Worst Criticisms You've Ever Received

That exactly sums up my own reason for writing, and my own philosophy about learning the craft. I want to tell a particular story the best way I can. That's probably the core of the advice we've all heard before : Write what you would want to read yourself.

 

I'm appalled to think of the experience you had. He should have been able to offer you some suggestions on how to improve whatever it was he didn't like. If he was unable (or unwilling) to do this, I question both his ability to offer feedback AND his motivation for doing so.

There is no writing that can't be improved. And there is also no writing that everybody is going to like.

My advice would be to simply forget everything he said. Everything. If he is still your friend, fair enough. However, don't fall into the trap of trying to write to please him.

Don't make an issue of it if you don't want to, but tell yourself you will NEVER let him read anything you write, ever again. By all means keep writing, and do go back to your project if you feel it has merit (and others apparently did as well.) See if you can find other people to beta read for you. Just cut him out of the process. And if he asks ...tell him you found his reaction so unhelpful, so devoid of anything constructive that you could use to improve, that you won't be giving him another shot at your writing in future. He's burnt that boat. You'll have articulated your confidence in yourself, and removed the power from him. Maybe HE will learn something?

 

I could fill this entire thread with trash review's i've recieved from haters and trolls.
But i'll be merciful and won't.

I've had readers reviews that have bashed my stories on everything from my taste in music, accusing me of being a 'retard SJW' because i had a fictional, alien race with no gender, accused me of pushing an agenda, and some that hated on my stories simply based on the title. On the TITLE. Because they didn't understand that the story was a satire of the Wuxia Genre, and as such, was meant to display the over-the-top titles the genre has.

I've been told to 'go to school and learn fucking common sense' because readers found it HARD to believe that a 800 POUND MINOTAUR could wield a HUMAN greatsword in one hand and a tower shield in the other.

 

Why does the word 'honest' so often get coupled with 'brutally' when it comes to a critique? Honesty doesn't have to be brutal at all. Just truthful. Truth doesn't need to come coupled with insult or dismissiveness or cruelty. Cruel to be kind? Well, that's okay when it's a last resort and the person is refusing to listen. However, I don't think it's all that great a tactic, when it's the first resort.

In giving any good critique, that initial reaction (love it, hate it, mehh...) is only the first phase. The second phase is where you explain specifically WHY you reacted the way you did. And then phase three is where you offer specific suggestions for improvement.

That's constructive criticism. Brutally honest doesn't come into it. Just honesty. And helpfulness.

........................

A review is different from a critique. A review can be 'brutal' ...although I'd hope it would also be honest. A review is made for a published book, and aims to help people decide whether to buy the book or not. It's not there to help the book's author improve. A review is public. Helpfulness isn't something that needs to be contained in a review, because the book has already been published and must be taken as it is. Unfortunately trolls do exist, and they love to give nasty 'reviews.' Nothing much you can do about them, except hope their 'review' will be so inane and ill-founded that nobody will take them seriously.

A critique is private feedback for a work in progress, and it should be aimed at helping the author improve the piece. It is intended only for the eyes of the writer (although it can often be read by others in the author's critique group or forum as well.)

 

I kinda wanted to start a thread on here about coaching writing. I heard someone online (and with one or two exceptions I think this holds true in my life) say that more experienced creative writing instructors are more forgiving about prose. People with none or close to no publications (like me) tend to shred prose, while the pros with 10-20 books are pretty relaxed about what students hand them. Why?

It has to have something to do with knowing what sort of feedback is applicable. Like a prize fighter who can only lift 300 pounds when his coach knows he needs to lift 450--the fighter isn't going to be happy if his coach puts him in front of a 450 pound weight and tells him to struggle with it.

Basically, is their polite honesty, and brutal honesty, and applicable feedback, and voluminous feedback that turns into noise?

 

I appreciate what you're trying to do, but wow, did you ever jump to some wild conclusions. I literally see this guy a few times a year, and never on purpose. A few years ago, I told him in casual conversation that I was pretty sure he was a sociopath, which is true. I put "friends" in quotes for a reason. I learned not to spend time with toxic people a long time ago. If we didn't have similar taste in movies and comics, we wouldn't have anything to talk about when forced into social situations by mutual old friends, and even then, we avoid each other as much as possible. In fact, the majority of our old friends can't stand him any more either. I mostly run into him at the bar these days, which is great, because we only have to talk for ten seconds, if that. I also don't spend much time at the bar these days, which is one of the reasons I barely see him. Where on Earth did you get "BEST friend" and "respect this guy's opinion above all others"? I mean, I guess I know where you got it. I could have included some of this stuff, but believe me there was no subtext. I'm a fairly self-aware person who, if anything, over shares, not under. I just didn't think an answer to this post needed a whole history attached. I really was just that fragile, apparently, and as I said, it wasn't the first time I abandoned that project for years at a time.

