Help, or possibly advice, from the peanut gallery?

[grundyscribbling]

Will preface this by saying that if sulien is thinking this is awfully coincidental, she's absolutely right - replying to one of her comments got me thinking.

I know as an author I love "meaty" comments. The ones where someone doesn't just say 'well done' or 'I liked it' but reacts or gives details about what they liked. These are the sort of comments I want to be able to leave as a reader. They are also the comments I feel I am worst at writing. (Seriously. Me trying to write one of those comments typically involves much flailing and handwaving, not all of it figurative.) I can say 'I enjoyed/liked/loved it!' but would rather say more.

Is there something I can do to get better at more substantive comments? I know Dawn Felagund has linked comment starters before. I'm not looking for a starter so much as a 'how do I get my brain to more reliably crystallize what about a particular story I liked/why I liked it?' And I need to convince my brain to do this in a timely fashion - while I've had some success with adding 'comment on [story]' to my to-do app*, in general if I don't comment right away, I don't comment.

*Yes, I have a to-do app. It's the one app that is on ALL my devices. It is key in getting me from the 'I thought about it' stage to the 'I did it' stage, not to mention extremely helpful in making sure I get repetitive but non-daily chores done on the regular and not just when I happen to think of them and am not distracted.

Comments

[keiliss]

The 'quote from the story' always works. Elfscribe did that a lot and it always made me feel good because I could see what she'd responded to in the fic (also it makes the feedback way longer, which is never a bad thing). I sometimes make a note or two while reading if I find something I rather liked but might not remember to comment on at the end. Just adding you liked the setting or the way the writer perceived the protagonist or --- just a small thing the writer can in turn respond to -- would be a good way to start, and then try and expand from there (setting AND character next time maybe :D).

Having said that, I've never had a problem with 'I really loved this story/this was a good read'. Pretty much anything beats watching the anonymous read count climb and wondering if they all hit the back button after the second paragraph.

[grundyscribbling]

I know any comment is better than nothing, but I would like to be able to leave more than just a generic 'I loved it!' Quote/copy-paste from the story seems to be the go-to suggestion, so that's what I'm going to try to do more consistently. Thanks!