How to Write a Review: The Essential Rules
Do you have a review to write? Perhaps it is for a language or literature class, or perhaps you are planning to make your debut as a writer on Letterboxd or bookstagram. Maybe you already have experience writing this kind of text but would like to develop your skills further. In this article, we will try to help by answering the question of how to write a review step by step and explaining what a well-structured review looks like.
What is a review?
A review is a form of assessment of any work or product. Reviews most often focus on books, music albums, films, television series or games. The purpose of a review is to introduce the audience to the work and share an opinion about it.
The term ‘review’ is usually associated with discussing a work of art, but that is misleading: you can also review technical or sports equipment, a holiday, a car or a cosmetic product. Virtually anything can be assessed. The term review is sometimes even used for a short opinion on Google or a comment about a product on a manufacturer’s website.
A review does not have to be a written text either; it can take the form of spoken commentary, such as a video on YouTube. In this article, we will focus on written reviews. However, most of the advice can also be applied to ‘spoken’ reviews, which are usually similar in structure and style.
In practice, this means that the principles of review writing remain similar whether you are wondering how to write a book review, how to write a film review, or assessing another product or event.
How to write a review: the basic principles
There are no strict criteria that every review must meet. This type of text belongs to journalism and criticism, so it is less formal than, for example, academic writing. It leaves plenty of room for creativity and gives the author considerable freedom in approaching the subject. Nevertheless, certain characteristic elements distinguish a review from other types of text. So, how do you write a review?
A review should include:
- information about the work being discussed (an outline of the plot, a profile of the director or author, and so on);
- a description containing elements of analysis and interpretation of the work’s individual components (acting, choice of music, cinematography and so on);
- your assessment of the work.
In summary, a review should contain both a subjective opinion and the objective features of the work, as well as discuss and assess its individual elements. It usually ends with a conclusion in which you recommend the reviewed product – or explain why you do not. A review should not normally be too long either. Texts of more than 5,000 characters including spaces are generally found only in specialist magazines and industry publications.
How to write a good review?
Now that we have established what a review is, let us consider how to write one well. How can you assess something in an informed and engaging way? How can you support your opinion with convincing arguments?
Identify your audience
Take a moment to consider who you are addressing with your text. Where will your review be published? Who will read it? It is extremely important to give your text the right tone and style. You will write differently for specialists in a particular field than for beginners or people with a casual interest in the subject.
A text written for the former may use specialist vocabulary and be longer and more detailed. A review aimed at a younger audience, such as a school magazine, should be accessible and light-hearted. Adapting your style to your audience is one of the key skills involved in writing reviews.
Think about the structure and organisation
Pay attention to the logic of your argument. The worst way to write a review is to rely on a disorganised ‘stream of consciousness’ – throwing out successive, unrelated sentences and judgements. For example, you might write one sentence about the acting, then one about the director’s life, move on to an assessment of the whole work, and suddenly mention the soundtrack.
Chaos is never a good guide, so before you start writing, plan what you will cover in each part of the text. This will make the whole piece seem orderly, considered and coherent. Ideally, each paragraph should follow naturally from the previous one.
When writing a review, make sure it has a clear introduction, main body and conclusion with a summary. Organising phrases can also help you keep the text under control, such as ‘firstly’, ‘in turn’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘however’, ‘another problem with the book is…’, ‘another strength of the film is…’ and ‘in summary’.
A standard review structure
If you are unsure how to organise your review, a slightly predictable but reliable structure will always work:
- First paragraph: introduction – introduce the work (genre, author, year of publication or production and so on).
- Second paragraph: description of the work (an outline of the plot, themes and style).
- Third paragraph: the work’s strengths – what worked and what you liked.
- Fourth paragraph: the work’s weaknesses – what did not work and what you disliked.
- Fifth paragraph: summary – your final assessment after weighing up all the advantages and disadvantages.
This structure works whether you are wondering how to write a book review or writing a review of a film or television series.
Do not summarise the plot
Remember that a review is aimed primarily at people who are not yet familiar with the work and are wondering whether they want to buy the book or game. That is why you should categorically avoid all spoilers! It is an unwritten rule of good reviewing etiquette. You do not want to ruin someone’s viewing or reading experience, do you?
