Is it good or bad to post a critique that essentially says, "I couldn't read it"?

Another approach is to ask the author to post a writing style that they might like to emulate, then contrast the two. It seems like some really "poor" writers are creating something that doesn't resemble any kind of normal style, and this points that out.

 

On the flip side, I’ve started telling people that I know about the sentence fragments and sending them the first page of Lee Child’s “Killing Floor” to tune their expectations.

 

Some information is always better than no information. Even if you say I couldn't get through it, at least the author knows the opening is bad.

 

This response reads so wrong to me. I’m not someone who encourages copying of anything. It’s one thing to be inspired by or be influence by another writer’s style, but I’d find it disturbing to think someone would point out, I wanna write like that guy, when they come for feedback. Or have people ask me who it is that I want to emulate. I’d have to reply, “Me. Is there a problem with that?”

I’d like to think everyone is developing their own unique voices and style, and that this is to be encouraged.

It might not be a style that resonates with you, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. What style is “normal” and therefore not “poor” to you? So people should provide a reference point for the readers to then have to mark the author to that standard? I hope the author is paying the critiquer, unless they are lucky to have an audience with too much time on their hands. Sounds like boring work to me. I’d hate to have to break the news to someone that they are not the next Shakespeare or Tolstoy. Not that I would know. Lol. Your reply reads to be elitist and therefore off-putting.

It’s more that the author know you think it’s bad. That’s an invaluable piece of information to me as long as it’s not a personal attack. Any genuine intel is good intel.

 

If I thought a writer was trying to emulate another writer, I'd point that out in a critique as a flaw, not a positive.

 

I don't think you understand how bad I'm talking about. It isn't that some writers don't write pretty enough, I've read some things that are essentially lists of events. This person didn't understand why people didn't like her story and didn't understand why people were asking if the story was intended for very young children.

So I shouldn't have chosen the word "emulate". What I meant was "What story or book do you like that inspires you to write this, or what story would you see as being similar enough to put in a collection with yours?" Because what was written didn't resemble anything more than the notes to construct a crude story, and the author thought it was done.

That's how bad we're talking. I see this person is a member here as well, and often posts complex questions about how she should plan out obscure details of her stories on multiple sites. When she finally posted her writing, it was 30+ one sentence paragraphs like "Johnny wants goes to the city and Dolly says "No!"" "Dolly builds a spaceship and she and Johnny have offspring there."


She dropped out before anyone got anywhere with her, but I think asking what sort of fiction her work resembles would have made some inroads in demonstrating how she wasn't writing anything that would have a readership.

 

I don't think it's very helpful cause like others said it's not very concrete. It's vague. You yourself want to have people read enough of your story to point out whether you got your characters right. They can't do that if they won't read past the first sentence. Just give advice/critic you yourself would like to receive.

 

Good for her. She should tell those readers to 'go f*kk off to Twitter.'

Twenty years later we hang her portrait in the White House, the National Gallery, the Elysee Palace, and her prophecies, her exclamations are more hallmarked than Angelou, more hallmarked than Twain

 

Clearly I'm being too abstract.

 

I was juss playing....careful with the posting ‘bad writing of other people,’ you’ll get whipped.

Bad writers are okay. Mediocre writers are more dangerous

 

Playful makes it awful hard to communicate about an already touchy subject. Link removed.

 

Sorry

 

I don’t know about you, but if people can’t read past the first few lines of my pieces, I’d want to know. So that weakens your argument about about giving critic you yourself would like to receive. Because some of us consider that to be a valid critique, especially when you are the kind of writer who never wants to force your writing on others. So I’m all for readers stopping as soon as they can’t go on and letting me know exactly where as long as they’re being sincere.

 

It’s quite difficult sometimes - on a writer forum. We are like a collection of the world’s ugliest models - every one convinced of our beauty spot on the pantheon of lit. We need a business that caters, that cares, where everyone can be a writer but lacking the exploitation of the vanity publishers. A blend of forum and ‘vanity.’

 

It is effect without explaining the cause - that's why it is dismissive rather than helpful. "I couldn't get past line four because ______________ .

 

I suspect there are a variety of “classes” of writers that post here. Some are essentially professionals, even if they’ve never published. They could crank out page after page of well-formed story, go back and clean up issues themselves, post it here for thematic review, and it would be ready for publication somewhere, because people would want to read it. They know who they are and the quality of their capabilities, and they readily stand up to any small breeze of critique. On the other end of the spectrum (the one I imagine, not necessarily the one that exists) are people who love to read a particular genre of fiction, and want to be a famous writer, so they crank out a story draft, packed with spelling errors, malapropisms, punctuation problems, and bad sentence structure. The story itself hangs together like... well, like something that doesn’t hang together very well. I can only think of impolite, slightly disgusting metaphors. Those people want more than anything to be recognized; to have someone look at their work and say, “this is worthy, keep it up.” Emotionally, they’re not ready for critique, and it’s what they need most, even if they don’t realize it.

I put myself marginally closer to the first end of the spectrum than the last, but only through growth founded in critique that I was willing to take in and use to modify the way I wrote. I’ve been writing on and off for thirty five years at this point, including a fair bit of technical writing as part of my profession. I’ve had time and necessity to polish my work. I’ve had a look back at material I wrote even ten or fifteen years ago, and it doesn’t stand up to the critical eye I give it today. If I had access to the resource of this forum back in the day, I would be a far better writer now than I was then. But it would have taken someone telling me of my early pieces, “I lost interest at about line four.” I would hope that they would tell me WHY they lost interest, because that’s something I could take action with. But the feedback would be necessary to me, and I wouldn’t expect them to plough through the rest of the work, however short, just to tell me that.

