I have a very thin skin, a weakness of mine that I'm trying to overcome. This most certainty will affect my perceptions and how this post is written. I'm doing my best to fair and affable here, even if I found their feedback to be particularly irritating. As I should be considerate that they took the time to critique out of their own free will. If you detect any sort of bitter or negative tone of voice here, please let me know, and I'll try to fix it. Anyways, as writers, have any of you have received criticisms/feedback that you disagreed with? If so, what are the problems you had with their takes? Personally, I had a few examples I'd like to share here. 1.I'm treading on thin ice with discussing this particular exchange, as it touches on quite a powder keg topic. More specifically, the whole encounter revolved around gender politics. Just to make myself clear, I'm not trying to attack the ideology of feminism as a whole here. As it is a very broad blanket for a wide of range of ideologies, with the only unifying factor pertaining to women's issues. I'm just discussing a run-in of mine with someone from a fringe but overly aggressive minority. Anyways, I posted a pirate/bandit OC of mine on a critique subreddit. Some commenter deemed him something on the lines of "a juvenile edgelord commonly found in fanfics of teenage boys", which wasn't something I could dispute. What particularly irked me however was when she decried his backstory as a "borderline sexist attack on women, especially sex workers" and demanded me to have empathy for them. For some background, I envisioned him being the son of some prostitute. At the time of his conception, she had relations with multiple men, and thus his father was unknown to her. As a mother, she was very deadbeat to her son, and only begrudgingly took care of him, and eventually abandoned him when was around 8 or 10. That was entirely done to cut as many relatives out of the picture as possible, and thus leave him without any means of family support. For example, if his father was untraceable even to his mother, then he has no means of tracking down his father and paternal relatives for help. Likewise, he can't rely on his mother if she abandoned him. Nor can he seek out her family if he wasn't given an idea of who they were. There was no intentions of "slut shaming women" at all, nor was she meant represent prostitutes as a whole like Stephen King didn't intended Christine to represent cars. Hell, she was entirely an afterthought to me. In the very remote chance that I've turned the outline in a published novel, she most likely wouldn't even make an appearance. The OC's mother was simply background information to contextualize his living situation. I was actually taken aback when brought up gendered social issues into it, as I never conceived it for anything beyond an explanation for a family-less character. She further proclaimed that prostitutes have access to birth control, and further pushed that she must've wanted to have children if she kept the pregnancy. Evidentially, she seemed to part of an especially hard-line school of thought that treat women as of some hive minded collective of "sisters." In other words, the idea of a morally unscrupulous female individual is unfathomable to them, and they regard the depiction of them as an attack on women as a whole. Also, I personally found her narrative of "all mothers must want their children, if they didn't filter them through birth control" to be incredibly naive. As any parents know, parenting is extremely difficult and stressful. There are many individuals who underestimate the challenges of parenthood until it is too late, and then find it too overwhelming. They also might be caught up in other circumstances that might cause them to change their minds. Not to mention, there are many well documented cases of mothers abandoning their children. Such as this particular incident when a Chicago mother in the late 1940s sold four of her children for some bingo money. 2.In another one of my story concepts, I had a character whose backstory involved him joining his nation's military as a teenager. One commenter (who apparently had a military background) took issue with this, stating that "militaries don't accept children, even out of desperation." As someone who studied a wide variety of 20th and 21st century conflicts across the globe as a hobby, I had a lot of disagreements with their claims. Many unscrupulous armies and armed groups in conflicts around the globe since WW2 have utilized child soldiers. Sometimes, they're just indiscriminately grabbing anyone they can reach out of desperation, like with how Nazi Germany started drafting children and the elderly into their Volkssturm units. Intense, grinding wars have a tendency to dry up manpower. In other cases, many malevolent armies and armed groups (like the LRA, FARC, the Tatmadaw, etc) seek out adolescents for a variety of reasons. Namely, children and teenagers are much easier to control then adults, as they lack their independent skills. If a military or rebel group is successfully able to supplement a family for desolate teenagers and children, then their recruits are dependent on them as their "stability anchor." As they've got nowhere else to go, underage soldiers are far less likely to desert or demand higher paychecks. To be fair, I didn't really clarify the precise context of the setting in my post, other then mentioning that it's basically an alternative 20th and 21st century world. Much like how Westeros of ASOIAF is a fantasy counterpart to medieval Europe as a whole. I assume that they mistook my OC's fictional nation as an analogue for the United States or some other Western European type democracy, and concluded that it followed their rules. In actuality, my OC's nation was more of a corrupt and penny pinching autocracy more akin to both Saddam and post Saddam Iraq, Sierra Leone of the 90s, and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (the American backed government that was toppled by the Taliban). The nation's military specifically targeted teenagers to avoid paying the salaries of adult soldiers. However, I found the person's other feedback to be quite helpful on other matters. Like how to better address PTSD in my character.
