Critique vs personal opinion

[shadowwalker]

Okay, I think we're looking at semantics then I see a review as nothing more than someone telling everyone what they think of a story. It doesn't have to be solicited or nice or helpful. A critique is meant to help the writer. Feedback is in both - nothing more (or less) than the giver's response to a story.

[Cogito]

Critique, as defined on the site, is focused feedback on a work in progress, to help the writer improve. Reviewing is a much looser term that we moved away from because it is closely associated with rating or grading a released work's overall quality.

We discourage applying a rating to a work being critiqued. It doesn't matter what the quality of the draft is currently. What matters is what the writer can ultimately do with it. The latter is limited only by how much work the writer is willing to put into it, and to learn along the way.

[jazzabel]

@Cogito: ah, I see, thanks for explaining that about reviews vs feedback

@shadowwalker: I agree, it is a bit of a semantics thing, but I used it to try and differentiate, but ultimately, it is what any one person finds useful in any given moment, that matters

[123456789]

I'm a little lost by the overall point of this thread. I agree it is obnoxious for a writer to rework someone else's sentences and apparently against forum rules. But how does this change how someone posting their work should receive criticism?

I'm assuming people post their work because they want honest feedback. If their work needed no improvement that could be offered here, I'm assuming they would be saving it for elsewhere. Most works I've read posted in the critiquing section, despite their level of skill, could stand to be improved in some area that I wouldn't categorize in basic writing skills or in vision. Flow, coherence, and tension are such areas. My own work could stand to be improved in all such areas, hence my attention here.

One could say, it is not in my vision to create a tense work, but if the critics are finding the motivation to read lacking, the writer in question must address the complaint if he wants to improve. One could say it is my vision to have lengthy prose, but if readers are complaining for lack of flow, the writer in question must address the complaint if he wants to improve. If the reader says, your work is long winded which is bad, ignore him, he does not share see your vision. If the reader says, your work is hard to follow, maybe because it is long winded, perhaps you are not achieving your vision even though you think you are.

I think it is dangerous for aspiring writers to take honest criticisms lightly. It's going to cause stagnation and delusion. Obviously I have not read all the works submitted on this forum, but of the ones I have, I have not seen many, if any critiques that pertain to different visions. I haven't seen many people, if any, tell the writer they didn't like the character, or disagreed with the plot line.I have not seen many, if any, criticisms that were not backed by at least two different people. Most issues have been about readability, and how that writer can improve their technique. These are all good things and should not be ignored.

[jazzabel]

@123...: I think you and I are talking about two completely different things. You seem intent on disagreeing and you keep insinuating things that I never said.
I am sorry you see no point in this thread, it seems that quite a few people found it interesting. But by all means, if you are finding this discussion unsatisfactory, you are under no obligation to participate

[123456789]

@123...: I think you and I are talking about two completely different things. You seem intent on disagreeing and you keep insinuating things that I never said.
I am sorry you see no point in this thread, it seems that quite a few people found it interesting. But by all means, if you are finding this discussion unsatisfactory, you are under no obligation to participate

I never said I don't see a point in this thread, so who is insinuating now? I said I'm confused as to what the point is.
You said

" But I thought to open a discussion about it for the sake of new writers to whom all this might be new, and rather painful, if they are faced with someone's opinion, but feel embarrassed to dismiss it if it isn't useful to them, that's all"

It's that last part I'm disagreeing with. How can a new writer know for sure if someone else's opinion isn't useful?

[jazzabel]

Just because they are new doesn't mean they can't differentiate between what is useful and what isn't. In my experience, most of us have a gut feeling about these things, but when we are new, we try to do the best we can and that includes listening to all and any advice even though, frankly (and I say this with confidence of my own and others' personal experience) a lot of advice is "take -it-or-leave-it" rather than gospel. But not uncommonly, the ones giving advice would like it to be accepted as gospel. I am sure you know what I am talking about .

Since I know how it feels (as I am sure you do as well) when you know someone's opinion of your work is missing a point, when we can't use it but feel obliged or conflicted to follow our inner voice just becuase we feel we lack experience. I've been in the art world long enough now, but once upon a time I was new and lost. It took me all this time to gain confidence to admit that yes, some advice can and should be ignored and I am the best judge of what is helpful to me and what isn't.

[123456789]

That's interesting you feel that way. I think our disagreement lies in our different experiences. My first serious attempts at prose were always criticized by people close to me. I definitely did not agree with their complaints, but still I was bothered. These were intelligent people and I wanted them to like what I wrote. It took me a long while and a lot of grief to finally accept their advice, but looking back on my older stuff, I can admit my writing has improved dramatically. More importantly, the stuff that matters, the vision was better received by my critics. In the beginning, they never got what I wanted them to from my writing. Now they do.

I felt like they were missing points in their complaints also, but in retrospect I think it might have been myself who was missing the point. I decided to trust in others, and not just myself, and I admit that is a difficult thing to do. You might be very right in what you say, and probably the aspiring writer could take your advice first. However, if time passes, and they realize they are not where they want to be, I suggest they consider my advice instead.

