Writingbattle Opiniões 

TLDR: Writing Battle is an unethical company that continually performs baits and switches, breaking its own terms and conditions by changing their advertised product mid-contest. Edit: the above, as stated, is on top of banning well-meaning writers who mean to improve the site.

As a long-time Raven (what participants call themselves) and someone who has given hundreds of dollars to this company since Winter 2023, I am deeply ashamed to be writing this.

Due to pending code/legal violations, I unfortunately must be mum on a lot of information, however, this is what I'll say: Writing Battle used to be a place of comfort and joy. It is with regret that I write this review as I've never had to write a negative TrustPilot review.

Yesterday, during the middle of the contest I'm currently participating in, I received an unprompted email saying I could not submit my story, and I was banned from the contest. Again, this email was unprompted.

While I've had unfortunate conversations with the contest runners regarding their behavior on a public forum, I've never been notified that my account was in bad standing. I've never been suspended from the platform nor have I given reason for the contest runners to find me "hostile" or a "hindrance" in their running of the contest. I've provided (paid for) multiple battles for friends and family, and I've brought at least a half-dozen people to the site. Additionally, I've participated in most battles since Winter '23.

Please, if you're reading this, understand that this review, along with the others you've seen, are not participating in "review bombing". This is in response to the contest runners' discriminatory, predatory, and prejudiced practices and they are going to face legal fallout as a result of their inept and callous actions.

Please research, for yourself, the many responses and attitudes of this company.

Please research, for yourself, the many different writing competitions and then ask yourself, "Why is this the ONLY competition receiving this type of press?"

You can only come to one unfortunate, sad, but inevitable conclusion.

When they took down the forum, I admit to feeling a bit salty. I wrote a satire story in the Tavern. It didn't mention WB by name, but they assumed it was about them. I am no longer able to log in now. I think I have been banned. I asked for a refund, but they did not give it. So many other things I could say, but others have said most of it. It's hard to believe that a child sexual abuse story could not only be allowed, but actually win in It's category during the last competition, yet my little humorous satire story was banned. I can't help but think the few 5 star ratings on here are a bit disingenuous, not even mentioning some of the recent issues that have come up lately. It all makes me very sad, honestly.

To start, I'm taking umbrage with a previous review that says:
"If you’re unsure as to whether to take part owing to the swathe of negative reviews that have recently appeared in a short space of time- there appears to be a group of embittered individuals who have now left the competition and are dead set on causing trouble, including ‘review bombing’, which is a tiresome, immature and embarrassing feature of the internet, whenever it comes along. If you want to take part in a writing competition where those sorts of people aren’t welcome- you’re in the right place."

This particular review, while I'm sure he means well is a biased source. He earns money through his podcast that features Writing Battle stories AND from Writing Battle promoting him as someone you can pay for feedback. Personally, I think his review should be removed as he might as well work for the company.

Also, the short space in time of negative reviews came AFTER the short space in time of 5-star reviews immediately following Writing Battles new draconian measures. They knew what the did was wrong and massively unpopular and now they are playing damage control. No way does that many 5 star reviews happen in that span of time with much a wide gap in between without some sort of organization because they anticipated backlash about people being removed for the least amount of criticism.

Another review will mention searching Reddit, and you should. You'll find one of their community moderators being hostile to people upset about recent changes. You'll find receipts on the how Writing Battle responds to criticism by immediate banning and banning people by association, and gaslighting from Writing Battle account itself.

They've shattered what goodwill they've had with much of the competitive writing community, save for their chosen elites that they feature in their social media ads... and the rubes that get roped in. They don't care if you supported them for years. Now they are in the volume game of how many one-time transactions can we make.

And they expect writers to NOT write about all of this? Please. These are not serious people.

The 5-star reviews that believe the 1-star reviews are a result of a group of grouches should take it upon themselves to have the self-respect to google “writing battle reddit”to read on a thread free from WB’s influence. the echo chamber that is the WB community and press is conducive to certain ‘loyalist’ being complacent: no doubt about it. Owe it to yourselves to pick yourselves off the feet of WB though.