1. That would have been advise that I would have ignored. Disagreements over a story's particular theme can be useful. The issue with prostitution in most times of human history is that it was not particularly fashionable to talk about, much less write about. It's very difficult to get first hand accounts of what happened in a brothel from the sex workers themselves. In other words, they didn't have a voice. If honorable women were already second hand citizens, then prostitutes were even lower than that. As a feminist, she should know that. And that doesn't mean you don't have empathy for them. Especially, if there are moments where your character is fondly remembering his mother or defending "ladies of the night" as part of his Juvenile edge lord persona. As a woman, I don't see anything wrong with Juvenile edge lords. Judging by the number of comics I have (2000+ from an era where they were still written by men and for men) you can gather I have a very special place in my heart of juvenile masculine edge lords. (In fact, just reading this made me far more interested in your story. Do you need a beta reader?) 2. I guess that guy never heard of a place called Rwanda. That is a guy I would absolutely slap in the face with facts. UNICEF reported in 2017 somewhere like 97,000 children soldiers. In fact, it's only been recently that children weren't raised to go to war. In the Middle ages if you were the son of a knight, you were trained to fight from birth. And in the Iliad, Achilles son was killed in the Trojan war at the age of 12. Has he ever seen Master and Commander? Apparently not.
IMO all you do when you get feedback you completely disagree with is thank the person for their time and effort and then move on. I've gotten feedback that absolutely confused the hell out of me with how hard it missed the point, but as the kids say, it be like that sometimes.
Sure, it happens. If you don't agree, ignore it and move on. A couple of years ago, I sent a manuscript to a friend's beta group because I wanted some new feedback and absolutely nothing I got back was usable because, unknown to me and I should have asked, his group read romance, not sci-fi. So I got a lot of people asking when the two main characters were going to get together and nothing about the actual plot of the book. That was a complete waste of my time. I flushed it all and tried again with more success.
I don't mind negative feedback, I'm OK with beta readers being wrong. In all seriousness, I haven't completed anything worth sending to a beta reader, but you have to weigh feedback that is objective versus feedback from readers with some agenda or perhaps are sincerely triggered by certain themes or scenes. And then consider how common those views may be among your target audience. It's difficult to write 50,000+ words without something that can be taken out of context and project an unintended message.
I can't comment on stories I haven't read, but yes I have gotten feedback I didn't agree with. I used to post on scribophile before I joined here. Once I got a comment that I really didn't agree with, and couldn't understand how they thought their suggestion was in anyway a good idea. But I really thought long and hard about the comment and why they made it, and I realized there was a problem. The critiquer just misdiagnosed it. But if they didn't make their ostensibly bad comment, I wouldn't have found the problem. I think I only have gotten one piece of feedback that was useless, and that was only because it was so generic it was pointless. I think they just line edited all my profanity out and then said "show, don't tell; work on the characterization." Yeah, okay, thanks homes.
I lied. I think you hit the nail on the head here. The reviewer may not have given you the best critique, but the comments alerted you to an area you can improve. That's often how critiques work.
Feedback on stories often tells the writer more about the person doing the critique than it does about the work that is being examined. Once had a reader suggest so many character and plot changes as to make the story unrecognizable. I thanked her sincerely for her feedback, but privately disregarded it. NOT to belittle her, but she prefers characters who triumph over all odds in a Hallmark ending. This book wasn't in that category. I completely misread my beta reader that time. My fault, not hers.
