The Arrogance of Judgment · 1:45pm Feb 6th, 2014
I wrote this in response to LunaUsesCaps' blog over here; I liked it and I've been pretty quiet here lately, so I thought I'd post it here too.
On a philosophical level, I agree with you. Words put to paper (or disk) have some intrinsic worth, simply because they are the attempt of one human being to connect to another in some way.
On another, more realistic level? My time is valuable, and Sturgeon's Law is a thing. If I only have time to read one story a week, why would I waste it on a story where the author couldn't be bothered to take the time to run spellcheck, or develop their characters in a realistic way? Both are important, though one is technical and one is more subjective -- failure on either count will break immersion, taking the reader out of the story. This is at best laziness; at worst, actively rude and disrespectful, to the reader and the source material.
There are endless debates and endless opinions on what makes a "good" story. That's why there isn't just one publishing house in the real world; different works with different strengths have different audiences, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no true way to grade a story's aesthetic quality, but we can judge a story on technical quality. And I do so, and feel no qualms about closing out of a story when there's a glut of typos in the first paragraph. That story did not deserve my time.
It's sort of like the idea of a four-year degree being "necessary" in the workforce. In the majority of cases, a four-year degree is wholly unnecessary for any given job. But HR departments need some way to filter the flood of incoming resumes, and when they look at two otherwise identical resumes and one has a degree and the other doesn't, they know something about the person with the degree: that applicant has proven that they're capable of taking on a big multi-year project and coming out the other side successfully. They're willing to be at the same place at the same time every day and do their work. Presumably they've developed the ability to balance school/work and a personal life. These may all be true of the guy without the degree too, but HR has no way of knowing that for sure, and hiring someone is an investment of resources that you'll never get back. You need to be as sure as you can that you're hiring the right person. And resumes with degrees get priority over those without. (Resumes with typo-riddled cover letters coming from misspelled email addresses never even make it into the pile.)
When I'm browsing a fic list, if I see a typo in the cover letter description (or gods forbid, the email title), it doesn't matter how interesting the resume story might sound; I'm not clicking through. I've learned something about that author: they don't really care. They aren't willing to put the same effort into writing a story that I'm going to put in to reading it. If they can't be bothered to proofread their damned summary, how good could their story possibly be?
The technical quality of an author's writing matters. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, all of it exists for a reason – to help them bridge the gap between the author and the reader, and to ensure nothing is lost in translation. I see no reason to invest my limited time in a story if it doesn't appear that the author has invested any time in making it readable. If an author has trouble with this, there are so many places for them to get help with it, they have no excuse except laziness.
High technical quality is no guarantee of a good story. But it is a guarantee that the author is trying their best, doing everything they can to present themselves and their work in the best light. And an author who goes over their story multiple times, reading and re-reading and ironing out those little errors -- and hopefully gets a prereader or three to do the same -- has a much higher chance of identifying other, deeper storytelling flaws than an author who shits something out in ten minutes and pastes it into the submit box.
What more authors need to understand is that there's a difference between writing for fun -- throwing words at the wall and seeing what sticks, just for the hell of it -- and taking writing seriously. There is nothing wrong with either of these activities. But the groups you're railing against are taking writing seriously, and are targeting the readers and authors who also take writing seriously. If you don't want to write seriously, that's absolutely fine! But don't expect to get your work published on Equestria Daily or inducted into the Royal Canterlot Library or featured by the Royal Guards.
Now, if you like writing, don't let anyone – not the Royal Guard, not the prereaders at EqD, not anyone – stop you from writing. Even if your work isn't popular, or is actively criticized, if you genuinely like it and are happy with it and enjoy doing it then don't stop. I met an author at Canterlot Gardens who's never posted a single word of his stories online, was in fact somewhat surprised to discover that I ran sites dedicated to fanfic; he's got notebooks full of ponyfic because he likes writing them, and that's good enough for him. There's something very Zen about that, I think, something to be admired.
