Review Writing in English

A review is a systematic format of presenting your opinions and facts based on a primary text like a book, news, social incident, debatable topic, a person, movie or web series, etc. Before reviewing or going into its depth, it is important to understand how to write a review as per the relevant format. Review writing helps one analyse things better and understand the pros and cons of the thing being reviewed; for example, if it is a movie review, the review tells us the pros and cons of a movie and whether the audience should watch it or skip it.

What is Review Writing?

A review writing is a summary writing where a critiqued overview is given about a topic, which may be formal or informal as per the topic and audience involved.

It is mainly published in newspaper articles, blogs or a journal.

Steps to Write a Review

The basic steps on how to write a review are as follows: 

• Understand the topic
• Make relevant basic research on the topic
• Gather relevant background information to be used while writing the review
• Create an argument or an opinion on the topic
• Present the facts and critically analyse them
• Write the final review

Structure of Review Writing 

To answer how to write a review, we first need to analyse the structure of a review writing format. 

Just like essays and letters follow a structured format in English, so does review writing. Its basic structure of it is as follows:

i) Introduction

The introduction paragraph of the review contains an introductory statement with basic information about the topic and matter involved to be reviewed.

ii) Plot Summary

The plot summary is an overview of the summary of the topic along with the plot or series of events combined. 

In the case of book or movie or web-series review, it means the plot of the story, the cast of the characters and summary of the story involved to be reviewed.

iii) Critique

As per the summary and relevant research performed, you are required to critically analyse the summary, present the pros and cons of it, your opinion, the general idea and your verdict upon its accountability. It is an essential part of a review structure as this forms the basis of opinion.

iv) Conclusion

In conclusion, a summarised statement is presented wherein an ending statement is given as an overall review opinion like any basic conclusion with a summarised review. It also summarises the entire review.

v) References

In the references column of the review, the sources are mentioned, which were used to form the basis of opinion. The source of factual information of the reviewed topic is mentioned.

Reviewing helps the readers to do a background check, get into the depth of the topic, and trust the accountability of the summarised review.

 Movie Review

A movie or film review, as the name suggests, is a review of any movie/film with the relevant plot and summary involved. Writing a review is always a tough task, but it has a series of orders or steps to be followed to write a good quality content review.

Some basic steps to how to write a movie review are as follows:

1. Understand the plot and present a summary of the movie to help the readers deeply connect to the review and movie.
2. Write a short comment on the director while writing the plot summary, and comment on his execution of instructions in the movie and how well the cast has performed.
3. Put forward what you understood from the movie, learn, and highlight the parts you found impactful or think could be done in a better way.
4. Use relevant quotes from the impactful scenes and take examples from the movie to make the review more factual and relevant.
5. Conclude your opinion on various aspects of the movie like direction, storyline, cast, cinematography, music composition, etc.
6. Compare the movie summary plot with other movies of the same genre and form an opinion of what was different or unique in this particular movie.
7. Give star ratings to the movie as per your opinion.

A critique can present his opinion. Reviews can be written about any product, service, incident, movie, book, or research topic. Reviews also add value and help readers understand the reviewed content deeply to the best of their capability.

Conclusion

Review writing is a type of summary writing where an critical overview is given as a result, which may be formal or informal as per the topic and readers involved. It is important for any writer to keep in mind while writing such reviews to be a critique yet use no abusive or negative word should be followed to denote any strong opinion or disapproval of any kind. Review writing is one such way of putting forward your thoughts,  and opinions about a topic yet not being abusive or negative about it. Critical assessment helps us understand things better, review writing gives us a medium to present forward our thinking on the same, in a structured format.