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We all know that when it comes to criticism, one gal's meat is another's poison. But some authors positively encourage criticism.
I'd be interested to hear examples of how criticism has enabled authors to improve their work. When it's subjective, do they act on one comment alone, or do they need a consensus of opinion?
Comments
helpful comments.
Firstly, let me say that any writer who thinks that they have cracked it and are now perfect is either a liar or a fool. We all constantly learn and hopefully that way will improve.
Secondly, you can't please all the people all the time.
There can be negative criticism that can be hurtful and destructive, but mainly criticism is because someone found a problem with your work, and is taking the time to tell you, for your benefit, not their own.
I have been blessed with many wonderful reviews on Amazon over my recent book SKIN. I have received ten reviews. Eight are 5 stars, One is four Stars, and one is one star.
This I found quite depressing until I read it.
I produce it here, as it is... no changes...
awful , really disappointing , i have liked pother books but this is boring silly and tiresome , i think she needs to spend more toime on her writing
Published 1 month ago by Christopher W. B. Jackson
See it here REVIEW
Clearly Mr Jackson can barely string a sentence together. He was probably after porn and didn't like the fact this wasn't. Had it been the only review, I might have been more depressed, but as it is, I find it quite funny.
My main fault is impatience. I know what is right and wrong, but in my haste, I constantly fail to adequately check my work. That's why I have editors. They tell me, always helpfully, when I go wrong, so that (in time) these niggling little errors will occur less and less.
When I first started to post stuff, I think it was on Sapphire's Place. The feedback was so helpful, as I really only wrote for my own sanity, the fact that others might be interested in my drivel had not really occurred to me.
Once I started posting, I wanted my work to be read and enjoyed. Therefore, if anyone found it difficult or somehow unpleasant to read, then I was interested.
For example, one comment was that i tended to use too many exclamation marks; literally peppering my work with them at the end of any piece of dialogue.
Another comment related to simple grammatical errors. Yet another in the layout on a website - I hadn't appreciated how different it is to the pages of a book on paper.
A rule of thumb for me is simple - if I don't like it, then others may not either.
My pet hates are: -
1. Single chunk of prose, without breaks between dialogue and paragraphs.
2. Bad spelling, grammar or simply bad English. I have no problem with the differences between US English and UK English, but there is no room for BAD English.
3. Poor continuity. Often when more than one perspective is being expressed, there needs to be clear notes as to which of the characters is now telling the story. If I continually have to go back to check, then I'll give up and not read it any more.
Reading should be an unconscious activity, like cycling. When one cycles, one looks at the road for hazards, but also one gets to look at the countryside and enjoy the activity. If the road is so bad and strewn with rocks, then one doesn't enjoy that route, so will pick a better route with less rocks. If there are too many 'rocks' in your writing that prevent the reader from enjoying the story, then the reader will simply give up and find something else to read.
I hope this helps
Tanya
There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes!
Criticism
When I started writing, I thought it was, perhaps, the best prose that had ever flowed from the pen. Then, my first editor ripped it to shreds!
I was angry! How dare he attack my child ... my perfect, wonderful, delightful child. I tried to justify my words with more words, and even more when those failed. He had to be wrong. My child could not be defective, deformed, crippled in heart and soul.
My second editor was equally cruel. She detested my child with a venom that I could not understand. How could she not see what a wonderful thing I had created?
Even my spouse then took me to task. How could she be so disloyal? She had seen how I had sweat blood giving birth to this, my creation.
But they had worn me down. I began to read with their eyes, to understand with their minds, to perceive with their senses. Slowly it dawned on me that it wasn't my prose that was the problem. It was ME!
I was guilty of hubris. I had failed my readers, and, therefore, myself.
Suddenly, their criticisms took on a new meaning for me. They were providing me with their accumulated wisdom, trying as hard as they could to teach me, to lead me, to help me be a better writer.
By so doing, my story did rise from its ashes to become the one I had seen in my mind's eye, but not the one I had actually produced.
That was when I became a writer.
Red MacDonald
I don't write a lot any more...