Write about the plot in general terms and do not reveal the ending under any circumstances. It is enough to outline the starting point of the work – what happens at the beginning and how the action starts – and introduce the main themes.
Support your opinion with reasons
Avoid empty statements such as ‘the acting was terrible’ or ‘the book was boring’. They are extremely subjective and simply unfair. The art of review writing lies in supporting your views with specific arguments. The reader should know not only what you think about the work, but above all why you have reached that judgement.
How can you learn to argue effectively?
An informed, worthwhile review cannot consist solely of subjective judgements. Alongside its evaluative layer, it must also contain an informative layer: it should provide concrete information about the work and discuss its characteristics.
- Give examples – this is a simple and effective way to prove your point and show exactly what you mean. If you accuse a book of being badly written, quote a passage. If you say that a computer game is full of bugs, describe a specific example of one.
- Use rhetorical techniques – knowledge of rhetoric can prove extremely useful to a reviewer. It can also help to remember the principles of building an argument that you may have learnt at school.
- Remember to ask ‘why?’ – whenever you express an opinion or judgement in your text, check whether your review also answers the question ‘why?’. In other words, every opinion must be supported by one or more arguments.
‘The production’s main weakness is, unfortunately, the acting. [Why?] Because the actors playing teenagers are in their twenties, the whole thing feels unconvincing and it is difficult to believe in the characters’ motivations. The result is inauthentic and exaggerated.’
‘This is the weakest album of the artist’s career. [Why?] You can clearly sense that the singer is bored and is now simply trading on past successes, even though for years they were one of the most original and experimentally minded pop performers.’
Expand your vocabulary and learn synonyms
A common mistake made by reviewers is to limit themselves to basic terms such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘brilliant’, ‘awful’, ‘boring’ and ‘wonderful’. The English language contains a vast number of words that allow us to describe things accurately. Film shots can be impressionistic, music melancholic, and the language of a novel uncompromising and brutal.
If you struggle to find the right terms, consult a thesaurus. This will enrich your vocabulary. You should also read reviews by other writers and learn from those who are better than you how many different and vivid ways there are to describe the world.
Do your research
Try to find out more about the work you are reviewing and pass some of that knowledge on to the reader. Read around the subject and do your research. What have other reviewers written? How was the work received by the public? What inspired the creators of this computer game? What awards did this film win? Who translated this book? What does the title of this album refer to?
This will allow you to share not only your feelings and opinions but also objective facts. Finding out what the creators, reviewers and online commentators think about the work will help you understand a book or film better, especially if it is difficult and you are unsure whether you have interpreted it correctly. An interesting behind-the-scenes detail or a quotation from the author will always enrich your work. Just remember to rely only on verified information.
How to write a review: the features of an excellent review
Would you like to improve your text even further? Are you aiming for outstanding work rather than something merely competent? Great! Here are several tips that will make your review stand out – a collection of advice for aspiring professionals.
Take care over your title
The title is the first element of a text that the reader sees, and it encourages them to read the rest. It is therefore worth looking for a good idea: something that catches the eye and sparks curiosity. Giving a review an intriguing, even provocative or challenging title is particularly important when publishing online.
The title is – alongside search-engine ranking and the reputation of the website – one of the factors that encourages a reader to click on your text. However, you cannot always choose it yourself: everything depends on the format of the magazine or website. Often, the title is simply the name of the product or cultural work being reviewed.
Place the work in context
This is definitely an advanced technique, because it requires knowledge, erudition and cultural awareness. No work exists in a vacuum: books form part of literature, and films form part of cinema. The better you know literature, the more confidently you can review one particular book; the more you know about cinema, the more accurately you can assess a particular film. If you aspire to become a professional reviewer or critic, you must deepen your knowledge of your chosen field.
This will allow you to write professional, well-informed and authoritative reviews, speaking both as an expert and as a passionate admirer of a particular art form. Your knowledge can enrich a review because it will enable you to:
- spot references to other works and movements and identify the creator’s inspirations; explain what the work resembles and which other works it brings to mind, such as recognising references to The Beatles in a song;
- define the work’s style and genre – is it film noir or a postmodern novel?
