Criticism, it never gets easier, does it?

I don't really feel that way. To use the cooking analogy, when I eat something I can tell when it doesn't taste good, but I wouldn't necessarily know the specifics of how to fix it.

I have to disagree on making suggestions. I find that making suggestions is, perforce, pointless. They will not be followed and should not be followed, as they reflect the biases of the maker. They are also easily dismissed as not legitimate criticism but simply a dislike of the particular flavor of story being told, which, to be honest, they often are.

Instead, do not only say something is wrong, but explain why it is wrong. Characters reacting weird? Say so, and why it seems weird. Contradictions? Point them out with citations. Grammar issues? Categorize them.

This is a far more useful form of criticism, as it makes it far easier to sort valid criticism from simple dislike of the premises, far harder for the author to simply dismiss it as complaining, and far easier for the critic to acknowledge their own bias; if you cannot construct a valid "why" then it's likely you don't have a valid criticism (whereas you can always make a suggestion that would improve, in your opinion, the story).

edited 17th Aug '11 10:17:07 AM by Night

If you are giving a reason as to why something comes off as wrong, then you are, in fact, making a suggestion as to how to change it, you know. You are saying "Don't do this," and that is a suggestion.

edited 17th Aug '11 11:10:36 AM by FreezairForALimitedTime

Merlo: But if you did know how to make the recipe better, would you suggest it? I would. And many criticisms, worded differently, are the same as suggestions; "This food is too salty" is basically the same as "Use less salt."

So how is saying, "I didn't like it" without any further qualifications helpful?

^^ If you put it that way, I suppose it's kind of hard not to make implicit suggestions.

Wrong thread.

edited 17th Aug '11 5:49:54 PM by MrAHR

@the idea of critique without suggestions,

Critique is, almost by definition, a suggestion. I don't ask people to rip my stuff apart for shits and giggles, I ask them to do it because it will make the work better. If not, there's no point.

@Freezair: Perhaps. But it's a grounded one, one with context. And most critically, it doesn't actually say how you're supposed to fix it.

I'm particularly fond of this technique because of its utility to fanfiction writing; it makes it easy for me to filter and explain the places where I've tweaked the canon to better tell my story.

Really? If the writer isn't prepared to hear that something's wrong with their work (or that it didn't work for the reader for reasons x, y, and z), then why are they submitting it for critique/beta-reading?

I think it would be better if the critic/reader poses questions about the choices made and have the writer produce their own answers, instead of leading them by the hand and telling them what they "should" do. It's not about shaping your work to fit someone else's expectations. It's about problem solving. Solutions that require creativity.

That's why many writers field a team of alpha and beta readers and editors, if they can. They don't want one person telling them what they should do to fix it. They see if there's any kind of consensus for what works or doesn't. If a reader or critic tells you something doesn't make sense, then you figure out how it can make sense, instead of waiting for a critic or reader to solve your problems for you. If one of your three betas makes a suggestion you don't agree with, or doesn't make sense to you, you then have 2 other viewpoints to consider it from.

Eh, I'm rambling now. But, yeah, I don't always live up to my own philosophy. Though if I do offer suggestions nowadays I phrase them in the forms of questions, to see if I can get the writer to see where I'm coming from, or what my thought process was, and it prompts them to come up with their own answers. It's less about getting a precise answer, such as how to solve an algebra problem, than about showing the writer the end result their work has had on the reader. The writer then has to judge if that's the outcome they wanted or not. That seems the most important to me.

I also suggest they study books they've enjoyed—see how their favorite authors handled a similar scene they're struggling with now. They'll probably find better examples there than any solution I could provide.

Tl;dr: It's not the critic's job to write or create any part of the story for you. Unless you want them to.

Edit 2: the reckoning: I think part of the confusion may be that providing feedback on art is different from providing feedback while serving on a committee or a professional situation such as a business project. In the latter situations, yeah, you probably want to offer solutions if you're going to point out problems. Art, that seems like a whole different can of worms to me.

edited 18th Aug '11 12:12:15 AM by MildGuy

It's sad that I'm actually incapable of fixing my own problems without someone pointing it out. I also have this tendency to believe every comment I get as a truth and adjust my work accordingly. The worst thing about me and my criticism is sometimes I just don't want any criticism because I just don't want to change my writing because I think I spent too much effort on particular aspect.

Tough, the world of writing is.

Crap, everyone's seeing a parallel I never intended. Now I look like a genius by accident and need to figure out if I should alter plans to account for this.

Even praise is a problem!

The thing about criticism is whether or not you trust the source. Personally, I trust my own opinion over most other people's when it comes to my writing. I know what I think is good, and if someone suggests something different that, after thinking about their evidence for their opinion, I don't agree with, I know to just ignore it. How you take criticism really comes down to how confident you are in your own abilities/experience and how much justification your critic has for their opinion. If you are a beginning writer you should probably listen to all the criticism you get from more experienced writers, but once you have a certain amount of experience you can pick and choose a bit more which advice you take.

I don't see critics as out to get me (though admittedly some might be trolling just be assholes) I see them as statements of opinion about something (the story) that aren't a reflection of me and might be coming from some place that has nothing to do with me, they might not even be true. Basically when I get criticism I examine whether it's relevant (Is the person saying anything that matters or are they just complaining to be a jerk or obviously not know what they are talking about?) whether what they are saying is even true (Do they have a point or does my experience disagree with their observation?) and if I decide that yes, they do I start figuring out what I should do to change it. You have to be dispassionate about criticism otherwise I bet you'll get pretty distressed by it.