Some years ago, i forget when, black library did an open submissions for a new anthology book on alien races in 40k. I forget the forum it was on, possible heresy online, but people were asked to post there synopsis on there for community feed back. I wrote mine on the Tau and it centered around the MC not understanding why society dictated what a Tau would do in life and he whilst he was not openly rebelious against the cast system in place, he didnt embrace it either. However, by the end of the story, he would. The criticism was that the Tau caste system was so ingrained in their society that no Tau would dare question it, and more than one person made this claim. It is after all the core of their belief system and they saw what I was doing as trying to change that and that it was not my place to do so. However, I didnt see it as trying to change anything, in fact, I felt I was reinforcing it by having the MC accept the Tau way of life in the end and this journey would serve as an explanation a to why they accepted it. I also pointed out that in a released BL book about the Tau, the MC there had doubts about the caste system, though for different reasons that my MC did. I felt that those criticising were blinkered. That this was the way things are and there can be no deviation from the established lore. Where as I saw it as a fleshing out of the lore, to give it more depth and understanding. I hear a lot of people say they write for themselves. To tell the story they want to tell. I get that. But perhaps what they dont get is, if people reading it dont like it, you really will be, just writing for yourself.
Critiquers can't help injecting something of themselves onto the work good or bad. They have preferences, likes, dislikes, etc. Which is why you can get such mean reactions to first person, present tense pov's. Part of accepting critiques is knowing what to pay attention to, sift out, and to have an understanding of your own work enough not to make unnecessary changes to appease someone. This I would dismiss. Lets stick in a 'nice' oppressed character to show the world they're human is how fiction gets more artificial, it's not real or from the heart it's done for effect. Also hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold has been done to death. I have seen this on other writing sites and it is troubling. I'm not a feminist. And feminism has hit some really dark notes lately just for the simple fact that they refuse to acknowledge the female capacity for evil. Anyone who knows foster care knows there's a lot of kids in there - not just because of abusive daddies, but simply because of indifferent mamas. It seems as if you know your intent and your work and have enough insight to think through both viewpoints. The critique might not have been the greatest but it did get you thinking about your work and defending it which is sometimes as productive as someone pointing out the flaws. I've only disagreed with a few critiques one ripped apart my style which I had hoped would have been more constructive and less personal.
Trigger Warning This post has some generalisations and terminology from social work, which are over-brief and may be upsetting if someone has had similar life experiences to the OC mentioned above ==== I think if the OP's drafts were as well-written as the post, they were just unlucky and these were people who happened to have some other bee in their bonnets at the time. I personally think it's good to put a trigger warning up-front to try and get critics who are chill. Feminist critique is an extremely useful and valuable discipline, but it's only worth applying it to popular works that are having a real influence on how society evolves. There is no point using graduate-level analytical approaches to tear chunks out of writers with less than a million copies in print, whilst also leaving billions of copies of sexist/antiquated books in the library, in the shops, and on the bookshelves. There is more printed matter than anyone will ever be able to revise or cancel - so on the one hand it's sheer vanity to do political critique (society sweeps it aside: E.L. James still sells 150 million copies), and on the other their efforts as critics ought to be directed to novels about prostitutes or child soldiers that (for some reason) are actually contributing to or highlighting a real-world problem. One thing I'd suggest (from years of close-up research with social workers) is to make sure the back-story is convincing even if it's brief. When mothers neglect their children it's often (stereotypically, briefly, and crudely-speaking) to hide them from an abusive man (who would hurt them to prioritize his own offspring with her, be they actual or potential) and to increase their desirability to him (by showing she prioritizes his dna over that of any ex-partners)... and people wouldn't arrive in this unnatural, irrational and destructive dynamic except from a position of other massive and complex disadvantages in their backgrounds: often attended by low self-esteem or serious personality disorders. Any disabilities the child has make the odds of it happening and their outcomes far worse. And sex work isn't a cause or a predictor of neglect in the way that (e.g.) mental health problems, substance misuse, domestic violence, or CSE are. It's if someone has been at an extreme where they have been enslaved or trafficked or run out of other options, they're more vulnerable to abusive men. Someone coming from the OP's critic's angle would probably delineate between sex work and sex slavery - and a mother abandoning an 8-year-old is something you might see in the latter... but even then there's going to be such a cluster of other problems that the transacted activities are a side-issue. Is it offensive to sex workers to conflate? On balance, I think it is, but I don't care. Is it offensive to women generally? It has lots of potential to sublate a more interesting female tragedy (of a mother coming to abandon her child) into the background of a less interesting male character (going around being an edgelord?) - but that's an academic type point and there's no reason to apply it to the OP. Secondly is the character written as suffering from any consequences of parental neglect? E.g. as to brain development, the ability to attach to others, the ability to moderate behaviour, language development... there are lots of others, and even when someone has good outcomes they usually carry some problems over into adulthood. It isn't just something that people feel sad about into adult life, it robs them of their human potential. Also worth observing: 8 year old kids who are actually abandoned, by their mothers, don't usually get adopted by daring buccaneers, or rakish pickpockets, there are far worse sorts of people on the look-out for them, and those types tend to cluster round the abusive boyfriends of mums who neglect their children. I guess if I was reading about a pirate who didn't know who his father was and whose mother neglected him to such an extreme extent, I'd want to see "damage" (which isn't the technical or respectful term but it's what they still often call it) and how the person copes with it in adult life. You might not have space in the story for a complex history of intergenerational child abuse - but just the OC's separation from his primary caregiver at the age of 8 would have radically altered the whole formation of his personality.