... early on in my writing career I received some criticism that transformed my writing. My first attempt was simply based on on an actual event in my life that I had wished would have developed like the story. The critic pointed out that my account of the event was dry and lacked any thing to draw the reader into the story. He suggested that I change my style. Instead of the simple narrative style, I should tell the story in first person, thus allowing the reader to get inside the head of the hero/ine.
Taking to heart that one simple piece of advise completely changed how I write. That was fifteen years ago and now, I struggle when I have to insert some narrative to fill in something that just can't be done in first person. It's a tough balancing act.
These days, I don't get a lot of criticism because I write mostly fluff. Cute little stories that don't delve into the deep things of life. My readership is small, but since I write for my own enjoyment, rather than the accolades I don't mind. I do however enjoy reading a well written piece by some of the fine authors we have here on BCTS.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Broccoli
Someone here recently said of "A Turn of the Cards" that they had to stop reading after (I think) Chapter Seven, because Alex was an infuriating, stupid character. It went right to my greatest concern about the novel.
But there wasn't anything I could do about that, since I had already finished the story. I won't publish unfinished work any more. It's made me think a little more about Brooklyn, the protagonist of the next story I'm working on.
That said, I relied heavily on my editors, and in fact I'd never have completed the story at all if they hadn't assured me that my paranoia about the likeability of the protagonist was unfounded.
A good editor will encourage you to "kill your darlings", as Bill Faulkner once said. There's a large chunk of Alex's schooldays missing from the final draft of "A Turn of the Cards" because my editor Geoff rightly told me that it disrupted the flow of the plot. He liked the chapter, and thought it was well written, but it just didn't belong in the completed work. And he was completely right.
I think writing is like cooking. Even if you're a good cook, some people just don't like broccoli. Nothing you can do about that. If they do like broccoli, and they tell you you've overcooked it, well, that's criticism worth listening to.
not as think as i smart i am
lack of criticism concerns me
No one ever seems to say anything that is criticism, but I notice that any time I have tried, authors complained that I "Attacked" them, even though I find it hard to believe asking someone to re-read what they wrote to catch the major typos or get another set of eyes on the story to help can possibly be an attack. So that person blocked me because I was so "Mean".
So, I tend not to say anything. I would actually appreciate some criticism, and notice that the most critical person of my writing is myself. Erin use to be my strongest critic but I made my way onto her do-not-read list due to my mistreatment of Gatorade Bottles and making her cry.
Here is some useful criticism I have gotten: "You mistake their for they're a lot" (Which was more because of laziness than it is because of stupidity. "Your characters are more mature for their age than they should be" (I get that more often than I like. Sometimes it is hard to know how a regular 8 year old talks because I was very mature at that age and well spoken, but I try).
Here are some not useful comments I have gotten: "You get off on writing abusive crap" and then there was a rant about bullies on The Dress Punishment that didn't make sense. The other thing that isn't useful is when people tell me how they think the story should go. "IT's a good story, but I would have made it happen in space and the main character an alien" (That never happened but you get the idea).
God Bless the child has 14 Reviews, 12 5-star and 2 four star (Amazon and Amazon U.K.). The main complaint was with my solution because they wouldn't perform SRS on a four year old. Unfortunately I got 2 books after the fact that require it to happen, but doubt I would change it.
BTW, TANYA, the other book that person reviewed was An Idiot Abroad and it looked like he typed the review on a smart phone. But it sounded personal, maybe he waited for the next book to come out too long. Don't fret it. I plan on buying Skin and doing a review at the end of the month when things settle.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
The fear of criticism is paralyzing me....
...even though I know you're all good people here, and not mean-spirited ogres who savage people's work. Work on my story has gone to a halt in the last day and a half because I cringe at certain passages and imagine the hurtful things people could potentially say. Worse, I don't know how to correct them to make the cringeworthy passages less cringeworthy.
I've never been one to take criticism well, even well-intentioned criticism. It's a flaw I'm working on--otherwise I wouldn't have gotten as far on my story as I have--but the fear of being embarrassed by what I write is still there, because I consider the ability the write to be a function of intelligence. If one's writing is embarrassingly bad, then, well....