No. I don't admire bad people. I stopped being friends with people I couldn't admire morally way back in high school. It did take me a while to realize just how terrible he was, and while we were never that close, I still gave him a lot of chances over the years, thinking he'd outgrow it. He didn't. Everything else you said though was more or less spot on. I did want him to like my story, but should have known better. I believe he would have been mean no matter how good it was. I know he wishes he were the creative type, and I think he wanted me to feel bad. Actually, I know he wanted me to feel bad. I knew the criticism would be harsh, even though I asked him to go easy on me. I just didn't think he'd use the opportunity to strategically attack specific insecurities. Again, I should have known better.

I haven't written much in the last decade. Yes, this incident was a contributing factor, but it wasn't the biggest. I got serious about writing again about three months ago, but decided to make a fresh start instead of going back to that story. I've worked on it in bursts here and there for close to fifteen years, and it's a 20K word mess. I love it, but it's honestly a mess. I'm working diligently on a novella now that I hope to have through first draft phase in another month or so. I plan to get back to that earlier piece after I have something finished in publishable form, maybe even a few. When I feel ready to tackle it again, believe me, it will spend some time in the workshop. I think I can take it. The criticism I've received in there so far, even the stuff that hurt my feelings, was constructive and genuinely useful. Mostly.

 

You're awesome. Punch away.

 

This is the guy that is so hard to write into a story. He's supposed to be part of the protag team but is more damaging than the antag.

Study him, and let us all know what you found out.

 

Absolutely. He may be friendship lead (as in metal), but he's story gold.

 

You sound like you're just a nice guy who wanted to believe the best in people - it's a good quality. Hold on to it! I'm so glad to hear you're definitely still writing and definitely don't hang out with that guy anymore. I seem to think I've read your stuff in the workshop before - were you the one who used to have a Naruto avatar? Or was that someone else? Because if that was you, I remember liking your stuff. I'm not sure I ever critiqued it much 'cause I never saw many flaws in it.

We're supposed to love our mess. And we all start with thin skin and it thickens over time, and it sounds like the Workshop has trained you well in this regard I'm looking for beta readers soon if you ever wanted to swap stuff to critique! (I write fantasy with romance)

 

One woman said she wanted my main character to be raped. :| It didn't deter me or upset me but it was very WTF. She charitably offered to keep reading my chapters because she wanted to know what happened, but for some bizarre reason, I declined.

If someone is spiteful or tries to bring you down, the best revenge is to get that manuscript well-published. Use it as fuel.

 

I can't imagine why you declined such a charitable offer.

She sounds like one of those people who wants you to have written the kind of story SHE would have written (if she could only write.)

That's actually a hard one to deal with sometimes. Folks may be well-meaning, but they want your basic story to change. At first, as an author, you might be tempted by, or even derailed by their suggestions. But as soon as you realise people want your characters to do something you KNOW they wouldn't do ...that's when to call a halt to the process. Either that, or have a close look at why they took this tack. Was it an attitude or preconception they brought to the story themselves? Or is there something in the story that led them to expect certain things? It can be a hard one to nail, especially if the person basically likes your story, but only on the condition that you change a part of it.

Changing how something is written is one thing. Changing what you're writing about is something else. Both can change, of course, but only if you, the author, sees merit in the change.

 

There's definitely a steep learning curve, both in learning how to GIVE critique and in how to TAKE it. I know when I first started, my natural response was to do everything critiquers suggested and change everything they didn't like. And then I started getting the (now familiar) situation where two critiquers said the exact opposite. I learned pretty fast that you have to evaluate feedback.

It's good practice. Agents, editors, and readers will all have completely contradictory reactions, too.

 

It's still January, but I got a valentine already!

 

I can only think of two truly terrible critiques. One was when I was 17 and excitedly telling my dad about the plot for my first nanowrimo project. Honestly it was the medieval werewolf version of twilight and sooooo bad looking back but I was so excited to be working on another long project since I'd set aside my first novella a year previous after two years of writing and a year of revisions. Also at the time this was my first long piece since the day I wanted to kill myself in 2009 (which my dad didn't find out about until...oh...April of 2017). So kind of a huge step in getting back to a place I was comfortable. Anyway, point is this was big for me and I'm excitedly telling him about it because, well, he's my dad and he asked what it was about. To which he, rather derisively, replies "Ugh, werewolves, you have so much creativity, why go with werewolves?"

Looking back, should I listen to a man who only watches spy thrillers and superhero movies and hates werewolves and vampires on principle and therefore never has anything kind to say about werewolves and vampires in fiction? No. But in 17 year old me's defense, he is my dad. Still he made working on that piece almost impossible because he made me feel like I wasn't applying myself to the best of my abilities.

The other terrible critique was "I didn't realize your main character was a guy." said by a guy 3 pages into a first person narrative about a scribe in a medieval setting. To date he is the ONLY person who has said that. I tried rewriting that beginning a million different ways to make it clear my narrator/MC is a guy but they never worked as well as that original opening so I just set it aside for now. I do wonder if author bias had anything to do with it because this was done in person and I had a very feminine appearance that day.