It's impossible to write anything without finding at least one person who will argue with you about it. It comes down to drawing a line in your writing, and deciding where you want the story to go. My rule of thumb is listen to others advice and hear them out, but don't allow their opinions to change the core idea or a character's story without good reason. Always remember that in the end it's your choice, and it's someone out there who wants to read the story you have written as it is. Personally, I've got the feeling I'll be arguing with a lot of editors and publishers in my future, but I don't let that stop me from write my stories. I'll stand up for them when the time comes. Here's a few things I've faced when asking for critique of my work that I've disagreed with. Being told the MC of my historical thriller should not be racist. I understand why people don't like this, but I'm also set on realism. The novel takes place in 1848/49 from the POV of a character who's white, upperclass, and male. He acts the way a man of his time period and station would be expected to. Same character as above. That it's unrealistic to have a bi navy office in a poly relationship due to the time period. There have been LBGTQIA+ people for all history, I'm just acknowledging that fact by writing a book with several in a historical setting. Various critiques I've received about how I handled trauma in my high fantasy. This seems to come mostly from people who don't do their homework when writing PTSD or other mental conditions. I've spent literal hours on this topic because I can't stand the poor representation in the overall. I don't expect to be perfect, but I do know what I am doing. The same goes for my disabled characters. This last one I understand a bit more, but it still bothers me. I've gotten a lot of poor feedback when using gender non-conforming pronouns for characters. I've got six characters over two different settings that use something besides she/her or he/him and I sometimes wonder if I'll ever hear the end of it. I have drawn the line with this one and basically told people, 'my characters pronouns are not negotiable, please respect that,' and moved on. Anyway, that's my ten cents and some on this matter.
Yeah, makes no sense. But that's what some people are these days - looking for dirt under the carpet and if it is not there, they'd add some of their own. I always laugh when some people insist that MC has to be a modern saint who brushes his teeth 3 times a day and helps old ladies with their grocery bags and knows everything.
Historical fiction as a genre suffers from this problem. People want a character with modern ideals in fancy period clothing, not an actual person living life in a historical setting. I could rant about this for hours, but won't because this is not the thread to do it in.
One thing that annoys me about writing critique subreddits and forums is your main character has to be a boy scout with only mild failings, such as the lack of confidence, some cockiness, social awkwardness, naivety, etc.. If your main character isn't a paragon of virtue, then you're mocked and derided as an "edgelord."
Luckily I have no experience with these and probably never will, but it would totally irk me. I love imperfect characters as a reader. I also love unreliable characters that see themselves as something else, while their action says the opposite. It is such a great vehicle for authors to explore.
I've been on both sides of the desk. Earlier in my career I handed in manuscripts to an editor and it was like laying my baby on their desk. I didn't like seeing the editor hack the thing up and hand it back to me. As an editor I sympathized when I handed that hacked up manuscript back to the author. It's something the writer has to get used to.
I was once reprimanded by a critic of one of my books. He'd pointed out something... I forget what... about the awkward way I'd said something, and how it showed that the book needed better editing. The funny thing was that, a few paragraphs later, he made the very same "mistake" that he'd dinged me for. And there was no indication that it was deliberate.
