Hi Goldenclover. I just read that you are thirteen, which changes a lot of my viewpoint. Maybe you should just write and enjoy it and save getting critiques for later on. Or at least mention your age because if these critiquers are adults, it's likely they think they're critiquing adult work and are discouraging you by being too harsh. Good luck!
@Goldenclover179 If you like writing you should try talking to your English teacher and asking them if they wouldn't mind taking a look. Other 13 year olds have come and gone on this forum and you are by for the most serious at writing, much so more even than a number of twenty-somethings on this forum. I'm impressed.
Am I the only one who has a whole new perspective on the Shakespeare-bashing after reading this thread?
I'd prefer harsh critiques to critiquers playing nice just because I'm 13. But thank you for the encouragement My opinion on Shakespeare isn't going to change the minute I'm an adult. He just isn't my thing, and he never will be.
I'm not trying to be rude or bash you based on your age. You are entitled to your opinion regardless. That said, I said the same thing about A TON of opinions I held as a teenager. You'd be surprised how substantially things change in adulthood.
Your profile says you're twenty, @Goldenclover179 - maybe you should change that? Because there's a big difference between being 13 and being 20. I was already making allowances for you based on age in the Shakespeare thread, because I'm not sure I really came to appreciate his work until I was teaching it, so I would have been closer to thirty... but thirteen is, whether you feel like it or not, a child. If an adult posted about having lost his/her writing style based on a critique, I'd have concluded that the adult didn't have a hell of a lot of style to begin with. But a thirteen-year-old is still, and still should be, in a really experimental stage of life. Maybe you lost your style, or maybe you're just undergoing a transition to a new style. Even adults will transition, albeit probably more slowly, but at thirteen those changes happen really fast. I'm sure all this sounds totally patronizing. And I guess, etymologically, it kind of is. The thing is--older people have all been thirteen. We all remember what it felt like. You've never been older. You can only imagine what it feels like. So we do have a bit of an experience-advantage that you don't have. I'd recommend that you explore, have fun, and don't worry too much about trying to preserve the style you have at thirteen. Your style will probably change a dozen more times before you settle into something more-or-less stable, and even then you'll likely see continued shifts on a smaller scale. Just enjoy your writing!
How I relate to the problem you had is.... it is hard for people to not think that they have the right to rewrite your work. EGO. When you give someone a sentence and say 'I'm having a problem with it' - for them to then rewrite it and say 'I fixed it' is a jerk move. The only time I rewrite someone else's work is when I'm trying to illustrate grammar, and I can't write on it with a red pen to show where the grammar should go, and have to write the sentence out. Even then, I cringe until my face implodes before I hit send. I don't profess to understand what the person was trying to say, and don't try to say it for them. And no one should EVER do this. Doing it is stealing the very fabric of this art-form away from you. It's like when you buy a vintage car because you want to learn how it works and fix it yourself. You hit a snag, go to a mechanic and ask HOW to fix it. Then the mechanic fixes the car for you and says 'DONE' - - and you say to yourself 'That's just great, why did I waste my money on this vintage car again?' and drive home someone else's car. If anyone ever rewrites anything of yours. Delete it before you read it. It has never helped me. And it will never help you.
I disagree with this. I mean, I don't think it's generally super-useful to rewrite someone else's words, but I don't think it's automatically "a jerk move" or that "no one should EVER do this." Sometimes a rewrite is the clearest way to express a suggestion. And just because one writer has never been helped by it doesn't mean another writer has never been helped. I've worked with editors who sometimes suggest ways to rephrase passages and editors who never do, and I prefer the ones who sometimes do. It's an easier way to understand what the objection is and how the problem could be solved. Possibly the difference comes from attitudes toward critiques. I only ever consider them suggestions, so if someone chooses to illustrate their suggestion via a rewrite it's not an issue for me--I can take it or leave it, just like any other ideas presented to me.
