Site Review – Field Report
From the FAQ:
FieldReport is a web site—a content ranking system and publishing model driven by the Web's richest writing contest. The contest is based on personal true-life stories called FieldReports—reports from the field of your life. FieldReport's contest motivates members to submit polished work and to spend time reviewing other work on the site, while a patent-pending blind review process pushes the best submissions quickly to the top, where they can win substantial cash prizes. FieldReport is reality entertainment and the start of a new marketplace for written content on the Web.
After field testing Field Report I have to give it a thumbs up with a big asterisk. I think that it's a great social networky site for creative writers, but I'm not a creative writer. While all the field reports are supposed to be true life stories, thus giving you tons of short memoirs to comb through, the writing style is akin to fiction writing. The better writers (and warning there is some horrible writing in there) paint beautiful pictures of dying mothers and literal broken hearts.
If you join Field Report you can post your own short stories for others to not just read, but members rate stories. Members can rate your piece on a scale up to 10 as well as an option to leave you comments. As someone who doesn't consider herself a memoir writer, I found the site interesting for entertainment sake. If you are a memoir writer, I think that you could find a good community here to write pieces and get some considerable feedback.
The big carrot for this site is that it is also a writing contest. Writers are ranked, thus the need for reviewers, and there are cash prizes available. There is also an option for people to pick their favorite pieces and develop your own Field Report book – of things YOU want to read. No more buying a book of essays and skipping crappy pieces!
The site is still young, but I think that it would develop into a great place for people to explore different writing styles in a non-blog format online.
If you have tried it please feel free to leave a comment about how you felt about it!
Disclaimer: I was approached to write this review and will be compensated with a small gift card, but believe me that I did not promise a positive review nor is the gift card big enough to buy my never ending love.
