.
When reading a story, you have several options: you can click on one of several “silent” reactions (sad, blush, laugh, etc.), you can “heart” it, and you can either leave a comment or a review/critique. I’ve noticed reviewers and commenters both tend to generally leave positive feedback. Reviews are for the story as a whole, rather than by chapter.
There is no copy/paste function on the site, so writers need not worry too much about others stealing their work.
Periodic chats (Q&A) with authors, user-created groups, and writing contests graded by authors immerse Figs with improving their writing, as well as socializing with like-minded writers. They also offer an optional weekly newsletter (you can subscribe without signing up for Figment) that provides community news and a spotlight on a Fig writer.
If YA and/or romance (excluding erotica) is your genre, Figment would be a great place to read and display your work. Figment is a very positive community.
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