Suggesting ways to rephrase it, having a discussion that leads to examples being illustrated, that eventually leads to a rewrite being made, and done by a professional, is all fine. Fantastic. Part of the joy of creating. But if someone just takes your work and says 'you should have done this' without any of your involvement, this is what I'm talking about.
This. You have to know what you're after in a crit. You have to know how to let your eye gloss over what doesn't apply or isn't germane. Most anything I post is pretty nascent and unformed. All the comments about "great writing, but the idea feels unfinished, what's going on with this character?" get reprocessed. Of course it's unfinished. Of course it's unformed. That's irrelevant. And I don't mean that in a snarky way. Just that it's the part that's not really germane to why I posted it, so I just gloss past it. It still just a suggestion, an opinion. It's not like it gets wedged into your work unbidden. One is always free to discard the suggestion. Always. Again, you have to know what you're after in a crit.
Yes. But, I refer to the original post and the request on how to better determine whose suggestions get through so that your work isn't changed into something you don't like... Everything is all just suggestion. How does one filter?
Maybe it's useful to think of your original copy as being "your work" and the stuff that goes out to other people as being--a notepad on which they can jot their ideas? Something like that. So nothing changes in your original unless you decide to change it. Your work won't be changed by anyone but you, so how would it get changed into something you don't like? You filter by reading the suggestions, considering them, and accepting or rejecting the ideas. Volume helps if you're getting critiques from people whose opinions you don't value that much--if only one person says something and you don't agree, discard it. If lots of people say something and you don't agree, consider it more thoroughly, but still discard it if you don't like it.
That's a shame. I've been dealing with something similar. I think you just need to clear your mind and try again - keeping the advice in to consideration, but for the most part ignoring it? It's a sad thing if what you're doing doesn't make you happy. If you like what you do you already have the best fan possible Good luck. I hope you can get your style back!
Nonsense. Here's a concrete example from a critique I did, with changes to protect the author's content. I started with the rewrite, then explained all the changes. The author told me that they found the critique quite helpful.
Yeah. But you didn't do what the poster is describing. Which is to just take someones work and rewrite the whole thing callously. You did A GOOD JOB.
If one's opinions don't change between 13 and 20, and don't continue to change and evolve over the course of a lifetime, there is stagnation instead of growth. Who wants to look back from adulthood and realize they still think the same things they did at 13?
This is an interesting topic! I was worried about something like this happening when I first showed something I'd written to anyone (about one month ago, I guess). But actually, I turned out stronger than I thought I was. However, I'd say I have experienced four different critiques (here and elsewhere). I am sure that there are many more than that, but in my short experiences these are the ones. 1. Positive feedback (some people might not find that constructive, but I say it is for motivation!) 2. Rude feedback (when someone doesn't like your work but doesn't tell you what it was they didn't like) 3. Constructive feedback (thoughtful advice and critique to things that can be improved. The most common one) 4. Change everything because (person) did not like it, and (person) must like everything put out in the world for them to devour My advice for receiving these criticisms would be: 1. Accept 2. Ignore 3+4. Listen, see if you can learn from it, practice, get better, but remember that you do NOT have to agree with everything Getting criticism is very, very helpful and honestly, in the last month my writing has improved HUGELY. But no one has a more valid opinion than someone else's. So if you do not agree with every criticism then your opinion matters just as much. Also, pleasing everyone is very impossible, so just relax, write what's on your mind/in your heart the way you want to write it, and if some critics has helped make your writing even better then great
Yes, rewriting bits of a piece in order to illustrate a point can be quite helpful. As always, it is up to the author to decide which portions of a critique to accept and which to discard.