- relate it more broadly to the traditions of its genre, such as other RPGs, or to the creator’s other works, such as earlier films by the director; consider how progressive and original it is compared with previous achievements;
- use specialist vocabulary and expert technical knowledge, for example when discussing film editing or the graphics in a computer game.
We are not suggesting that you must read hundreds of books or watch thousands of films before you can start writing reviews. Familiarity with the subject is useful, but you can formulate a reliable opinion without it.
Try to get to the heart of the work
What is the Holy Grail of every reviewer? Discovering the essence of the work. Capturing in your text what is most important about the work being discussed and what makes it distinctive. This is not easy, but it is worth attempting, even if only for your own satisfaction. The following questions may point you in the right direction:
- What distinguishes the work from others? Where does its uniqueness lie?
- Do you think the work is important and necessary? If so, why?
- What vision of the world or philosophy is contained in the work?
- What did the work teach you, and what conclusions did it leave you with?
- What is beautiful about the work? Can you define it or capture it in a sentence or two?
Are you reviewing a work that you consider extremely unsuccessful? Try to get to the heart of that too – the heart of the problem. Diagnose what made the film, song or book unsuccessful. Where did the main problem arise? Which element was the first to go wrong?
Get involved
The best reviews are those in which the author’s passion and commitment are visible; you can feel that they genuinely wanted to share their observations about the work with the world. That is why it is easiest to write about a film or book that provoked strong emotions in you – either because you liked it very much or because you disliked it intensely.
Even if the subject does not particularly interest you, try to awaken genuine curiosity in yourself. Then the review will practically ‘write itself’.
Do not be afraid of an individual style
A review is a journalistic and critical form, so you can use a light style, humour and even colloquial expressions. The main exception is a review for an academic journal, which should be more restrained. You should also avoid going overboard with informal language in schoolwork, because you cannot be sure how your teacher will react.
Apart from these two cases, however, a review is a light form whose reading should primarily be enjoyable for the reader. So do not be afraid of unusual ideas or unconventional turns of phrase. You can try to amuse the reader or surprise them with the form of the text. You are limited only by your own imagination and talent.
Review example
Are you wondering what a well-written review looks like in practice? Below you will find three short examples – a book review, a film review and a theatre review – showing how description, assessment and argument can be combined.
Book review example
Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is an emotionally demanding yet incredibly absorbing novel. The author guides the reader through the story of four men’s friendship, gradually revealing one of the protagonists’ traumatic past. The book’s greatest strengths are its deeply developed psychological portraits and the evocative, at times almost painfully realistic, storytelling. Although the novel can be overwhelming and is very long, it is difficult to deny its literary power and emotional authenticity.
Film review example
Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, tells the story of two families living on completely different rungs of the social ladder. The premise is simple – a poor family gradually enters the lives of a wealthy one – but the film quickly proves to be much more complex. The director skilfully blends satire, thriller and drama, keeping the story unpredictable right to the end. The film’s greatest strength is the way it depicts social tensions and class differences without moralising, but with considerable irony and sensitivity. Parasite is an engaging, inventive production that encourages us to reflect on contemporary society.
Theatre review example
This modern staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet shows that a classic play does not have to feel like a museum exhibit. The production brings the drama into the present day without unnecessary grandeur – it is sharp and occasionally provocative, but that is precisely what makes it so engaging. The strongest elements are the intense performances and the simple, stripped-back set, which builds tension rather than distracting from the action. Not every directorial choice will appeal to every audience member, but it is difficult to deny the production one achievement: it makes us think and shows that a classic can speak powerfully about very contemporary concerns.
We hope that this short guide to writing reviews will help you produce one in a way that is fully satisfying.
Summary
- A review is a text that assesses a work or product, combining information, analysis and the author’s subjective opinion.
- How do you write a review? A good review should have a clear structure: an introduction presenting the work, a discussion of its elements, an outline of its strengths and weaknesses, and a final assessment.
- It is worth avoiding plot summaries and spoilers; instead, focus on interpretation and supporting your opinions with arguments.
- Sound reasoning and specific examples make a review more credible and useful to the reader.
- A good reviewer pays attention to style, vocabulary and context, making their text not only an assessment but also an engaging and worthwhile read.
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