On the flip side I did give some initially very unhelpful comments in a beta read I did last fall. Normally if I don't like something I don't bother leaving a review or comment but since it was a beta read I felt I had to say something when I didn't like something in addition to just singing praises and cooing over my favourite character (who wasn't given a name for three or four chapters so I just kept calling him "Draco" because he's blond). There was this one character I just...from his first appearance I did not like him and every time he entered a scene I would just go "This guy's not dead yet?" or "Ugh, this guy again" and his scenes were just littered with comments like "stop talking" or "get away from my son/MC" depending on which of the two he was near at the time. At the same time I did message the author and go "I feel bad that I hate this guy because I can't figure out why I hate him so I'm going to sit down and figure out why I hate him." To which the author said they planned to ask around to see if there was a consensus of dislike for this character and gave me a tiny future spoiler that they'd already written his death scene. After about a day I was able to get back to the author with a more articulate reason which was that the character reminded me of Dumbledore, came across as very manipulative and "ends justifies the means except when my pawn is disobeying me" and that this character was basically a walking trigger for me because I had grown up in a house with a Dumbledore like person who also mentally abused me and I was only able to figure a lot of that out through critiques of Dumbledore's character. Based on the message I got in response to that, the author hadn't even realized they were doing that with the character. Either way after I realized what my problem with the character was, I was able to step back and reserve all comments related to him to only MAJOR issues (like don't go accusing the asexual lead of not being human just because she doesn't feel compelled to have sex with the part-incubus character who is also your son-figure!)

 

The harshest critique I ever received was the one I needed to hear the most. Sure, to read this critique hurt (and still hurts after about two years of having received it) but the person pointing this particular flaw out was right. Conversely, after reading this critique I got determined to correct this mistake; to 'prove' to this critiquer that I can make it right, even if this person probably never will read something from me again. And I am glad that it still hurts, because I want to remember my determination. I owe it to my story and to myself.

 

There is always two people that read your kindle for free and didn't like it. Why didn't they stop at chapter one?
Who are these guys and why do they wait until chapter 35 to be totally disgusted?
That’s like eating a three-course meal and complaining during desert.

 

Lots of readers find it very hard to not-finish a book, probably because we tend to think of books as precious. Like many of us are taught that wasting food is heinous, even if we aren't enjoying the meal.

I decided a while ago that there are too many good books out there for me to waste time on ones I don't enjoy. I now give it a few chapters and bye bye.

 

But if I was eating it specifically to critique it, it would be difficult to give the entire meal a fair assessment if I skipped most of it just because I wasn't fond of the entree.

 

I figure that if you can please 10% of the people who pick your work up oh, you got a bestseller. A critique is only one person's opinion. Take it as such. I like to read all the critiques ,and Consider all the critiques but I do
n't really consider it a problem until I got two of them that says the same thing.

 

If you have no faith in this person, then by all means dismiss the criticism. But there are a few things you said here that make me think you might want to give his response SOME attention.

The one that jumped out at me was this:

This was a lesson I had to learn the hard way—although, fortunately for me, the person giving a similar critique was a kindhearted and helpful person, with several novels under his belt already. He discovered a similar issue that didn't make sense to him, and when I tried to explain what I'd meant, he said, "You're not going to be standing over your readers answering their questions. The things they need to know must be there in the writing itself."

The fact that the explanation IS there in the writing itself doesn't matter, if people don't notice it.

If anybody gives me this kind of criticism, I go back to the problem point and see if I can make the point more strongly. Sometimes even a sentence or two, to make that point stick, is enough. A stronger image can help. Even if some of your readers got it the first time, it doesn't hurt to ensure that more of them get it by making the point more visible.

If your critique-giver is one of those people who sticks to 'unbreakable rules' then yeah, you can go ahead and break them without paying too much attention to his objections. (Like I ignore people who say they 'never' read prologues, etc. It's no reflection on my prologue, if they never read prologues.) However, if your critique-giver had a problem with you switching between first and third person narration in that particular story, perhaps it's not just prejudice? Maybe see if you can make the transitions easier. Maybe he just didn't adjust to being yanked from one kind of perspective to the other. Maybe see what you can do to ease those jumps?

I feel that criticism is helpful if it makes you look at your writing a different way. Don't be too defensive, although I know from experience that defending what you write is almost a knee-jerk reaction! But if you can swallow that impulse, you'll likely see areas that actually can be worked on and improved.

Again, though, if you feel this person was attacking you for personal reasons, or was on some weird ego trip, there is no need to spend much time worrying about what he said. But don't dismiss what he said because it wasn't what you hoped to hear.

 

"This reads like some Emo-teen girl with suicidal tendencies wrote this," - Me, reviewing work I wrote in '99. Yeah, had to make fun of it to get through it.