You know that you and I are usually in agreement, but as regards that aforementioned take on Shakespeare on the part of the OP, there's a small part of me that can commiserate. I kinda' feel the same way about Steinbeck. My adult, 46 year-old self is a bit resentful that his work was presented to me at an age when I was too young to grok it, and by a teacher who didn't know his ass from a hot rock. Steinbeck's work was all just so much over-processed sepia wash dreariness to me at 15. Later in life I lived where Cannery Row was within walking distance. I went to school in Monterey, CA for a year and a half, and my time there was beautiful and Monterey remains a magical, Star Trek soft focus dream to me. I should be able to pretty much fap to Steinbeck, but every time I have tried to reengage the work, it's my 15 year-old inner self that finds something else for me to do. The stain is indelible. As for Shakespeare, I think most adults don't even know how to engage it. My go-to example is the film Much Ado About Nothing. Only two actors in that entire film gave any evidence of even understanding the lines they were delivering: Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. All the rest (especially the Americans) all read their lines in the typical wooden, phonetically memorized way, with that tragic arm reaching out into eternity, that we all know so well. The lines could have been in Icelandic for all the meaning they brought to them.
I personally prefer the critic's version. However, yours has more character. You just have to smooth it out, learn to write with better clarity while maintaining your voice. The solution isn't to write like your critic's, even if it was better. The solution is to look at it and say, "Ok this guy rewrote my sentence and thought his worked better. Why is that? Why did he feel mine didn't work and his did?" From an outsider's perspective, I'd say yours was confusing and a little convoluted - as I said, it lacks clarity. The second one benefits from better clarity, however it's also a lot more "standard" - there's nothing much special about the second sentence except that it's clear what it's trying to say. With yours, I had to reread it to get it, and even on the third go I'm still not 100% sure what you're saying. That doesn't mean change your style. That means, you gotta write it again till the meaning is clear, but there's more than one way of writing a clear sentence. It doesn't have to be according to what your critic said. When I get critique, I almost never take another person's rewritten version. Instead I identify the problem and I rewrite it how I would write it, in a way that I think resolves the problem. So in your case, it could be that you didn't really understand the problem in your own writing to begin with, and therefore you're fixing the wrong things.
I agree that change should continue throughout life, but in terms of rate of change? My ideas changed much more from 10yrs old to 20 yrs old than they did from 20-30, and the change from 20-30 was greater than the change from 30-40. I don't think the slowing rate is a sign that I'm sinking into stagnation... rather, I'd say that I've spent a lot of time learning and thinking about the world and have built up a pretty solid base of understanding. I still make micro-adjustments on a close-to-daily basis, but big changes? It takes a lot to make a big change in my way of thinking these days.
Yes, I don't disagree with any of this (including the film). One's opinions won't change about everything--there are some tastes that remain intact, whether for good or ill. That's not a problem when viewed from the perch of adulthood (in my view), and particularly later in adulthood. The viewpoint one has at 13, however, that one's views are immutable because one is right about everything now is necessarily the product of being that age (and as typical as it is incorrect on many, though not necessarily all, matters).
True. The change between, say, 13 and 23 is so pronounced that if you still think the same way at the end of that span there is an issue. The pace may slow over life but should never stop. You're always acquiring new information as you live, so if you stop growing/evolving then 21st some point you've just become a dtone, impervious to new data. But yes, the pace of change isn't likely to be as rapid as when you're still actually growing up.
It's funny, because you'd think that young people start out open-minded—because they are young, and their lives are all before them, etc, and closed-mindedness comes with age. People often say about an older person that they are 'set in their ways.' For me, however, that's not been the case. I'm more open-minded about the kinds of music I like, and a lot more open-minded about the kind of reading I enjoy, the kind of artwork I appreciate, the kinds of people I can tolerate, etc. My love of new experiences is tempered with the physical restrictions that come with getting older, so I'm not as physically adventurous as I used to be. But mentally, I feel more free than I did when I was in my teens and twenties.
I agree - I think in our teens we're very conscious of group identity and fitting in, and as we get older we (hopefully) become more comfortable with being individuals. It's less important to have a clear "us" and "them", so we can open our minds to positive ideas regardless of their source. Hopefully.