Peer-Judged? When Mods Compete, Past Winners Judge, and Admins Can Remove Entrants, Who Really Controls the Contest? Now they want your ID,Seriously.

I joined Writing Battle because it was presented as a peer-judged writing competition. My experience had destroyed my confidence in that claim.

After I uploaded a satirical story criticizing rule changes, moderation, and treatment of the community, I was banned before my peers ever had the chance to judge it.

It was a test. I paid hundreds of dollars to play a contest that appears to be fixed.

If management can remove entrants before peer review, then entrants deserve to know exactly how much control administrators have over which stories are even allowed to compete.

I also object to the structure. Moderators have been allowed to enter contests, and past winners have later served as judges. Even if everyone acts honestly, that creates obvious concerns about independence, conflicts of interest, and fairness.

Winners are then promoted on social media as marketing for the platform, making transparency even more important.

Members provide the stories, judging, critiques, community, reputation, and money. Yet questioning changes can apparently carry serious consequences.

My advice: read every rule, document changes, save communications, and be extremely careful about what personal information you provide.

A company may control the website.

It does not own the community that gave the website its value.

16-ish people banned for questioning rules changes that happen and some winners magically show up to give good reviews? That tells you all that you need to know.

I've been a member of this wonderful community for a couple of years, and I'm so glad I found it.

In a nutshell, there are scheduled contests (Battles) throughout the year. Entrants are challenged to write a short story, the length of which changes from Battle to Battle (usually from 250 to 2000 words), using set prompts (genre, character, object). You only have a short window (2-4 days, depending on story length) in which to submit your story, so it forces you to put pen to paper and get those words down.

The process is smooth from start to finish, and Battles are managed competently by the small admin team, who bend over backwards to accommodate requests for new functionality and answer queries in a timely way. They clearly care deeply about providing their writers with the best possible experience and pour their heart and soul into this platform.

The contest has helped me to get into a regular writing routine, and I love the variety of prompts. There are lots of badges and trophies to pick up in each Battle, and collecting these becomes a bit addictive!

The organisers often introduce improvements and new functionality to keep the platform and the contests fresh and fun, and apparently they have lots more in the pipeline, so I can't wait to see what they've got in mind.

Thanks to Writing Battle for creating an enjoyable, supportive, friendly contest. Here's to the next Battle!

This is my favourite writing competition, and has been for the last few years. The prompts are fun, and the time constraints are great at squeezing the creativity inside my brain out of me, and into a story.

I’ve learned a huge amount about my own writing process from these competitions—I would recommend Writing Battle to anyone!

If you’re unsure as to whether to take part owing to the swathe of negative reviews that have recently appeared in a short space of time- there appears to be a group of embittered individuals who have now left the competition and are dead set on causing trouble, including ‘review bombing’, which is a tiresome, immature and embarrassing feature of the internet, whenever it comes along. If you want to take part in a writing competition where those sorts of people aren’t welcome- you’re in the right place.

This used to be really fun, a competition based on community and good vibes, but it’s become overly complicated and the administration is a complete mess. Rules and service offering are changed on a whim (including mid contest on several occasions, with no option for refunds if you don’t like the new set up), and the admin can’t handle any kind of constructive feedback without having a tantrum. Not a very professional business and definitely high-risk for low-reward.

This company has devolved into rampant censorship with zero explanation given to customers.

On 8/4/26 the forum was deleted.

On 8/5/26 I was suspended for leaving a comment on the most recent story posted to the Tavern. My comment was kind and supportive. The story was deleted and the writer who wrote the story was banned. I don't know why I was suspended just because the story was deleted, so I replied to my suspension email to ask why I was suspended. I received no answer. In total I sent 3 emails over a 48 hour period asking why I was suspended. I was then banned without explanation. I still have not received an explanation.

This website is not safe for anyone to write in or comment in without fear of being banned or suspended without explanation.