[shadowwalker]

I think, whenever we put something out for critique, there will be people who don't 'get it'. The question then is not deciding whether or not the critique itself is useful, but to look at why they don't get it. Certainly there will be cases where they don't understand the genre or the conventions within or there's some other 'deficiency' in the reader. But that shouldn't be a given, or the first conclusion jumped to. If someone isn't getting it, maybe (probably) it's because we didn't present it so they could. That's not something to be ignored. We have almost a mantra in my beta group - if you have to explain something outside the story, there's a problem within the story.

[jazzabel]

@shadowwalker: of course you are right, and "not getting it" in a sense that the reader is confused by a sentence(s) is most definitely worth paying attention to. I was referring simply to the reviews where the reviewer doesn't get what we are trying to do and then re-writes our work in a way that we go "no, no, that's not at all how I wanted it to look".

I am not sure if I am explaining this well, but I see this time and again. I'll give you an analogy with photography, it's easier. Ok, you wanted to show movement in the photo, so you exposed it for a few seconds, which resulted in a blurry movement of a child on a swing and everything else stationary is sharp. A reviewer with a very concrete mind and litttle knowledge of photography starts to criticise you for "taking a blurry picture" and proceeds to explain to you what you need to do in order to make a child on a swing sharp (decrease exposure time to something like 1/250 of a second instead of 2 seconds etc). He/she out of their own ignorance assumes that you yourself are ignorant, and that kind of a review is hurtful because it is negative, frustrating because you are dealing with someone with more arrogance than knowledge, and ultimately it is useless to you.
If they simply said "personally, I am not keen on these kinds of pictures" it would be perfectly ok, but to say "you don't know what you are doing, you posted a mistake" is a completely different cup of tea.

With stories, yes, as long as the reviewer gets to read the whole story. But with snippets, it might as well be entirely fitting with the rest of the story to write a portion of a narrative in a certain way, but if the reviewer isn't seeing the whole picture, it leads to the same kind of "missing the point" to criticise the style whilst making assumptions about the rest of the story, which might be wrong.
For example, you post a couple of paragraphs from a second act. The reviewer has no idea about the characters or their purpose, because it is just a snippet. But they proceed to tell you that you need to explain their purpose, mention their names etc, reviewing a snippet as if it was a stand-alone short story. Most of such feedback will be pointless but since we all feel a bit rotten every time someone doesn't like what we have done, it will hurt unless you can distance yourself and say "ok, this feedback is useless to me because they didn't get what this is at all".

[jazzabel]

@123...: yes, that is interesting, I never though about it this way.
My experience is quite different. I was an avid reader since I was 3. By the time I entered high school, I was extremely well read so all of my writing attempts were far beyond my age and as such they invited a lot of praise both from my teachers and students and friends. I never showed my work to my parents, didn't have very good relationship with them and they discouraged art in every form.

Then, I went to pursue a scientific career and for almost 15 years I wrote a lot, but they were scientific essays and case studies, although my field lent itself to writing people's biographies of sorts, so in that sense, the reports often followed the format of a short story. By the time I took time to start writing again, I found that my stories had lots of support from the readers, and it was me who wasn't happy with the standard, it was me who was my own worst critic, so I pursued self-education in creative writing.

Now, what's left is that I am a really fast learner. I welcome all useful feedback with open arms, and I am really lucky to have a husband and a sister who are very sensible and well read, who regularly take apart my paragraphs to such an effect that they end up being truly of the quality that I would be happy to publish.
So I never had the experience of "hating" the criticism, if anything, I always wanted more useful criticism than I was getting.

Edit: sorry, of course I had experience with hating criticism, but it wasn't a dominant experience. More often, the feedback was either useful or useless, depending on where I looked for it (a trusted beta reader will more often give useful feedback than a random person on the internet, for example, at least that's what I found, which is not to say that all internet critique is useless )

[shadowwalker]

For example, you post a couple of paragraphs from a second act. The reviewer has no idea about the characters or their purpose, because it is just a snippet. But they proceed to tell you that you need to explain their purpose, mention their names etc, reviewing a snippet as if it was a stand-alone short story. Most of such feedback will be pointless but since we all feel a bit rotten every time someone doesn't like what we have done, it will hurt unless you can distance yourself and say "ok, this feedback is useless to me because they didn't get what this is at all".

Understood (well, all of your comment but this in particular ). I guess I've never been in a situation where I only posted a snippet for critique. Brainstorming with my beta partners, yes, but not for critique. Probably for the very reason you pointed out - I would have to explain soooo much for them to understand the context, I might just as well post the chapter! And really, other than a grammatical or phrasing quandary, I don't really see any reason to post just a snippet. Of course, I've only posted to two forums in the past; otherwise it's always been within my beta group. But in all cases it was SOP to post a full chapter at a time, so that probably explains my perplexity at posting anything less than that.

[JHockey]

My view is that everyone has a story to tell, and the aim of a critique should be to lead someone to that goal. In one case it may mean pointing out technical errors. In another it may mean suggestions about timing, character development etc. Not everyone is looking to create a masterpiece and so should not be judged relative to that standard. We can only learn a few things at a time, so a good critique would firstly determine the current level of the writer and then criticise accordingly.