For my part if I can see where a critic is coming from even if I think it's being nitpicky or not as much of an issue as they seem to think, I usually try to figure out something that alleviates the issue without having to get to far away from what I want the story to be. Might as well make my story the best it can be after all.

edited 28th Nov '11 8:43:19 PM by NoirGrimoir

What was it Niel Gaiman said? Something like "believe people when they say they don't like something, but ignore them when tell you how to fix it." I really value comments like "I like this" or "I don't like this," then if the critic says why, I usually don't pay attention. I DO however go back to that spot and fix what needs fixing.

I had a really belligerent critic a while back. He attacked my writing style, my world, and my characters in language that was really insulting. Worse, he didn't read very carefully, so I would get page-long diatribes based on a fact that he had misread or missed altogether. I didn't tell him to go to hell (in fact I was more like "thank you, sir, may I have another?) because if THIS guy didn't catch something, so might other readers. Because I could always trust him to be negative, he was an excellent barometer. True I threw out half of his advice, but the other half was really useful.

It just took a lot of willpower to stand there and take the abuse.

Someone once called me the worst "writter" ever.

It didn't affect me in the slightest.

edited 28th Nov '11 11:13:28 PM by Dragonzordasaurus

"Also, there is the fact that you have to know who doesn't like your work because it is not in their demographic, and because there are legitimate problems."

Demographics shmemographics. Being generally uninterested in a genre does not mean that there is an automatic barrier to enjoying or appreciating the work on its own merits. The real problem is if you have a very fixed genre in the first place, and fail to offer anything substantial outside of its norms.

Sometimes I really want to tell people they suck without hurting their feelings. Not like in a nice way, letting them down easy way. I know most people's intentions when they give harsh criticisms in usually either to help someone or to cut them down but I just want people to know what I think and then they can do whatever they like with the information after that. I wish there was a way to say what I think point-blank and people take it objectively without getting emotional over it. Maybe that's a bit selfish on my part to want to express my opinion without having to take into account the feelings of others. Feelings are such annoying things in real life.

I think sometimes authors should try to look at it all from the perspective of the critic. It didn't take that many times for people to get angry at me for my criticism, for me to start shying away from posting anything negative. Nowadays, when I see a drawing or a piece of writing, that I don't like at all, I simply don't comment at all, because you never know if the author/artist is going to take the criticism in a professional manner.

This is also a problem looking from other side. I remember I once posted a bunch of pages of a comic for criticism, and one poster offered a very good and very correct observation about something that was definitely very much lacking and needed to be fixed, and then she wrapped it all up in a dozen of caveats about how she doesn't mean it as a personal attack or anything like that. It was obvious that she had encountered some pretty bad reactions in the past, and it just made me very irritated.

So many people simply stop posting criticism altogether, or start sugar-coating it to hell and back, simply because a few people just HAD to lash out.

This is the first statement in the last few posts I can really get behind. I frankly think the way some people view themselves as better critics of their own works then anyone else is slightly arrogant, and assumes a level of objectivity about their own work I am dubious of any writer having. But if someone who makes basic spelling and/or grammatical errors is criticizing me, I'm not going to take it seriously.

I have a lot of social anxiety and critique scares me constantly. I prefer online critique since then I can come back later to read it, instead of sitting around turning red in front of people with the occasional total meltdown since I feel like I can't leave the critique (especially a class one) and get some alone time to cool off.

But at the same time, I get paranoid as all get out when no one wants to critique me because then it's like... "Oh my god, am I too boring to even look at?!" "Am I so hopeless it's not worth bothering?!" (Didn't help that I had one professor who mentioned that professors don't bother to help students who look like they don't care) "Oh God, I'm not even the sort of bad that is fun to laugh at" >_> The last one doesn't make much sense, but I think it anyway.

I'm also terrible at those "give a crit, take a crit" things since I generally don't notice mistakes unless they're really obvious newbie mistakes or I've mulled on it for at least a week (if I haven't forgotten it altogether)... >_<' So I'm terrible at giving criticism too.

I also suck at noticing my own flaws because I'm a bit of a cloud cuckoolander and I will think the strangest things make sense and do things in the most illogical way. And with Boy Aurus especially, I'm a little loathe to change it sometimes and nearly no one seems to interpret Aurus the way I do because the number of people who want to punt him grossly outnumbers everyone who likes him.

For some reason I'm more willing to edit my novels than my comics, but I'm so unconfident with my novels that I'm not sure at what point I'm ready to show it to people and sometimes when I post it, I just end up sending it back to the scrap pile a few weeks later and editing it some more.

And on the other other hand, I'm not sure which crits to listen to. Because sometimes I pretty much don't agree with people, but I'm an unobservant cloud cuckoolander so I can't decide if I should use their observation or not and asking someone else I dunno whom to ask and vote by the crowd doesn't necessarily help so... I don't really know.

edited 29th Nov '11 1:19:50 AM by Kaxen

I feel similarly, which is kind of hypocritical of me.

I think I said this before, but:

• Criticism gets about 100x easier when you realize that most of it is not personal and the critic isn't doing it to be mean, but just noticed some things that didn't look right.

• Also when you realize that your work is a bunch of words, not yourself, and thus you shouldn't defend it like it is.

• Also also if you just get used to it.

"Also when you realize that your work is a bunch of words, not yourself, and thus you shouldn't defend it like it is."

Personally, I wouldn't be half defensive about myself as I would be about ideas that I stand behind.

Well, you're still being defensive due to a personal connection which the reader generally has no idea about.