Repairing TheTroper critique Club .

@ USAF: At the mo', the club works like this:

1. Author posts something (scene, line of dialogue, story, entire novel) and asks for critique.
2. Sometimes critics will come along and critique it, most times not.

Aaaaaand that's basically it—post and pray someone will read it. As you can imagine, lots of people are overlooked, for various reasons.

Scrib's idea is nice, but it's more of a formal beta set-up than an informal critique project. It would be better for writers looking for someone to review longer works; definitely helpful for clearing that sort of thing out of the Troper Critique Club. So maybe Scrib's plan for longer works, and the TCC for shorter things?

Yeah, I think Scribemaster's plan is best suited for that.

Damn, Drunk, you ninja'd my idea. xD I only found out after I posted my thread, too. Oh well. I guess the fact that I came up with something similar says that I agree with the idea completely.

Drunjk your idea is good and I support it. But I have just one problem. I am worried that many people, specially rookies won't be able to get critiqued at all.

Sure experienced authors will get opinions easily. But the newbies that need it the most may not get any help.

edited 17th Aug '11 6:28:36 PM by FallenLegend

What.

I don't see that train of logic at all.

Explain please.

People will focus on the established tropers they know and ignore what I like to call the "pictureless," i.e. those who are identified as green tropers by their lack of avatars.

Am I following the logic correctly?

If you have a good enough synopsis that will generate reader interest, it shouldn't matter if you're a rookie or not. And if you think you won't be able to do a write-up that will generate readers... well, this is a good chance to practice.

Meh, I don't really think that will happen, but hey, I could be wrong. I find what really stops people is when there is a long list before or after you of waiters, it is linked somewhere else, it's fanfiction.

I just had a random idea for the beta thread— if the author does get a reviewer, maybe they should edit their initial post to show that. They don't have to say who is reviewing it, and they can still ask for more readers, but it'll give people some idea of who's getting critiqued and who's not. Thoughts on this idea?

Yeah. I was planning on strikethrough.

I don't know, but now I really want to get about the first ten chapters of my book done so I have a head-start and can post here. Otherwise I won't be able to keep up and the beta will be left hanging...

@MH AHR It's and unfounded fear I admitt. But there is the risk that some people may not atract a critiquer, specilly considering th Better Than Itsounds stuff.

Bad writters by definition produce bad works that won't atract people to read them, and without critiques they will hardly able to improve. Bad writters are the ones that need help the most.Established tropers are more likely to get criques after all.

This is just a little issue I have. But by all means I support the idea.

edited 17th Aug '11 6:38:21 PM by FallenLegend

One thing I'd be need to know, before volunteering to critique anything, is the ambition level of the work. Where does the author intend the work to go? Is it just fan fiction? Or an original work that he intends to put up on the web for free where it will drown among the crud? Or does he intend to submit it for approval to gatekeepers who vouch with $$$$ for the basic quality of the stuff they publish?

Word count is also important. I honestly don't understand the purpose of short stories. There's no time for characters and no time for world. Others are the exact opposite.

Genre is also important, meaning science fiction, fantasy, horror, western, and so forth, but mood is probably at least equally important. Is the story supposed to be funny, exciting, erotic, fear-inducing?

Major tropes can help too. I'm rather biased against stories that don't feature badasses. Others intensely dislike high-competence protagonists. Perhaps this is important enough for so many potential critiquers that it'd be useful to indicate the competence level of the protagonist(s), on some kind of sliding scale (AFAIK there's no article for that yet).

People who ask for feedback on a story often want different kinds of feedback. I'm the ambituous kind of writer, so I want feedback on every aspect of the story. Other writers don't want feedback on grammer and spelling, possibly because they're ESL or dyslexic or very young. Others again don't really care about the world, seeing it as merely a stage for their plot; since I'm very intersted in worlds, and tend to want te story to answers my questions about the world, I'd be a bad match for that specific kind of writer. (Note that "I want feedback on everything" is a good indicator of ambition level; of being headed in the direction of gatekeeperland.)

To clarify what I wrote about tropes above, a list of major tropes in the work, or tropes that defines or characterize the nature of the work, can help attract critiquers who like those tropes, and turn away critiquers who dislike those tropes.

In this regard, aversion of tropes common to the subgenre is equally important, e.g. my fantasy workds tend to be historical fantasy, so they avert Medieval Counterpart Culture in favour of the real cultures, and likewise Crystal Dragon Jesus is averted (my polytheistic pagans are genuine polytheistic pagans). EDIT: In some cases, justified tropes may also be important tools here.

Another thing that might help potential critiquers with deciding whether to bite or not, is a list of authors that inspired the work in a clear or more vague sense, or authors that the work is a sort of negative response to.

At least if the point is to match up writers and critiquers in an intelligent fashion.

edited 18th Aug '11 5:27:13 AM by Peter34

To be honest, I suspect part of the problem is simply that not everyone wants to read every story; people will only grab the ones that interest them to begin with. If the critics available when your story goes up don't find it interesting, it gets left there and buried by other stories.

I think it all boils down to one simple problem- there are more people who want their work critiqued than there are people who want to critique works.

That's it, really. If anyone has suggestions to solve that problem, I'd love to hear it.

The best solution is to make a place with enforced rules that optimizes the chance of beneficial meetings between writers and critiquers, meaning that everyone has to define the works that they ask for feedback on. The reason for this is that if 95% of the people asking for critique in the please-critique-my-stuff thread do not adequately describe their works, then the 5% who do will be drowned out, and potential critiquers will stop visiting that thread.

See, to me, "Give me feedback on everything" just seems amateurish. It says that the author hasn't looked over their own work to find specific areas where they feel they need improvement and can't or won't edit their work themselves. I'm cool with an author asking for the critic to point out additional problems the author may have missed, but "Look at everything" makes me think they haven't spent any time reflecting on their writing themselves.

Well, it could also mean they are PARANOID about everything being bad.

That would be me...

Which doesn't exactly inspire optimism from potential critics.

It's also nice when authors give you an idea of their intentions along with the piece. It's nice to know that, say, a character that grated me is supposed to be an annoying prat, or that a protagonist's wonky morality is supposed to give me the shivers. I think it's best given after the piece, though, because the average reader isn't given an idea of what the author's intent was.

If you don't ask for, or expect, feedback on everything you are both not using the skills of the critic and more importantly, you have lost the plot regarding the editorial process. They are a test audience, and the actual audience certainly isn't going to set limits on their critiques of your work.

wow solving this will be harder than I tough.

We really need readers!