Critique is not always pretty, and that's a good thing.

That's a pretty black dress. Would you like me go over it with my red pen?

(God... that sounds sooo stupid, lol)

 

I've heard the phrase "a writer's writer" used as a compliment, and I certainly don't think it should ever be an insult, but, yeah, I agree, there's absolutely nothing wrong with just telling a damn good story. For all the shit Twilight and Fifty Shades get, they clearly touched people and got them involved in the story. To me, that's successful writing.

 

Leave the pick-up lines to the expert (AKA me).

 

Or even the Harry Potter series.
Why do the kids sometimes use this spell and not again later on when it would be useful?
Why do the parents not give a crap their children are dying?
Why do wands are sometimes necessary for spell casting and other times not?
Why is Hermione such an exposition tool?
Why is Harry Potter the stereotypical chosen one who just so happens to be rather excellent at most things he needs to win?

Easy criticisms, but when you're reading it you don't think twice about.
It's all about the page turning, the fun characters who sound rather real, and the entertainment of the story.

So.. maybe as a culture, we've become overly critical of art when we hypocritically just enjoy stories for their own sake?

 

Hey, you can't monopolize pick up lines!
Some of us need them for a chance at
And I'm sure you'd charge exuberant fees.

 

Or maybe as a sub-culture we're overly critical. As writers, we try to figure out what works, we search for the magic formula, and we get crabby when we find times it doesn't seem to work. Reading a critique from a writer and a non-writer, of the same work, can be eye-opening!

 

I'm sure that goes for any art group really.
I bet even visual artists, painters, or whatnot all have the same sort of issues.
I mean, I used to do chainmaille, had to stop cause I bought more than I sold, and it was all about speed, technique, originality, and how perfectly done it was.
Lots of hate between the artists and people who sell from magazines/online-to-resell or whatever.

 

"If there are no objective components, we might as well all just go on our writing binges and oh well, either people will like it or they won't."
That's how a lot of great writers work, to be honest.

 

Look, Ed get's it.

I'm not sure the basics would be that different to each of us. Beyond the basics, personal preferences become more predominant.

This comment though, I have a comment about and it relates to the issue at hand:

I would wager that this is simply a statement of an inability to verbalize what one is judging by.

I learned this in nursing by two different means. One was when an experienced nurse sees a patient crashing, you know it. But if you can't describe it, you can't communicate that to someone on the phone. When you get good at recognizing something, be it recognizing porn (giving Justice Stewart the benefit of the doubt), or a patient in trouble, or recognizing good writing, you indeed know it when you see it.

The reason you recognize it is often described as intuition. But the intuitive brain is not working magically. It's just putting things together very fast, so fast you often don't know what went into the 'knowing'. However, identifiable describable things went into that knowing.

A patient's skin color, restlessness, a facial expression, dry or moist skin, and a dozen other immediately visible indicators are identifiable and describable things that went into that 'see it/know it' which appeared to be, 'intuition'.

The second means of learning this concept came from the revolution that occurred in nursing simply by identifying and describing exactly what we did. Believe it or not, things can be invisible when they go undescribed. Until our profession described what it was nurses were doing, we were doctors' extensions, little helpmates. An entire profession was invisible. The nurses were visible, but the profession was not.

So to bring this back to writing, we are (or are learning to be) word masters. We should be able to verbalize what it is we are seeing when we recognize skilled writing, and what is observable and describable. And there are some basic writing skills, separate from whether or not we like the piece personally.

Just to address a couple things that were added while I was writing this post:

Re Harry Potter, Twilight and 50 Shades, I don't put those in the unskilled category. They may not be the most skilled work ever written, but this thread is not about what every work of fiction must have.

Rather, consider identifying and describing what it is in those books that makes them such best sellers. You can describe it as simply someone's preference. I would say there are more identifiable things there than just preference.

Here's one list I think we can relate to the truth of:

There are more things about those books than just those qualities. Those elements alone don't guarantee a best seller. But the point is, those are identifiable, describable elements of skilled writing.

By the same token, the recipe for skilled writing doesn't require a basic formula. But we should be able to look at a book that either we like or one that is a best seller and pick out certain elements that make that book skilled, well beyond just subjective opinion.

 

No, that's how they work because they have the skills that give them the ability to do that.

 

I'm not disputing anything about their skills. I'm just saying that the great ones are largely immune to criticism, and would indeed have that attitude. Thank goodness for that.

 

If by "gets it" you mean "agrees with me", then, maybe so. But I worry that this may be the kind of confirmation bias that flavours your attitude toward writing in general.

I don't think I've ever written a book with detailed world-building, great evil, or very high stakes. But that doesn't mean I'm not a competent writer, it just means I'm writing in a different style, for a different audience.

 

For a lot of what many people consider objective in terms of writing, you can find one or more works that don't employ that skill, or employ it differently. And any given work may he considered fantastic by some readers and disliked by others. That tells you how much is subjective.

 

Yeah. I don't really understand the mentality of giving people the power to pretend that a subjective work is objective. In the internet age where everyone and their brother is a brutal critic, that mentality kinda backfires. I think that's the real issue behind people being offended by people's comments on their work. They view someone's opinion as crucial, when it's probably very insignificant. I don't know how some people ever survive on the interwebs.

 

No that is not what I mean. I mean he described the problem I am describing.

Which is why I said: "the recipe for skilled writing doesn't require a basic formula. But we should be able to look at a book that either we like or one that is a best seller and pick out certain elements that make that book skilled, well beyond just subjective opinion."

 

So what are the elements that made 50 Shades an example of skilled writing?

 

Which is the same as saying you know it when you see it but you can't verbalize what it is your brain is picking up on.

 

So this is turning into an argument, of course, given some of the personalities involved, but I think the main point I can see is that different writers see their work through different filters. If you see you work through a "technique" filter, then critiques based on technique may be useful. If you see your work through a more intuitive "effectiveness" filter, then you'll get the most benefit from critiques based around that.

Different strokes for different folks?

 

All I'm saying is that people have opinions on things and they're just that. Opinions. We can decide whether people's opinions are valid to us or not. That's it.

 

"Different strokes for different folks?"
That's how I see it.

 

Hot fantasy erotica
Focus on sexual pleasure of the woman, rather than the man's
The standard fantasy: rich/handsome/strong man love-obsessed with sweet young thing

I'm sure there are more elements but those come to mind.

 

Nothing I'm saying negates that.

 

So those are elements of skilled writing?

Obviously all works don't contain these elements (unless you are looking at sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-SUB-text), so I'm not sure how we can use them to critique other writing. Like, if someone posts the first chapter of Ulysses, would we say, "oh, nope, sorry, no focus on the sexual pleasure of the woman rather than the man - this needs work"?

(n.b. It's been a long time since I read Ulysses. I don't think the first chapter focused on women's sexual pleasure... but who can be sure, really?)

 

Yes, those are the elements that 50 Shades got right.

I didn't say 50 Shades or Twilight were highly skilled writing. The writing is average in Twilight and EL James writes erotica skillfully but a lot of the book was again, average.

You're looking at this from the wrong angle. This is not about grading books as the most skilled or the worst skilled. That's where a lot of people are missing the point.

It's about recognizing an element of writing that is a skill one can identify and describe.

Did you ever answer the questions I asked?

Do you think there are objective elements of skilled writing that are identifiable and describable? Or is everything subjective personal preference?

And if everything is subjective personal preference, what makes skilled writing?

 

Since everyone was too inept to answer my question on Dead Poet's Society, I'll ask a simpler one.

Do you ever look up at the stars?