 

I suppose it’s more your phrasing. It never presents well to me when people on writing forums refer to the others as poor writers, you compounded it by seeming to position yourself as an expert on “normal”, which must be pretty special since it has quotes. So maybe not so normal?

We’ve all been there, being that writer of cringey stuff. Some are self aware enough to see it, some are not. But I don’t think asking people what story they are trying to copy, emulate, use as a template or even be inspired by is the way to go. I might enjoy certain type of story, but I am writing my version of that. I wouldn’t want people to critique me on the basis of another story. I’d be offended if they even asked. I’d like to be judged on my words alone and people can draw their own conclusions.

If what she wrote didn’t meet expectations, then just tell her. Ask generic questions like genre and audience. If she can’t understand the constructiveness of those questions, then there are bigger problems that I don’t think comparing her writing to a published piece will be any more constructive. It might be kinder to just tell her to read more to get a feel for what she likes.

 

I get where you're coming from, but it is helpful to the critic to know if you share a style or are aiming for a certain commercial style. I'm not especially well read, and I read almost nothing but recently published and first time authors, as well as big genre names like Roberts and Child. Sometimes I'll get a story to beta read and the sentences come off alright, but the whole thing seems dense or awkward or flowery, or old fashioned. If I say, is your writing like anyone's and they say, "Frank Herbert," and I ask, "do you mostly read classics, to which they say, "only classics," then I know that I'm dealing with someone who isn't going to find where I'm normally coming from useful.

 

There's no pleasure in the bear-baiting.

I mean you might draft the response and sometimes the finger slips. You have deconstructed some poor fellow suffering a mental health condition and the consequence is he posts dog shit to your home address. If you can't live with that well clean my porch..ehmm...where was I?

I dunno...it's always a pleasure to see pomposity pricked. I have to edge away from those threads occasionally - 'I am a great author and posted to the great publication. The editor rejected me personally which was a spectacular honour...testament to my drafting of a/the most complex elf mystery...'

shut up/vd

 

I'd rather people nitpick over the opening in the first three sentences thread than use that same mentality in the workshop. I didn't say it wasn't a valid critique I said according to the op he wanted to know about his characters. You can't figure out whether someone has gotten their character right in one sentence. And I don't know if reading on is forcing anything on anyone because a critique is of benefit to the critiquer as much as the critiqued.

 

My "phrasing" is trying to characterize a second hand conversation with someone who was writing at a 2nd grade level. And my suggestion in the case of dealing with someone who is so utterly out of their depth is to ask them for a bit of fiction that they feel is similar, of a close genre, that they would be proud to write like, etc and then be able to compare their prose point for point so they might see how even the way the words are placed on the page are unusually regular. repetitive, pedantic, etc. It is just a tool for giving someone who is having a heavy communication problem access to another way of self critique.

And I'm sorry, there is an objective standard to writing. Unless it is intended to be experimental and the writer has said so, it can be judged on the same standard as any English teacher would grade an expository writing assignment. Your touchy-feely denouncement of my use of the word "normal" does not forward this conversation. I'm sure you understood that I was referring to common, usual, customary, familiar or standard ways of writing story prose, but you dressed it up like I am bullying someone for writing different. Please just stop with that nonsense - you know perfectly well what I was talking about.


This is a difficult topic. It doesn't help to have people proclaiming their hypothetical offense when the clear intention is to avoid dismissing someone by providing an actual tool to help them.

 

Is it good or bad to post a critique that essentially says, "I couldn't read it."

The critiquer doesn't owe the writer anything at all but is answering the writer's call for assistance out of the goodness of their heart. So if a quick, general comment is all the input a critter cares to say about that particular piece, that's fine.

The same goes for anything else that particular critter sees fit to say about it (aside from a personal attack, obviously).

It's all nothing more than one person's opinion, which the writer requested to hear and is, in turn, 100% free to use or discard as they see fit. Some critiques are more useful than others but critters are at differing skill levels, just like writers, besides the issue of how much time the critter wants to put into any given piece.

 

Don't you think that people can ask the wrong questions about their piece?

For example, imagine me 70 pounds overweight, working out on an elliptical twice a week and lifting weights. I can do two pull-ups. My friend gives me a flyer for an eight mile race with 12 climbing or crawling obstacles. A month out, I'm still pounding beers and working out on the elliptical instead of running outside. Then I ask my friend: "I hit four pull-ups today. Is that good enough for the rock wall? Will my shoes stick to the track? How many water stations are there?"

What a friend would say is, "stop drinking energy drinks and start a jogging program."

Same with writing.

"How are my characters?"

"I think you meant to ask, 'can I say this in fewer words?'"

 

Nobody's ever going to get to know that character if the writing is so bad you give up after a few sentences.

"Do you think I overseasoned this soup?"

"The soup pot is on fire! Your kitchen is burning!"

"That's not an appropriate response. I asked if the soup is overseasoned."

 

@Fallow

So I’m now I’m writing nonsense because I don’t agree with your way of expression or approach? Not sure what was touchy feely either, but you seem to have all the words.

Also no, I don’t know what you mean. Maybe it’s you who should review your writing style and word choices? It comes across as hard to read and condescending. But I’ll leave you be, no doubt you’ll further demonstrate how you have such a strong grasp of the English language. I don’t think you’re a bully, I just find your comments disagreeable. But have a nice day.

 

Considering that the post you're complaining about is getting Liked and you're the only one objecting, I think it is unlikely that I'm the one in need of review.

The point of my posts, after all, was to provide a tool for teaching and avoid a condescending "this is unreadable". You just seem to be up-in-arms about even the suggestion of an out-of-the-box approach to the problem. And I think that is because you got offended instead of asking polite questions and giving the issue some thought.