Personally, since you're discussing controversial topics in a time when it's something we're trying to normalize in a modern society, perhaps you should include more female beta readers to see their reactions. Now, is the way you're portraying your the mother of your MC a reflection of YOUR opinions on sex workers, or his? Especially when writing first or third person limited POV, your work is subject to the character's own bias, in which case, I could definitely see his opinion being more slanted against his mother and her profession as a whole. If your beta reader has given you useful advice, then thank them for their time and use it but discard anything that would undermine your the story you're trying to tell. I did disagree when what she said about sex workers commonly using birth control methods or "mothers always want their children" because... it's not uncommon for sex workers to be substance addicts whose income goes solely to their vices, or certain control methods would be an expensive upkeep depending on their number of "jobs." Plus, depending on the era your story is set in - birth control could've been much harder to obtain or less effective than it is now. On the other note, plenty of people give birth to children whom they do not want or have the ability to provide for or nurture, but instead of placing them in the system or finding a new home, their children are haphazardly drug through life like some sort of phony house plant... forever around but never tended to or paid any mind. Now, just from what you said in your post about feminism or more specifically, how you tried to detail that your work is not meant to be an assault on feminism as a whole kind of came across less than genuine. I know plenty of guys who always start out saying, "it's not about feminism but..." then proceed to bash feminism more broadly than just the minority of extremists. Feminism as a whole is a great thing and I do not see how anyone could possibly disagree, even when it comes to normalizing modern sex work... it's simply an argument that two or more consenting adults should be able to trade goods and services even if that includes their body. Perhaps, you're demonizing the mother more for her line of work and blaming the industry, more than you're focusing on the point that... her treatment of her son is a reflection of her as a person and that is why she's being demonized. Maybe this is an unpopular idea but being a sex worker does not automatically mean a woman is an unfit or abusive parent. Just my thoughts though! To be honest it'd help if we had a bit of your manuscript to truly see what this reader was commenting on. If you're not interested in posting it on this forum - you could put it in the shop and link it or PM me an excerpt.
As a general rule, a good critique has to have some respect for what the writer is trying to accomplish, even if the critic isn't really into it, and try to help the writer achieve it better. Demanding complete overhauls in style, character, setting, genre, etc. is not useful. If I find such basic aspects thoroughly repugnant to me I just keep my thoughts to myself since my advice will not be helpful. Obviously child soldiers are a real thing, both as frontline combatants and in other roles (communications, supplies, espionage, etc). Perhaps your interlocutor thinks war is primarily conducted between professional, uniformed armies (though even those can recruit kids) when actually most warfare is extremely dirty, grim stuff. It's a lot more Come and See and a lot less Gettysburg. Even when armies aren't actively recruiting kids, if situations are horrible enough kids will join in of their own volition.
I think there's a difference between "agreeing" with a critique and "getting something from it". I try not to take any review of my work personally, and when reviewing, though I'm sometimes tempted to call someone a bad person, I try to separate art from the author. I'd say, even if you disagree, try to understand the other person's point of view. Both of the examples you listed might not showcase how to write a good review, but those reviews (or comments, I don't know how extensive the critique was) tell you something about how your work might be read by others. For example, you mentioned how making your OC's mother a prostitute was an afterthought, and though I wholeheartedly disagree with the review you've received, it tells me that using such a sensitive topic just to get rid of relatives from my character's lives might potentially upset a certain crowd. If you'd like to appease this particular demographic (you don't need to, obviously), you might want to change your character's backstory. But if you don't care about these types of people, you can prepare yourself mentally for the fact that other people like that woman might be offended by your story, if you'd decide to publish it. As for the question, in the thread's title, I don't really keep track of whether I agree or disagree with a review - I just ask myself if the feedback I receive can serve to make my story better. There are some objective things that I might get wrong, mostly grammar, punctuation etc, but then there are things that I might want to keep, even if some people don't like it. For example, I love introducing a character that seems likable at first, but then turns out to be a despicable monster - that's my way of critiquing popular archetypes in pop culture that I find harmful - and a lot of my beta readers were furious that a character that they identified with was called out on his bad behavior! But to me, even if my critics don't like this part of the story, their reaction shows that I did what I wanted to - I managed to introduce a character that was actually likable in the first half of the story. Of course, I can still adjust the other half, to make their shift in character a bit better suited for most audiences, but that depends whether I find the points mentioned by my reviewers as objective problems with my story structure or as some people being offended that the way they acted their whole life might not have been the best - in my humble opinion.
As requested by other users in this thread since this past week (couldn't get to it for a while, as I was swamped with schoolwork for most of it), I'll link the outlines discussed in my post here for more context. I'm doing this with great reluctance, as I personally find the first character outline in particular to be quite embarrassing. Especially considering how the juvenile the writing is in it. If you feel like I misleadingly straw manned any of the commenters, please feel free to call me out in the thread. 1. Outline #1 2. Outline #2
I think the only criticism I never agreed with was during a writing group on Discord. The owner of it was a very pompous writer that was in love with their own works. They told me my short story was very pedestrian and average in its style. When I asked for some elaboration or a way to improve they said "I dunno. The way you write just seems dull and average to me." If you're just going to insult my work without offering actual feedback, I'm not going to listen and assume I've written good work you feel threatened by until you actually critique it with effort.
