On Writing Constructive Criticism
I'm not a master of leaving concrit, but by the principle of "There are tons of people who do it worse than me, therefore I might be able to do some good," I decided to procrastinate on important real life matters to write this list, most of which are gripes
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Comments 13
I especially love point #1. Why waste time looking for something to nitpick about if they're not asking you to?
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When I'm leaving concrit I usually try to offer suggestions on improvements only because I feel that if I point out something I felt was flawed, I usually feel obligated to justify why I felt that way, which sort of leads me into giving suggestions on how to fix it. I just feel a little awkward saying something like: "I think this, this, and this is wrong, but hell if I know how to make it better" XD I think that would be appropriate for a standard book review, but I do think there's a distinction between a ff.net review and, like, a New York Times review XD. Especially wrt providing the author something concrete to build on. Then again, this is coming from the perspective of an admittedly insecure reviewer, so... XD
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...Whaaaat. Why would you feel that way, WA?
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Critics criticizing critics criticizing critics.
Though technically this is content, but what have you!
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Okay let's try this.
1.) Thank you, yes. I agree entirely with this, I think. I guess this is why I do not do critique for people I do know. Their writing is decent at the very least, and so on a first read-through I rarely notice more than minor things to point out.
2.) Yes, please! When people review my stuff and use big words and technical terms...it really does not help me at all. I just feel really stupid and have to go look up definitions. I don't know if most authors are like me or not; I'd wager I'm a bit different, especially when it comes to the technical aspect of writing. I really don't get it. So talking in technical terms just confuses me.
Let's not forget that newbie authors will write like n00bs, and it's not fair to jump on a likely-14-year-old child and demand they write like pros. Not gonna happen. Especially with your average fannish 14-year-old. Come on, they're 14. :/
3.) The bad idea here is to pad a review criticizing things such as flow, fine word ( ... )
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You're very right about some peoples' shyness in response. Hmm.
Reviewing new people -- that's sort of a component at "critique at an appropriate level". It's not quite universal, but I think there are a lot of factors in writing which suggest to me how well a critique is going to be received and how gentle I should be about it if I do decide to do so.
Re: defensive writers: Because the writer took more hours to write the fic and someone called their baby ugly and they're not going to think about how much effort it took for the other person to do so. :P
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2) I hesitate to say that it's something that should be pitched to age. When I was 11~13, I remember receiving some critical comments that expected more of me and helped me think about important things, and some critical comments that just irritated me and flew over my head. So it's a matter of knowing what to expect. There are usually clear signs that you shouldn't expect an author to be able to handle certain things yet.
4) I say "Which are you going to leave as a compliment?" because there might be occasions in which you want to backhandedly indicate that it's not as good as it could be. I don't think this is what most people are thinking of when they say "you didn't fuck it up this time!" though.
B) Ah, if you don't feel confident about remarking on it, you don't have to! (Which is true for all of these, pretty much.) But if you did notice it, I recommend pointing it out.
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As far as my original post goes, I was definitely directing it more at beta readers and people talking about serious critical review aimed at improvement, versus people looking to give some nice concrit in their reviews. They're two different things in my book. The argument that inspired me was full of people taking themselves very, very seriously.
on the matter of offering suggestions on how to fix something. I think that's largely a beta reader concern
I disagree. While I don't want to go as far as saying you're obligated to justify a critical point with a solution, I do think the utility of doing so depends on the level of ( ... )
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