It appears that if they think what you wrote may be about them in any way they will ban you. (What kind of writing competition censors writers for satire but doesn't censor SA content?) The admin team has become paranoid and cruel to their customers.

Overall, I have participated in 3 battles. When I first joined, things were fine, but as I remained I noticed that competition rules often changed mid competition, which upset people. When anyone complained in the forum (which are now gone) admin and mods would freeze threads and delete posts and then change codes of conduct to try to silence users.

Writing Battle seems to have put a great deal of money into marketing, as I'm sure anyone who is reviewing this would have noticed. This seems to have had a huge effect on the quality of the peer judging during their peer judged competition (Ravens). I believe the ratio of established writers to brand new writers is now heavily weighted towards brand new writers, so if a person is looking to grow as a writer, there will no longer be a community of mentors to give you quality feedback. Especially with the recent bans of many seasoned writers in the community.

In the past, the benefit of competing in a Writing Battle contest was access to a community of writers, and making friends with other writers. Now that the forum is gone, that is next to impossible to do on this site.

There is no judge feedback, and the peer feedback is not trustworthy. Winning is a complete gamble.

There is nothing about this contest that is worth the cost anymore. If anyone does choose to enter anyway, I would strongly advise not commenting on any stories, because you might be suspended or banned and you will never be informed why.

I would also advise against buying any bundles, because they will continue to make terrible changes to the site that you will like less and less, and then you will be stuck with commitments you don't want and will likely not be allowed to get a refund due to their bundle policy.

In conclusion, there are a lot of amazing writing competitions out there, and writing communities. This is not one of them. Look elsewhere.

If you love:

• Censorship of criticism to the point of deleting forum posts, then deleting the entire forum.

• Removing writing criticism from sexual assault survivors, then gaslighting those same survivors about what happened.

• Retroactively inventing rules to justify banning critics while insisting it was never about the criticism.

• Refusing to let judges opt out of stories containing their own trauma triggers, then banning people for following the workaround you suggested.

• Requiring members to send images of government-issued IDs over unsecured email after they publicly criticize the company.

• Keeping dossiers of private Discord complaints and circulating them to new moderators.

• Allowing AI-written stories to win your contest despite rigid anti-AI rules.

• Asking your cronies to flood this very website with 5-star reviews to bury legitimate criticism.

Then this is the contest for you!

If you're looking for community, go elsewhere, because this competition has shut down their forum entirely rather than deal with moderating it. I competed in writing battle for over 2 years and made a number of important friendships and writing connections there, but the community management has been handled incredibly poorly.

Leaving this review in particular to highlight the fact that if you're looking for community, you will no longer find it there since the forum has now been shut down. Also important to note that whatever the competition rules are at the time you sign up and pay, they will likely not be the same by the time the actual battle rolls around, especially if you purchase a bundle. Whether or not you can receive a refund after the service you paid for has been modified without your consent is dubious, and seems right now like it comes with a lifetime ban from the platform, if you ask.

The code of conduct changes frequently at the whim of management and often attempts to over-reach and dictate the actions and speech of users on other platforms. A number of bans were recently handed out for what seem to be arbitrary reasons, re-litigating past events that had already been handled, disciplined, and left behind.

As a long-time competitor, it's genuinely crushing to see writing battle become what it has. This really was the top-tier short story competition and online social space for writers seeking community, and in the past year and a half it has declined terrifyingly quickly due to irresponsible and immature management. If you choose to compete, be prepared to be banned at any time if you write anything that expresses a negative sentiment about the competition or its runners, or if you're found to be socializing with any number of competitors that were deemed undesirable and booted by management.

**EDITING TO ADD in response to recent reviews:
To the people claiming these negative reviews are a result of "a group of embittered individuals who have now left the competition and are dead set on causing trouble" and similar: We are not a legion. We are not ganging up on Writing Battle. Writing Battle ganged up on us. We never wanted any of this to happen.
We are also not a group. I do not know who the vast majority of the other people who have left negative reviews of late even are. We are simply individuals connected by the fact that we have all been similarly mistreated, ignored, and cast away by the admin of Writing Battle. That is all. To call us "tiresome, immature, and embarrassing" for voicing our experiences and thoughts on recent and past events is extremely disrespectful, and should tell everyone everything they need to know about how WB and people who stand loyally by the admin as they discard members of their website view those who cared about the community enough to fight for it. To see that these words were said by a person I once had a lot of respect for is extremely disheartening.

