I have been there, but it was more just cringe than emo. Though it was more edgey than anything. Still have it as example of what not to do.
Oh... Cringe to the max was this story Emo and Cringe. I think you can access it through the Wolfe's Den Discord Server. Edit: Oh, absolutely. It makes an important base for the rewrite I did which was 1000x better and yet still needs to be rewritten once more.
Oh, gotcha... I have some of those as well. But I am basically developing and rewriting all my works.
If you seek out criticism and feedback, that's what you're going to get and the majority of the time (at least for me) it's not what I was hoping for. I would like everyone who reads my work to tell me I'm brilliant. And why not? I tried my hardest. I worked and reworked it. But we often our too close to see flaws and it's important to know how your work is being received. There is a reason why the writer isn't allowed to speak while their work is being discussed in most writing workshops. Even the best defense doesn't make a piece of writing any better than it is. I've been in a lot of workshops and seen more than one classmate actually breakdown in tears. Criticism is tough to take. It's much easier to blame the person who provided the critique rather than admit our best efforts might not be cutting it. But it's important to take in whatever feedback you're getting and think of how you might change things or approach things in a different way that might produce a different type of response. If you want to know what people think of your writing, you have to know how to handle it and process it. Usually, even the harshest of feedback has some truth to it. A lot of people say they want brutal honesty. That's not the approach I take. I'm honest, but I think there is a lot in the delivery. Still, I'm sure some people have just disregarded what I've had to say because it wasn't the reaction they were hoping for or expecting. Somebody took the time to read and respond to you. They weren't doing so to cut you down or waste their time. I think the worst criticism I've received was probably spot on, but that doesn't mean it's what I wanted to hear. It's what you, as the writer, do with any feedback that will or won't make a difference.
Worst criticism I've ever received was a single line of text. I can't decide whether the worst thing about it was that the guy somehow expected me to be able to improve from a single line, or that he included the word "dude". I will say this - it was inspirational. "dude, this reads like someone took a stephen king novel, ate it and shat it out again." I kind of like it, in a weird way.
There's only a few times where I felt like I was getting someone's brutalness as a counter treatment. I think they thought I'd nit-picked their work unfairly so they cracked their knuckles and eagerly returned the 'favor'. The difference was I liked their genre. And I read their genre so I thought some of my comments were harsh but fair. And I was certainly more encouraging. I don't think they particularly liked my genre and constantly told me - even when I didn't ask - I'd never read this.
Just wanted to add that I think a writer can do is get defensive. You can justify your writing and your decisions all you want, but as many know we're not always the best judges of our own writing. I was in a workshop once where the professor told me I had a really great opening. That was about the only thing he thought was worth salvaging and suggested that opening needed a different story. Basically, he was telling me I wrote the wrong story. And this was a story I worked very hard on. It was hard to take that a half dozen sentences was the only really decent thing I had done in a 20-25 page story. I rewrote it and rewrote it in search of the right story, but nothing seemed to work. But I aways came back to the beginning and really had to ask myself what I had done right there and how I failed to keep it going. I just couldn't get it to work. Then a few years later, still thinking about that story, I started my novel. It didn't hit me at first, but then I figured out that what had worked (those few lines) would work in my novel. It totally changed the course of the novel and I didn't use those exact lines. But I put a few of those characters into a different story and a different form. My novel isn't finished, but I've got a good amount of it down. It's nothing like any of the short story versions I attempted, but this criticism got me thinking of what if anything was really worth saving. The answer is not much, but it did take me in a new direction. Not sure if my novel will be better than any of the short story attempts with this piece, but if it is, well, then it was worth hearing that 95 percent of my short story was trash. And I didn't quite see it then, but I do now. Critique, criticism and feedback aren't going to make you any better unless you can start to see what in your work triggered the sort of response it did. And if that's not something you can do or are willing to do, it's probably just best to have your mom read it.
First time anything I ever wrote appeared on glossy paper - the sub-editor - a professional sub-editor deleted 35% of what I sent to her. She produced a brilliant article.
You produced it. It's just that most editors no how to elevate a piece in ways the writer misses. My published work has gone through some heavy editing with editors. And it has always been better for it.
What I hated was the 'however' letters they wouldn't say what was wrong it was just However your manuscript is not suitable at this time. I must have gotten six of those from Omni.
That's far from any criticism on your writing. That's just a form. I've gotten hundreds of them. I don't really take it as any sort of criticism on my writing or try not to. Six of those, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Forms suck. Rejection sucks.