There's a quote commonly attributed to Abraham Lincoln that resonates with me in its simplicity, and its application to every aspect of one's professional and personal life. It applies to hobby fanfic authors just as much as world leaders or brain surgeons.
"Whatever you are, be a good one."
Your story about the guy with the notebook reminds me of an encounter of my own. Please forgive me while I take off my old man reading glasses, lean back in my rocker, and begin rambling on about the distant past.
It was, I think, about twenty years ago when I ran into the writer inside of a small bookstore. He was approaching the customers, introducing himself as the author of two books, which he went on to describe with such enthusiasm and excitement that I couldn't help but be caught up in it a little bit, myself.
He was offering a deal: if I bought one of his books, the second was going to be thrown in for free. So, with a shrug, I decided to take a chance on it.
The books were... not good. Not good at all. The occasional spelling problem was eclipsed by the consistently awkward grammar, poor pacing, and unbelievable reactions of his characters as he shoehorned them into situation after situation.
Needless to say, he was self-published. But I remember that enthusiasm, that happiness he displayed. "Here is my book, and I think it's great!"
Good for him. Seriously, I mean that.
I wrote him a letter telling him that I thought it was great that he wrote two complete novels, but that he would greatly benefit from hiring an editor in the future if he wanted to be more than just personally successful. I never heard back, but I'm hoping that he kept up the writing. For himself, if for nobody else.
Thank you for standing up. Really, that sums up what I have to say that'd be useful - thank you for speaking from the other side.
I want to agree with you, because I take a great deal of care in my writing. I have 3 editors, I have a team of trusted prereaders.
But all that effort will never be enough. EQD and the Royal Guard don't want technical skill, they want to dictate how you write, what's important to your story and what isn't.
Let's look at a painting for a moment.
presentportraitblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/mona_lisa.jpg%3Fw%3D581%26h%3D878
This is clearly a work of art. But look there, over her shoulder, that background only serves to draw attention away from that enigmatic smile. We should focus the image more to only show what's important to the painting!
snag.gy/9OT0l.jpg
There we go, no wasted space. Who cares about the original artist's intent. This is better.
1802592
Let's not forget that the mona-lisa was supposed to be a part of a much bigger painting which was simply never finished.
I'll take a quote from somebody not quite so famous. He's a character in the movie 'Rattatouile' from Pixar:
"In many ways the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and themselves to our judgement. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face; is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."
1802592
Do they? I can't really speak to EqD -- two years ago I would have absolutely agreed with you, based on my perception of the prereading team there at the time, but I haven't kept up/paid attention to them much since. As for the Royal Guard, that hasn't been my impression at all. Like many other groups, they are attempting to call out quality work. Unlike many other groups, they are also attempting to make it as transparent a process as possible, with public guidelines and thoughts on what contributes to quality. Everyone I've spoken with there agrees that their documentation aren't rules, but guidelines -- good authors can and do "break the rules".
Rules are there for a reason. In English, they provide the foundation of our communication, an agreed-upon standard to make sure everyone's on the same page and understanding each other. Most importantly, they're there to make you think, often very hard, before you break them, with deliberate thought and intent behind that decision.
1802611
It's a nice sentiment, and again I agree philosophically. But in the real world, I just don't have the time, energy, or wherewithal to trudge through a bunch of junk. I rely on various methods of separating the wheat from the chaff, and the best method to my mind is critical review from those who put dedicated thought into it.
I agree with you, to a certain extent. Spell-checking and a basic understanding of formatting (including grammar) is totally necessary for taking a story seriously.
But in my personal experience, EqD requires grammar above and beyond what's necessary for good storytelling, to the point where they reject perfectly readable stories based on it. Things like commas vs semicolons, em dashes vs hyphens, or the typeface used to denote a character yelling aren't going to seriously affect any reader understanding the story. The occasional run-on sentence is sometimes just as important to an author's style and the way they want to the story to read as the occasional sentence fragment, both of which are common in published fiction. Any group looking for good fiction that can't look past these things has spent too much time reading style manuals and not enough time enjoying a story.