I joined Writing Battle this April, and for a while I loved everything about it. It was a beacon of light for a girl that had lost motivation to do a thing she once loved. Writing Battle's format pushed my creativity and motivation so far that I started writing not just for the battles, but just for fun again. I started HAVING fun again. The format was perfect. It still is. But it was not the best thing about Writing Battle.

The best part of Writing Battle for me was always the community. I know that I am not alone in this thought, as the appreciation for the community was discussed pretty widely. It was incredible to have a group of writers (and— more importantly— human beings) to connect with and share stories with. The problem was, we also started sharing thoughts and ideas. Some of these ideas were for improvements that could be made. Any criticism was silenced. Any question of ethics and censorship was also silenced. Then, they shut the Forum down in its entirety and silenced us all, and began banning anyone who voiced an issue with it.

The Admin of Writing Battle pride themselves on open communication, and listening to their members. They are terrible at both of those things. They spread false positivity and sweep all of their wrongdoings behind a glossy purple door that leads to a closet full of skeletons. They do not listen to their community. They listen to the people that will never question them. They deem everyone else a threat.

Lastly, I find it quite difficult to believe that prior to the recent dismantling of the Forum and subsequent Reddit post outlining the unethical practices and hypocrisy of the admin team, eight "unprompted," glowing 5-star reviews were posted within a 24 hour period, before other reviewers arrived to set the record straight. Prior to that, there were a total of 6 Trustpilot reviews for this site, ever. You simply can not convince me that's a coincidence. You can not convince me that that is not the continuation of unethical practices set into motion by the admin/moderation team. I'd love to be wrong. I no longer have hope that I am.

The Admin team protects writers of sensitive material from feedback from readers about their use of that material. They do not have appropriate protections in place for readers who do not want to read and judge these types of stories.

The Admin team takes critiques of their business as personal attacks and respond impulsively and defensively. As a result of their responses, the community WB had has entirely collapsed.

Contest rules change mid-contest and communications about these changes don't consistently reach all participants.

Owner is erratic, vindictive and inconsistent. Rules change without warning, stories glorifying rape are supported, community voices talking about harm done to them are banned without warning. Horrible company with horrible ethics, would not recommend this competition to anyone. It’s a shame the owner ruined what was a great idea and lovely writing community.

I cannot support the ethics of a company that allows stories about sexual assault, child abuse, and other such things to be posted unchecked. If you allow the free speech of writing such things, you must also also those pieces to be open to scrutiny otherwise you are supporting the idea expressed within. This site used to be great, but with rapid expansion and a fuzzy sense of who their audience was, they have changed too significantly for me to ever recommend it to others. Additionally the fine print allows for them to change the rules at any time while a contest is running, which is suspect. An AI written story won. Another published story used song lyrics, thus violating copyrights. This is not a site for actual authors looking to improve their craft and is a step below straight up gambling your story might win. Stay away.

I participated in Writing Battle for many years and made genuine friendships along the way. I have a lot of positive memories of the community and the competition, which is why the events of the past 12 months have been particularly disappointing. Recent events have raised serious moral and ethical concerns for me about the direction of the company and the way it handles criticism, sensitive subject matter, and members who disagree with its decisions.

To be clear, this is not a complaint from someone who lost a competition. I have placed in the money several times and have received more in prize money than I have paid in entry fees. I have genuinely enjoyed Writing Battle and have benefited from being part of it.

My biggest concern is how the community has handled discussions surrounding stories involving sexual assault and other traumatic subjects. Sexual-assault survivors raised concerns about portrayals of sexual violence and the impact those stories had on them. Rather than allowing those participants to openly discuss their concerns, their comments and discussions were reportedly moderated or removed, while the authors of the stories were protected from criticism under rules intended to prevent author-shaming.