Quoting the whole thing because snipping is hard. I'll start with your last--There are only two things I'm dismissing out of hand in all of his unnecessarily harsh critiques. First, his thing about 'lol, why's he gotta be white', and second, 'never switch between 1st and 3rd POV'. I've already explained why I object to the former, but I've done 'research' into the latter and it seems to have been done before. I can't think of any books I've read where it goes between types of POV, but the absolute worst book I ever read POV-wise was in all first person where all the characters sounded the same. At the top of each chapter was the name of the person narrating, and i remember having to go back and check the name frequently. I didn't want to be that book (was it No More Dead Dogs?), so I didn't want to do all first person. I also felt a drive to have the MC in first person, given that his journey is an internal one. It feels more personal, especially during the anguished scenes. I don't know that my critiquer is much of a reader, and he's definitely not an editor by trade, so his 'never' and 'always' have less weight than they might from someone on this website. My point is that going into this, I wanted the MC to be first, but I din't want everyone to be 1st. Everyone I've had read it (all six people, besides him) I've asked if the switch between POVs is a problem, and they said they barely noticed it. It seemed like he was objecting to it as a concept, rather than in practice. 'It might be confusing' and 'I was confused' are two different sentences, to my mind, and I think they ought to be considered as such. Having said that, almost everything else he said was at least in the vicinity of valid--just unreasonably harsh. It did give me things to think about, although a fair chunk of what he brought up was word repetition and character consistency.
This would be an issue even in third person. I think you would be able to change the voice. I.E. sentence length, slang, syntax and a few other tricks to keep their voices apart. I had to do that in a first person novel and it was a learning curve for me.
Many, many years ago I was taking a mail-in writing course, and the first teacher I had was amazing. She was great at pointing out flaws, what worked, what didn't, what needed just a bit of tweaking, etc. When I received my first story back from her, my heart sank at the sight of all the marks and notes across the pages, but her critiques were done in such a teachable way that I didn't see any of the future marked up papers as a negative. She was a great teacher and I credit her for helping me learn the basics of writing stories or articles. Unfortunately she retired and the next teacher wasn't very good. My papers came back with marks and notes across pages, but they never taught me anything. "Change this", but how, why? "This paragraph doesn't work, take it out" okay, but why not? And that paragraph explains the MC's motivation later, without it the MC's behavior later is totally out of left field. Small things like that. It was rough, but I had the other teachers explanations and examples to fall back on and plowed through. Until one assignment. In that story I had the MC experience an event based on a real life event that had happened to me, and my MC grew as a person due to this experience just as I had. I worked hard on that story because it had special meaning to me. I made sure the grammar, sentence structure, everything was perfect. I had an English teacher I knew read it (and gave me good advice on some things, but overall said it was close to being publishable), and once I had the story as perfect as I could, I sent it in. She trashed it, said it wasn't good enough for a middle school writing project. No explanations on why it was awful or how I could improve it to make it less bad. She went through it and pointed out everything wrong with it (there were a few scattered legit wrong things, but not enough to warrant her response), her notes on certain paragraphs just made things worse, one being "this isn't realistic, no one would ever respond in this way" -- when it was exactly how I had responded to the situation. She never pointed out just one good thing about the story. It felt like she had personally slapped me and sad to say I did let it get to me as a writer. I dropped the course and didn't write stories again for several years. I tried getting into writing again a few years ago, but that didn't last long, although not because of horrible critiques. Life just got in the way. So now I'm trying to get back into writing again, hopefully this time I can get something finished!
When a person can't tell you why, it's because they don't know why. They have no business critiquing, let alone grading, because they don't understand the process or the medium. They can't even express their own thoughts in words, which is more or less the exact definition of writing. I'm sorry that happened. I would tell you to blow it off, but that's actually not something I'm very good at myself. I can say it gets somewhat easier though. I'm in a similar boat, returning after a long hiatus and making a serious go at it for the first time. Here's to better luck for both of us this time around!
Never had a Naruto avatar, but we have crossed paths. Most significantly for me, you gave me some advice on the outline to my current MC back around November. I don't know if you'd remember. It's a sci-fi thriller about a couple who wakes up with amnesia after a viral apocalypse. You were very encouraging, but you also said something about seeking organic solutions to the issue I was having, which led me to abandon the course I was on and take that particular element back to the drawing board. I was looking for specific suggestions, but your assessment was far more useful than that. I ended up fixing a myriad of problems as a result. I'd love to trade betas. It sounds like you may be ready for a read before I am, but I'd love to take a look at yours in the mean time. PM me!
