This topic again..... Speaking from experience here, OP, Do Not let this get to you. Like other have said, take what you can use from a critic and apply it to your writing and let the publishers be the judge. If you dwell on how your work was critiqued, you will not go to sleep at night. Additionally, as mentioned above, if someone reads your work, they are doing you a favor. You do not want to know how many people thought they had the PERFECT script until it was dismantled to its foundation. Opinions are good which mean you have to learn to accept what could improve your work.
Well you guys can disagree all you like, however, I just had a bit of a back and forth with the critic and he ended up seeing my frustration and offering a more detailed and specific critique that imho may have just saved my book. I did thank him at every chance I got. Thanks to this person, I believe in my story more than ever now. I wouldn't have ever gotten that invaluable piece of information if I hadn't gone deeper. I make no excuses for my bad writing, but I won't leave a situation be until people start making sense. I do this as humbly as one can (I hope). Honestly, I plan to critique some pieces here in this workshop and if someone doesn't get me then I hope they will make it known. There's no point in me giving vague-ass feedback that doesn't help the writer. It is about being respectful and nice, but it is also for bettering the writer's story by constructive criticism.
It takes 2 to tango. A critique is as much about the reading as it is the writing. It's difficult to do a good critique, and can be as difficult IMO to deal with a bad one.
It's worth while remembering that a reader who buys your book and sits down to read it WANTS to enjoy it. However, a person giving a critique is all poised to find mistakes. On the forum here, novels don't get a full read, either. We critics are making lots of judgements based on wee snippets of work. And judgement is the name of the game. As writers, we need to learn to feel our way through critiques. Be openminded to what the critique-giver has said, but also be aware they are giving a critique, and looking for things to 'improve.' They are looking for mistakes, and it's an old saying that if you go looking for trouble you'll find it! So you have to take everything that gets said with a grain of salt. If the critique causes you to re-think something you've written, that's great, but don't feel obliged to let everybody's opinion derail the train. The key is openmindedness. Don't be defensive about your work. Truly DO take the feedback on board, enough to give it fair consideration. If they've totally missed your point, then ask WHY they totally missed the point. You don't have to change the point you're making, but maybe make your purpose clearer? Often just a few tweaks can solve a confusion problem. You, the author, have a clear picture in your head of what your story contains. (I hope!) The trick is to make somebody else see it too. If other people don't see it, you might want to think of ways you can present it differently. However, they may be careless readers, or people who only like one kind of writing—and yours isn't it. So you need to keep yourself on an even keel. Take what makes sense, and leave the rest.
If it makes you feel any better, the fast-paced beginning of my and @T.Trian's WIP gets bashed too for being fast-paced aka too deliberate and calculating, or in the best case, simply confusing (confusing can be improved, after all, so that's good). What is a slow beginning anyway? A beginning that has no exploding action and frantic, rapid transitions from one situation to the next? 'Cause to me a slow beginning actually suggests a beginning that drags on, and on, and on, and on... And you start to wonder "is this going anywhere? Is any of this relevant?" A beginning that offers me a conflict or a goal is bound to keep me interested, whether it happens amid explosions or in a library with a lone character reading a book. Most of the books I own start with some kind of conflict or goal; a promise of adventure, the coveted hook. A teenage boy goes to summer camp and feels an odd familiarity with the old asylum-cum-dormitory. A young girl follows revolutionaries to a castle where she saves a prince, but this, in turn, makes her the enemy of the new regime. A man returns after a long while to the house of his childhood and is offered the post of a family physician -- but there's something seriously wrong about the house. What's the hook of your beginning? A book that should not be read? Or a young man wanting to leave a place he hates although leaving it means he'll never be safe again? Or perhaps something else? Some editor recommended starting your story as late as you can. I don't think that's half-bad advice. It doesn't say you have to start it with a bang (or a whisper), but at least it has helped me to see better what's the first scene, what will kick off the story, be it a chase, escape, mystery to uncover, or a quest to save the girl/boy/country. If your beginning hasn't worked for your readers it can be either because they want murder and mayhem right from the get-go, or it simply doesn't have the kind of hook that your readers can connect with (either due to lack of context or there simply isn't enough at stake). You may be confident that a non-bang-boom beginning works -- that's absolutely true. But are you confident that your beginning, be it slow or fast, holds a hook that your readers can connect/identify with enough to keep on reading? I'd also like to point out that if your betas read the MS without having read the blurb, all they (or more like, us, 'cause I've read it ) have to work with is the beginning. But at least when I buy a book, I tend to choose it based on what's it about as a whole. A less interesting beginning won't deter me if I know there's potentially something that'll interest me happening later.
I was actually just thinking that KaTrian. That the blurb makes a huge difference. I read the Giver for the first time recently, and I must honestly say that if I had no clue what the book was about and had not seen the front cover or the back cover where the blurb was written, and read all the compliments in the page before the first chapter, I would have put that book down by page 3 easy. I think it's weird that people say your beginning is too fast paced. If you ask me, for the story you guys wrote it was a perfect scene to start with.
I wish everyone had the incredible critique group I have. The insight and writing expertise I've gained from the group has taught me how to write. They've taught me how to change the story I fantasize into the story people will want to read.
Hi, First I'm glad for you that this worked out with your critic. However, I do think you went about this wrong. First as others have said, when others are critiquing you they are doing you a favour. You have to keep that in mind at all times. Getting upset because you don't happen to agree with them is not at all gracious as someone receiving a gift should be. And it helps no one. The person doing the critique may well feel pissed off. And because of that may not continue. Others therefore lose out. Meanwhile others will not critique you having seen your response, and therefore you lose out. Second, and you really need to remember this in my view, a critique is an opinion. Assume it's genuine. But don't assume that it is representative of everyone or even correct. And you are under no obligation to accept it. Often not accepting a particular opinion is actually empowering to a writer. The critique makes them think about their work, and that in turn lets them decide what they think is worthwhile about it and what is not. Whether you agree or not with their opinion they've still done you a favour. Third, never assume that everyone else out there has the same general knowledge, values or cares that you do. It seems important to you that a book was banned. To others this will seem like no big thing. Many books have been banned, by the Christian church as well as many other bodies. And most times when that happened, the world continued unchanged and unaffected. Also, the fact that a book is banned may not be as important as why the book was banned. Gallileo's teachings were banned - but despite what is commonly held, not because they espoused a heliocentric world view. There was actually another scholar around at the same time espousing a similar heliocentric view, who was not banned. And in fact Kepler's model was far more accurate. Gallileo was banned from teaching his views on the basis that he was teaching a theory as a proven fact - which was in fact true since he could not establish the evidence to support his theory. And probably more important in the scheme of things, because when he was spoken to about it he started blasting the church and pissed off the pope. Not a clever thing to do. Given all of that to then launch into a criticism of a critic on the basis that he does not share a belief in the significance of a book being banned seems a trifle unfair. Why should other people share your beliefs? And really that is the value of the critique you received. It makes you ask that question, and hopefully answer it in your work. Cheers, Greg.