There is a very important distinction between harassing an author and respectfully saying, "As a survivor, this portrayal of sexual assault was harmful or upsetting to me." Writers should absolutely have the freedom to write difficult and controversial material. But that freedom should not come at the expense of survivors being able to discuss, in good faith, how that material affects them.

What has troubled me further is the broader approach to criticism. Writing Battle's Code of Conduct gives the administration significant discretion over moderation, posts, and account sanctions. Criticism of moderators or administrative decisions is also restricted from public discussion and directed toward private channels. Posts are frozen and deleted should a dissenting voice speak up. While moderation is necessary in any online community, these policies can make it extremely difficult for members to openly question or challenge decisions made by the people running the competition.

There have also been concerns among participants about changes to competition rules and procedures, including judging, rubrics, feedback, timelines, and AI policies. When people have already paid for competitions or bundles, changes to expectations or procedures can be particularly frustrating. The refund policy also means participants have limited options once a Battle has begun.

There have been more and more concerns about the community becoming increasingly hostile toward dissent and criticism, including reports of participants being moderated or suspended after challenging administrative decisions. I cannot independently verify every account I have seen, and I don't want to present allegations as established facts. But the number and nature of these concerns have made me question whether this is still a community where good-faith disagreement is genuinely welcome.

I am not calling Writing Battle a scam. I have personally profited through it, enjoyed many of the competitions, and made friendships that I value. There are undoubtedly people who continue to have wonderful experiences there.

My criticism is about the direction the organization has taken and, most importantly, the moral and ethical questions raised by how it has handled recent controversies.

A writing community should be able to hold two principles at once: writers should be free to explore difficult subjects, AND readers, particularly survivors of those subjects, should be free to respectfully discuss why a portrayal was harmful or upsetting to them. Protecting authors from harassment should not require silencing legitimate criticism.

After many years as a participant, it is difficult to see a community I once enjoyed reach a point where I feel the need to write this review. I hope Writing Battle takes these concerns seriously and considers whether its current approach to moderation and dissent reflects the kind of writing community it wants to be.

To start, I want to be completely transparent. I have been banned from Writing Battle, one of the "dirty dozen" who were banned this week. I don't know why. I commented, not under my actual name, on a Reddit thread about WB's censorship. I was rarely on the WB forum, my stories generally made it to the top 32 or 16, and in general, I just keep to myself because I'm not the kind to be all social butterfly. I'm writing this review to present something that isn't the glowing 5-star. There's obviously a concerted effort to prop up WB's reputation which is currently in the tanker. Read it all and make your own decision. This is my experience.

My first Writing Battle contest was in October 2024, the 2000 word Autumn battle. Like many others, I loved it. It helped get me back into writing. That was the first short story I ever actually finished. Until that point I had a bunch of bad poetry and half-finished short stories under my belt. The community was amazing! I wouldn't say the feedback was great, but finding a community of peers who could beta read my stories and provide feedback outside of the contest was great. I'm very grateful to WB for that.

However, I guess all good things come to an end. In March 2025, there were a spate of questionable stories. In one, the writer freely admitted on his blog to writing from a woman SA survivor's POV to garner sympathy and votes. There were other, less provocative takes, but no less damaging. The community let those writers know in Debrief that the stories didn't work and why. WB owners said, "No, no. Writers can write what they want, but you can't rebuke them for it." There was a lot more that went on - deleted threads, deleted comments, bans, rule changes, etc, etc. Some members of the community asked for the ability to opt-out of triggering content (I mean, this is one reason there are content warnings on writing and videos) and were told no. The solution was to have someone else read the story you found triggering and write your feedback. See, as a peer-judged competition you have to read 10 stories and provide feedback on them. It's weird to have a peer-judged writing contest tell you to have a non-writer read and write feedback on a story, right?