And that's not even going into what 1802592 pointed out about style requirements, which are even more subjective. I totally agree with him on that.
Of course, the answer to this is that if you have a problem with any of it, simply ignore the venue. But I'd find EqD, at least, a lot more relevant if they were more interested in finding good, readable stories, and less interested in being the comma police.
(I can't speak for the Royal Canterlot Guard, since I haven't had dealings with them yet.)
1802658
From the Royal Guard responses:
They do want to dictate what and how you write your story. I wrote my story in this fashion for a reason, and if they won't feature it because they don't agree with that reason then what good are they? Isn't it supposed to be my story? Not 'as directed by'?
I'm not saying you should slog through all the crap, but if you only look at stories with perfect grammar you're going to be left with... maybe a dozen? Mistakes happen everywhere, and a misplaced comma in my third paragraph shouldn't be enough for you to go 'fuck it I'm out' Because that just makes you an elistist prick.
Is my story perfect? No, I'm sure it has a lot of flaws; but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading.
Okay, I'm just going to throw my two cents in here and be outright. People may get on my case about it, but I'm going to say it anyway:
It's fanfiction. It's not supposed to be held as classic or exemplary literature. People often take it way too seriously, EqD among them. And I've seen both EqD and you, in fact, hold stories like those in high esteem. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but for example let's use my story The Pony in my Pocket, which was featured both on EqD and in your Vault. Despite the fact that it's gotten such acclaim, it's not written that well. It comes from a time when I was still trying to shape my skill. It's full of stylistic inconsistencies, continuity errors, historical inaccuracies, spelling mistakes, fragmented sentences, and the like...and yet it was such a hit.
I don't mean to sound so self-defeating or arrogant, but I'm just pointing that out. Anyway, I just don't think that fanfiction should be taken so seriously.
I read both your blogpost and LunaUsesCaps' and... I'm torn inside, because I agree with both of you (though definitely not with the way (s)he attacked you in the comments)! How is that even possible?
Though, perhaps I'm just being an egoistical prick who would like to follow your rules when reading someone else's work and have others follow LunaUsesCaps' set when they read the pathetic crap I've written.
Have I ever told you that I love you, RBDash? Because I do.
I would provide a much more insightful comment of my own, but I'll have to save it for when I have time. It'll probably manifest as a blog post though. Either way, I completely agree with you and that resume analogy was great. I believe LUC's blog had his heart in the right place, but was misguided in his explanation. I believe your words narrowed the scope a little of what he had to say.
1802870
Are you either? I thought the group was supposed to showcase good stories. I had three editors and two grammar specialists help me out on the story, and none of them saw any problems with the scenes I wrote.
My example specifically? My story isn't about Celestia's search for mortality, and doesn't contain Pinkie at all. I have read your omnibus, and don't think that I violated any of the rules therein. If you were asking me about this while I was still writing that chapter, and I had actually asked for your advice, then I would consider it; but it's not, and you're not.
I didn't submit the story to TRG saying: "Here, please tell me how I can change it to please you." But rather: "Here is my story, I think it is good enough to be in your group."
"missing commas between independent clauses with coordinating conjunctions."
Yet... you, or at least the pre-readers, did. Which is fair enough. Grammar mistakes I am perfectly willing to fix, and I did go through the entire story with somebody who knows his grammar better than me to fix those. After that, he went through it again on his own, because I asked him to, and told me that there were none left that he could find. Yet, the very next reply from TGR proof-readers were a bunch more 'grammar mistakes' which I call 'stylistic choices' that needed to be fixed.
Again, you, or the pre-readers did. Like I said before, I didn't submit my story to the group to be told how I should change it to appease them, I submitted it because I think it was good enough as it was. (barring said grammar mistakes)
And yet, I am told that if I ever want to get into the group, I need to drastically alter my story. Because what I've written is apparently not good enough.
You're describing the group as being the place I had hoped it would be, yet my experiences simply paint a different picture.