I'm generally not critical of your stories, K.T., because I genuinely like them. The only criticisms I would have would be the rather glaring spelling errors you make in some of them. I figure, however, that it's quibbling over details and not necessarily helpful to you, unless I were editing your work.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
Chillax
... As the young people say. :)
I'll have something back to you tonight. You don't need to worry.
not as think as i smart i am
Criticism
I like to draw a distinction between the 'common' use of the word, in which it usually carries a negative feeling, and the specific term in respect of art. All writing is art. Some of it is wonderful, some dreadful, and some sits at all levels in between. If you want to say something burtful, or brutal, best do it out of the public eye.
I have one or two 'critics' in the latter sense who keep me on track, as I write everything almost directly to the finished page without editor or beta-reader. Those people are invaluable, and I have changed my prose several times where oddities have been pointed out, or breaks in continuity/logic. In particular, I nearly wrote the principal character out of 'Cold Feet' right at the start. Not good.
What I try to do with criticism of a negative ('helpful' or otherwise) kind is to look at what I have written in the light of what the critic says. More often than not, they are right, and I adjust things to suit. Ther are some, though, who cannot be satisfied, and I believe the main reason in most cases is that what you are offering them is simply not what they are seeking, just as Tanya writes above. People who want fluffy schoolgirl stories will not like my work, and neither will people seeking pornography, superheroes or magic. A greengrocer does not worry about competition from a baker or butcher. They are in different markets.
Someone who complains because his local fruit'n'veg shop doesn't offer a decent rack of lamb is someone who is simply there to be ignored.
Comments
Comments are the only "pay" we get for our stories and often those comments are mixed. I admit that I seldom leave comments myself unless I'm really moved by the story. I used to leave a critique if I thought the story had a good premise, but was lacking in execution but it only seemed to make people mad and I stopped.
I have used criticism and suggestions in comments to shape the next installment or next story because it gives me insight into what people might want to read. And then there's those stories that I have to write to satify an inner itch.
And I have to admit that some criticisms have been so harsh as to cause me to ask why bother? On Saphire's, one story, Princess of Q'fahr, was given some blistering comments on the initial premise so it took me years to finish it and the story never seemed to have gained an audience. Some stories just don't seem to click with readers. Another fairly recent story received criticism that indicated that the reader didn't understand the story was a farce. I thought it was obvious, but maybe it wasn't.
But I'm probably not the best judge of my own writing. I posted a story a couple of months ago that I had to write to exorcise it from my head that was so hard to write and I ripped page after page out and re-wrote it that I thought no one would like it and turned out to be one of the better received stories I've written in the last year or so.
But there are a few things that will cause me to stop reading a story. I'm not saying they're wrong, but for me, it makes reading more difficult. One is row after row after row of un-attributed dialog. If I have to go back several times to figure how who's talking now, my tendency is to stop reading. Another technique that is one of my peaves is after the story has started, the narrator halts the story to introduce themselves (or the central character if it's not first person.) Along the same vein, I find it jarring to have the story stopped to explain something. There was a story I was reading that was really good and did a great job in making you visualize walking through a forest in middle the night and then it came to an abrupt halt to describe a ghostly legend instead of working it into the narration. We all make typos, but really sloppy writing makes reading just too much of a chore.
Okay. I'm done venting now. :)
Melanie
You can vent hon
You have created virtual classics that stand the test of time. Not every story is accepted by the same audience. Other audiences will accept that same story that might not do well here in a different venue. So do not tear your story up or quit. Find a different outlet for that story. Every story is a unique view into an author.
Every author here, including all the ones I begged, asked, and nudged are at different stages and levels of writing. No one author is ever right. Every author has a unique voice and way of writing. Their levels of learning are also very different.
If there is an author whom you like and shows some problems in their works, why not work with your favorite author and be a beta reader or psuedo editor and assist in their productions? That sounds a lot more fun and productive rather than criticisms to me. That way, we can all help one another.
After all, isn't a story produced which becomes a well read classic of our genre more important than proving a point?
I think it is ^^ I would hope all of you do too ^^
And I do my best for all of our authors here too. This is also a plea from me to ask for more help from our membership too... we are really short of editors and helpers for our authors. I cannot do it all :(
*hugs*
Sephrena