I have mentioned the site figment.com a little bit on my blog, but trust me when I say that I will never be able to do that site justice with my mentionings and reviews. Oh well…
Figment.com is a website geared towards young adult writers (Ages 13+) who want a community of other writers for support, critique, and more. I have been a member on figment since May 2011 (http://figment.com/users/33988-Lydia-D-Sharpe-Kony-2012-) and think it is the greatest site ever for writers to connect. Figment has so many things you can do on the website that the possibilities are endless. They have an online newsletter I read daily that has interviews with authors, actors, actresses, publishers, and other celebrities who all have on thing in common: Writing/Reading. The daily newsletter also gives you flash fiction contests, random links you may like, and really just cool stuff for writers. It is definitely my go to place when I have writer’s block.
Another really cool feature on the site are their Contests page. Now these contests aren’t your ordinary “here’s a cup of soup as your prize” contests, they have interesting and fun topics to write about and prizes ranging from scholarships to being on TV. One thing I will say I don’t like on the contests is that some are judged by actual judges and some are something they call “heart contests”. I don’t tend to enter heart contests because unless you have a really great following and you get a zillion people to heart your entry before the deadline (which in some ways is against site rules) you don’t have a chance. Even with a great following there are always 10 or 11 people who always win because the heart contests are easily rigged.
Now on to another feature on the site, Groups. Groups is a new feature that was introduced by Figment late last year. The whole idea of the groups is so that figmenters can have a chance to come together and talk on topics they have in common. You’ll find about 1,000,000 different groups to join (you can join as many as you like) but only about a tenth of them are popular and have activity going on within the group. A lot of the groups I have joined are more like a “badge” sort of join because when you join a group it shows on your user page it just sorta lets everyone know you support that topic.
Your user page is pretty much like any other user page you would get with things like MySpace or Facebook. You can have a user photo, about me, and even have people message you on your page. On your user page it also displays your badges which tell the world of all your figment accomplishments. The page also displays all of your novels, poems, short stories, etc. You can put a password on your writings so only certain people can read your stuff, but if not anyone can read your work. When someone reads your work they can “react” to it, comment on it, review it, or just give you a heart (this is sort of a way of seeing how popular that story was).
Now the rest of the site is pretty self-explanatory but I do think I should inform you on something that happened very recently. A couple of months ago the well-known publishing company “Harper Teen” sold the rights to their own writing community called “Inkpop” to Figment which made the community even larger. If you go on the forum boards you may or may not see that this brought a lot of drama since the Figment people were like “Yay!” and the Inkpop people were like “You suck!” for no reason. So if your confused as to why people have a badge that reads “Inkpop User” or they put “Inky Foreva!” in their username it is probably because they came from that site and have some weird Inkpop pride thing going on 😛 Anyways, since Inkpop joined Figment there have been some pretty cool changes happening. One thing Figment is still working to provide is a security system. A lot of Inkpop users complained about Figment because on Inkpop they used a system that blocked any way of copying and pasting stories. So it makes it a little harder to steal your work, either way I still put passwords on my archives account.
So there you have it folks! The amazingly awesome world of Figment is just one click away. Why not look around? If you have any questions go on and drop me a comment 🙂
Wanna visit my Figgy account? http://figment.com/users/33988-Lydia-D-Sharpe-Kony-2012–
-Lydia ♥
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