1802662
I don't have any particular disagreements with you, here. My mantra is always that rules are there to make you think before you break them, and you should have a reason for doing so. Sentence frags/run-on sentences have their time and place, to be sure. But it takes a skilled writer to break these rules well, with purpose behind them.
Absolutely.
1802706
I honestly hate the attitude "it's just fanfiction," implying that fanfic is somehow lower or lesser than "real fiction." There's no reason a ponyfic can't be as well-written as a novel I'd pick up at Barnes & Noble.
Pony in My Pocket also comes from a time when the fandom was younger. There was less fanfic, so standards were lower. As the years have gone on and the amount of fanfic available has exploded, filtering what's out that has grown more important.
1802745
For the record, LUC hasn't treated me poorly (or at all); my discussion here and there has been with other commenters, and we've made up, I think!
1802775
We do seem to keep being the same person... I'm gonna go with "transporter accident."
1802898 I did not mean to imply that fanfiction was somehow of less value than "real" fiction. However, I just think that some people take it way too seriously. It's supposed to be fun and casual, at least in my opinion. And you have to consider the fact that many authors on here aren't necessarily writers by trade or hobby, and that many may speak/type English as a second language.
Also, I think the attitude of the author reflects the work he puts out, and think that should be taken into account. To me personally, it doesn't matter if he's a brilliant writer; if he has a very poor attitude, then I will not respect him or his work. I will not blame those who think of me in the same way, as well.
1802898
Both our names start with an R and end in two-digit numbers which themselves end in seven. There must be seven more of us somewhere.
1802898
You're right, of course. A slight nickname reading error on my part.
In the interests of symmetry, I will post my reply to your comment here, too:
I could not possibly agree with you more, RBDash.
If you love doing something, then it's worth putting a little effort into it. Frowning at mistakes that even the cruddy spellcheckers on most word-processor programs - or even the system on this very website - would easily catch isn't elitist; it's an expression of distaste at sheer laziness.
Hiding behind the flashy mantle of ART~! doesn't absolve one of all responsibility to put in at least a token effort, nor does it give shoddy, half-assed work any inherent meaning or value. If you want readers to care, YOU have to care. And that means making your work the very best that it can be.
And if something you write DOES turn out to be full of errors, you don't get righteous and defend your massacre as masterpiece. You don't rail against the elitist snobs who fail to recognize your rebel genius. You accept polite, earnest criticisms, blush prettily, and learn to improve.
Anything less makes the following "artistic" statement: I couldn't be bothered to try.
In closing, here's a little artistic backup for this viewpoint:
"If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius." - Salvador Dali
1802662
The difference with the Royal Canterlot Library is that we aren't open-submission. There's a story suggestion thread to give us pointers to things we might not otherwise see, but we chose deliberately to follow RBDash's model: it's things that we subjectively deem worthy, and the goal was to mitigate that subjectivity with a multi-reader voting/debate process, and with curators of high reputation.
I mention this because I have heard it said, and I agree, that the problem that EqD and now TRG are up against is in trying to create objective standards for quality. Because they are publically accountable for every decision they make, they're up against a double bind. If they give their prereaders carte blanche to subjectively decide story quality, then standards are arbitrary and (necessarily, because of the number of prereaders) unevenly applied. If their prereaders have specific style guides to judge stories against, without huge amounts of effort and training you don't often see in volunteers, they become the comma police.
I have a great deal of sympathy for that dilemma, and I'm glad we're able to sidestep it. The "we post what we like" model absolutely has its own issues, but at least it's an alternative, and it allows us to feature excellent work and dig into featured authors' minds without the perpetual drama of a public evaluation system.
... Actually, no it isn't.
People who don't are to be considered outright fools that deserve to be liquidated.
I would even so far to call them scum, considering that they write material that is all but worthless to the vast majority of us.
If you don't write for quality, don't bother writing in the first place, lest you bog down our time with useless banter.
And if your story is still sub-par even with your attempts to try and make a good story?
Shame on you.