This seems to me like a lot of words about a simple type of character. The drama he's creating online is possibly more interesting than he is, but I think the 4 questions you put onto reddit were unfairly or unfortunately ignored or skirted over by most of the commenters there. So I'll try and offer a response structured to how you think of the question. 1.How would you write a character similar to Rat Teeth, without coming across as an overly gratuitous “edge lord”? On that same note, does he come across as a “edgy” deviantart type OC to any of you? Non-seriously, and in far less detail. I'd be trying to amuse the reader by making them think Rat-teeth's life can't get any worse and then adding on some new embellishment. What you have is a comedy stock character trying to exist in 'serious' fantasy. To fix him, start again from the beginning but write his perception of himself rather than yours the author's - that's what a character is: a self-perception, a consciousness outside us. Horrible, nasty people like Rat-teeth don't think about themselves in the terms the reddit description goes into -that's a core aspect of the human condition- Rat-teeth is horrible and nasty to other people because he thinks he's a pretty decent guy, and has created a psychologically bizarre way of convincing himself of this even while he is spooning people's eyeballs out of their skulls for a crime gang. If you can write him from his own point of view, he could work, but it's a million times harder than growing his external backstory. 2.How do you maintain an audience's interest with a deliberately unlikable villain protagonist like Rat Teeth? Is he just too depraved and irredeemable to be the primary POV in your personal opinion? He hasn't really started to form. That might seem to contradict the walls of text he's accumulating around him, but the reader's interest begins with why he thinks he's nice. And how he tells himself he's nice. He has an identity, with a core. Someone makes him rob an old lady, he goes back in to the core, reflects on his actions, concludes "I'm nice" and trundles into the next atrocity and repeats. The reader, though, has a privileged view of him: perhaps there is some shift in where the core is, or how he remembers it, and he develops. This is the other thing with that description - it's a description when it should be a character arc and you make up whatever description serves the arc. What he did when he was 10 is just paraphernalia. 3.How much of a overpowered “Gary Stu” is my OC in your point of view? Does he have any Gary Stu/Mary Sue like traits, from what I described him in my outline? Gary Stu / Mary Sue is a floating term. I don't think it's useful in critique outside of fanfic and adaptations of existing IP. He would be a Gary Stu if you were writing Amazon's next middle earth series and inserted him to represent you. 4.How realistic of a character do you think Rat Teeth is? Could a man like Rat Teeth possibly exist in the real world, or is he just a goofy caricature of a violent criminal? Does Rat Teeth seem original to you, or does he seem like a ripoff of a more popular character(s). I think the description has become over-elaborate, concealing the reality that there isn't yet a character inside it at all. Characters are choices, personality, identity, a way of thinking - and the description keeps running out of words without producing these things, and each time it runs out it winds itself up again and has another try: he joins the navy! his mother was a prostitute! famines! rafts! arms deals! petty crime! a court appearance! an asbo! But it's all puff: all the reader cares about is who is he? Without an inner world that belongs to him, distinct from you the author, any of his background could inadvertently cause offence - whether it's to real sex workers, sailors, or young offenders. So I'd suggest to get rid of all that stuff, and add things in only when it helps the reader understand this person, this character who the book is about. Add it in on the basis that we write what we know. If the author knows Victorian prostitution, explain the character with details chosen from 1840s Soho, but if the author knows about modern train drivers, just put the story on a train - that's much easier than research. ========== I should have said, this is to some extent guesswork, based on descriptions of the character (which are to some extent distanced or second-hand). The OP most likely has a character in mind, but for whatever reason it isn't coming across in the description or might even have been actively pushed out of the description. To avoid that sort of mismatch, it's much better to put an excerpt of the actual story into the Workshop: perhaps a scene where he does something nasty and wonders if he should feel a pang of guilt. Also... more tentatively... I'd suggest you'll know when you've 'got' Rat Teeth because things like this will start to happen. You'll be paying for petrol, or whatever, and you go up to the counter and the cashier says "We've got a special on batteries, would you like to buy some batteries?" and you stare them in the eyes, with the eyes fixed in position while you slowly angle your head sideways - all the while snorting out through one nostril. And then you pay them, and you leave, and on the way out you're thinking "That's what Rat Teeth would have done - maybe I should take some time away from the novel."