Anyway, as the past year has continued, more and more changes have come about. Writing Battle has dumped an insane amount of money advertising "the biggest writing competition in the world" and "$150,000 in prizes" but that's over the course of 8 contests which pay out to second place in 10 genres. First place is something like $1,400, not tens of thousands of dollars.

There are changes in every single battle. I purchased the 2026 bundle in December for four peer-judged contests and 4 pro-judged contests. The pro-judged were changed right after the first one in 2026, fundamentally changing the contest. I requested a refund on those grounds and was told no because their refund policy is to not refund a bundle after the first contest had started. Fine. Shame on me for not being more careful. Since I'd paid for them, I decided to make the best of it and use the contests as deadline-driven draft-creators. I genuinely love most of what I've written this year in those contests.

But things continued to change, often mid-battle. I get that the rules say this can happen, but from a business perspective, it shouldn't. There's no reason to change the product/service someone has paid for in the middle of using said product/service. People started asking questions, threads in the forum were being deleted, forum moderation was introduced (which I actually defended in my Discord group; as a moderator of a FB group, I understand it's preferable this way than chasing down forum posts and trying to put fires out), but then the ID thing happened, and while it's not necessarily a big deal, it's just one of many, many little things. The straw that broke the camel's back for many of us. Now the forum is gone and people have been banned for posting stories in their Tavern which are not even related to these troubles, but WB admin appears to be increasingly paranoid about their reputation and people saying things they don't like.

Through 2026, many of us have brought questionable stories to WB's attention. One story that seems to point to child SA won; a story that uses song lyrics, in direct violation of fair use, won (and WB didn't know that lyrics are off-limits. Like, how do you run a writing contest and don't know this?); a story that even WB has said is probably AI won. None of that inspires in me a desire to support this business. If you do, great. Go for it, but at least go in with eyes wide open, knowing what you're getting in to.

If you want to support less problematic contests, there are tons of them: Twisted Tournament, Whimsy, Not Quite Write, Furious Fiction, Odd Embers, Jerboa Lit, Writers Play

Where do I start? There is a long, long, list of complaints about Writing Battle on public platforms such as Reddit and Facebook, and among private writing groups (a few of which, I am a part of).

Heavy censorship of any posts, stories, or comments that can be deemed critical of the company. Multiple paying customers being banned without official explanation (but come on, we all know it's for airing their critical opinions on the website or on other external platforms).

Admin takes a very condescending "well, if you don't like it, you're free to leave and never come back stance." Yet rules may be changed (and have changed) mid-competition.

Increasing tolerance of Gen AI. Not good.

Is it a legit contest? Sure, but there are a lot better out there.

Not sure what happened to those leaving negative reviews, but their comments do not reflect my experience. I am new to Writing Battle this year, and have found the experience to be entirely positive.

This contest has gotten me back into more consistent writing, has allowed me to read some excellent writing from a multitude of other writers, and has overall provided a very fun and supportive environment.

If you're looking for a lot of feedback or a fun way to motivate yourself to write more (or write outside your comfort zone), I would recommend you check it out!

I’ve been posting on the Writing Battle platform since around March 2026, and the experience has been great. There’s a good mix of experienced writers, brand-new writers, and those who are simply dusting the cobwebs off their keyboards.

The two kinds of “battles” I’ve participated in so far have been professionally judged and peer-based. The professional judging provides a lot of useful numerical feedback. For example, a 7 on clarity might suggest that you need to work on how you present your story ideas, while an 8 or 9 for prose can show that you’re doing well with things like dialogue and mechanics.

Peer-based judging gives you a different perspective: how actual people like you or me are interpreting your work. In other words, the same kinds of readers who might someday buy your stories in the real world. That feedback has been especially useful. Of course, you’ll occasionally run into someone who doesn’t read horror and prefers whimsy, or vice versa, but even those readers can point out worthwhile areas to focus on.

If you’re ready to receive feedback on your work and find out where you could use more practice, this is a great place for it. It’s also a good way to find beta readers for personal projects, experiment with different styles, and simply share your work with other writers.

Cheers, and come say hi in a comment if you join up for a battle or two!