Comments. While NOTHING does more to lift my sagging spirits as an author, and while most comments are either generally complimentary or story-specific.....or both, some comments fall into a sort of comment-limbo. And while even unflavored white rice is better than no food at all, a truly gratifying or helpful comment, or one that specifically mentions a particular flourish of language or phrasing, is the one that makes a difference to me. It is also the type of comment that readers are encouraged to leave .....if one reads the little blurb from the site administrators on comments being something substantial.
Over the years I have gotten many kinds of comments, some very nice and very encouraging, some not that nice, and others that make me scratch my head. Here are a few examples of comment styles I have seen using "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" as the piece being evaluated. (See if you have seen these kinds of comments as well.)
Comment style #1, [Plain praise]: "Great story! Well written. I love bears." Nice, but not terribly helpful. It does make you inexplicably glad you chose bears over wallabies though.
Comment Style #2, [Dismissal]: "Goldilocks is guilty of breaking and entering. It is unnatural for innocent blonde girls to do such a terrible thing." Not so nice, equally unhelpful. And also shows the commenter doesn't really know blonde girls as well as they think.
Comment Style#3, [the Non-comment Comment]: "Great idea. The bears should have had a lock on their door, but Goldilocks probably still would have found a way in." You see this type a lot. While they are specific to the story, they really just repeat something obvious while offering no actual input on how the story was written or the point behind it. Whenever I get one of these I think the commenter is just trying to bolster their commenting score as quickly and effortlessly as possible......while being utterly noncommittal on whether the piece is any good.
Comment Style #4 [A Real Comment]: "I liked how you made the bears the victims of the human intruder instead of the other way around. And the rhythmic repetition of how each thing was evaluated as too one extreme, too the other extreme, or just right, set up a pattern that ran throughout the story. Very creative." These make my day. I don't even mind if a comment like this is critical. ( e.g. "Perhaps the story would be better if Goldilocks came with a sister who behaved more responsibly to sort of contrast the two." ) It doesn't matter if the comment is inherently positive or critical. The crucial aspect is that the reader saw and understood what the author was doing and then gave an evaluation of it.
At the end of the day, as I said, something is better than nothing, and way too many readers here leave nothing. So I don't want to make too much fun of those who do leave some sort of comment. But if you are an author yourself and you have a working brain, challenge yourselves to leave #4-style comments whenever possible. They really can be the highlight of an author's day. | 
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