I had a biology teacher that use to irk me because he would make corrections on answers to his essay questions. Essay questions bother me anyway in science classes, I think they should be straight multiple choice, and why is this science teacher correcting grammar, but anyway...I got my revenge one day on the correct usage of "principal" vs "principle" and all he could do was get defensive and say he knew that and give me my point back (this is like regression therapy, this is the first time in many decades that I remembered that he was actually subtracting points for the mistakes).
Such "teachers" have no business in teaching. It's actually one thing keeping me in school - I'd like to be in a place where I'm ready to protect these children and give then the encouragement they need. There's one such kid in my class now and I've really taken to him. Honestly he's just a cool kid, but a pain to teach, so I can't blame the teacher's frustration with him. But it just makes me all the more want to shower him with positive attention, show him he's kinda awesome and smart and funny and I hope he feels that way, and knows it too, one day. Anyway, a teacher has no business trashing her students' work. Sure, maybe the work is crap (not talking about yours - just a hypothetical piece of work). Well that's why they're bloody here, isn't it? To learn, and it's your job to teach them! It's never a fault to not know something. A fault not to learn, for sure, but a lack of knowledge where the knowledge hasn't been provided isn't a fault on the students' part. (I'm into shared responsibility though - I don't buy into the British/American nonsense of "There's no such thing as a bad student, only bad teachers." I'd like people who say that to try and teach primary school) Anyway, sorry this happened to you If it's any consolation, supposedly, Shakira's music teacher told her not to waste time on singing because she sounds like a goat and we all know the ending to that story!
'Okay for a first draft' That was my Dad! The human who's supposed to adore everything his daughter creates! Gah!!! I was devastated. It wasn't a first draft at all. It was a second draft. Note: I haven't really shared much of my writing.
I actually got one of the harshest critiques I’ve ever gotten the other day, and it was on a piece that had already been workshopped and I feel confident about. Anyway, there was a historical inaccuracy in my secondary world fantasy that made this person say to himself, “this writer is a fucking idiot.” Once that happened, the critic started skimming, missing things, then complaining they weren’t there, and growing more frustrated by how illogical it all was. I still have a hard time reading that kind of feedback, but I want to because I know there are legit complaints in it. Probably won’t though.
It points out that people giving critiques should be familiar with your genere. There's nothing worse than getting criticism from a person less knowledgeable than you, on anything. I once received telephone cover on something I wrote just after the first school shooting in the USA that got any national attention, Jonesborro, Arkansas, (Columbine had not happened yet but would soon after) and I made mention of how that inspired something I had wrote and she said "I hadn't heard about that story, I don't get it). It had been on the news wall to wall for a whole week. Well, I didn't give anything SHE was saying much importance after that because unfortunately I thought she was an idiot after that).
One thing I still struggle to understand is why people expect fiction to be so "logical"? Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I always thought the definition of fiction or fantasy always meant that it's not true? Make believe or made up like superman? Avengers anyone? Where is the logic in those? But why does it HAVE to be so on point accurately logical I just don't get it. I read to escape to another non logical world and if I want logic there are plenty of non fiction or historical type books out there too, which I also enjoy sometimes.
If a critic started skimming, missing things that are there and complaining things that are there supposedly weren't, then this is not someone whose feedback I'd care to read. Save yourself the heartache. What on earth makes you think someone who didn't even give you the courtesy of reading it properly would have anything of value to say? If there's a major flaw, someone else would pick up on it and tell you. If it's nothing important, then the heartache of getting through the feedback isn't worth it. I don't subscribe to the idea (that's very popular amongst writers, it seems) that just because someone gives you critique, you have to thank them for it. You're allowed to say that feedback was shit. You're allowed to defend yourself. You're allowed to give your reasons for why or why not and make conversation about it. Just because you asked for help doesn't mean it's a free pass for someone else to be mean, and then for the mean person to slap you in the face and expect a grateful "thank you". I don't agree with self-flagellation when it comes to writing. Listen intently to those who are genuine about helping you, even if their feedback is harsh, even if they say everything is crap - but if they come from a place to help, listen intently. But someone who's already branded you an idiot over a trivial thing and who won't even read your work properly and then trashes it? Screw them. I wouldn't bother.
Sure, I get where you’re coming from. I do have some compassion for harsh critics. It’s just a symptom of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, bolstered by the fact that they are in a superior position from being asked for help. They can’t know their advice is bad and are excited to be given the authority of advice giver, which many people crave, so they tear in. Bonus points for giving worse than they got from the last critique of their work. Double word score if you read their work and didn’t gush over it, so their chance to critique you is really about social hierarchy and dominance. A lot of it is silly. But I always feel really lucky when I meet a good critique partner.
