The Novelty of Writing - 02 (Being A Critic)

One thing I want to say up front, is that this is not a self-help manual of any sort. What I write here is mostly for my own chuckles, and I take no responsibility for its usage, inclusion or adherence from anyone else. Basically what I'm saying, is that you should read at your own risk.

A few days ago, I happened to log in on the site here, and I noticed that there was a new blog post made concerning criticism and how to take it. I read the whole article a few times over; checking it against some of the forms and types of criticism that it's been my fortune to encounter, and I thought about offering my own snarky take on the subject.

One of the glaring things that I took from the blog piece was that as a writer you are expected to more or less stand there and take what ever the commenter/reviewer has to offer. We'll chalk this one up as collateral for being a writer, and being a writer on the internet. We want to write, and we want others to be able to read it, so as a purchase price for this liberty, we are expected to not only receive criticism, we are expected to tolerate all forms of it.

Maybe that's true, and maybe that's just a hard and fast rule. I won't argue that one. It's certainly no different anywhere else. I publish a book, the thing goes from my tender hands to the distributor, and from there it's like a baby turtle on its own in the vastness of the ocean. I say a mild prayer for its safety, and hope that when it comes back around it's survived the onslaught of its travels.

I read at length what a writer is not supposed to do. Don't delete comments, don't dismiss criticism, know your audience... etc, etc,. But the one thing that I would have liked to see in that blog post was something pertaining to the critics. It seems that as a writer we are always expected to do something, listen to something, adhere to something, and once again the readers get off scott-free. They get to offer advice, responses and praise or condemnation without any of the same restrictions that get placed on us writers. I think that's a bit unfair.

So, I'll offer some hard fast rules to the critics.

There are two types of criticism; constructive, and destructive. For the most part, the criticism that gets dished out is constructive. It's meant to help in some way. A good critic knows how to do this with effect, and get results. That's the key. As a critic you want to get results for your effort. Just like the writer that wants to get results from his writing.

First and foremost let me say that, a comment is not a critique. So all those comments that say nothing of importance are meant to be overlooked. “Here we go again. Another story about Princess Molestia. Let me get my motion sickness pills ready!” There is nothing constructive about that. It's not even destructive. It's subjective commentary based on user input that is personally affected by the subject matter. I'll get into subjective and objective later on, right now I want to talk about this constructive/destructive stuff.

Criticism that goes after flaws is not necessarily constructive either. If the goal of the critic is to solely find flaws, then congratulations, your search is over. My last novel sported something in the neighborhood of five hundred thousand characters/letters, and almost ninety thousand words. If just ten commas were out of place, then my margin of error would be somewhere around, 1/50,000. If there were only ten misspellings/typos, then my margin of error for whole words would be, 1/9,000. It is absolutely stupid to think that a writer can write nine thousand words and not have a typo.

Okay, so let's put this in proper perspective. Someone puts up a story on the site, and it's riddled with bad spelling, bad grammar, and awful word usage: criticize. They didn't put the effort into it; they may have even asked for a review: give it your best shot. But, let's suppose that someone puts up a story on the site, and they have had it checked for grammar and punctuation, and even spelling; and still there are a few typos. Well, finding them is kind of dumb. “Your story is really good. I liked it a lot. But I found a few typos for you. You should really watch that.” Well, if that's all you've found then, yippy. There are typos in almost every major publication. Your quest is over, you've pointed out a good writer's flaws, and made it look like you are a knowledgeable and competent grammar nazi... congrats.

As a critic, it is important to note when a writer has put forth the effort, and when a writer has not. Just like a writer has to be able to identify his target audience, a good critic needs to be able to identify a competent and worthwhile writer. Stories that are written from a freshly greased hand that just finished whacking it to clop, probably won't be worth the effort of reviewing. I can spot a story that was written on the fly, why can't the critics?

What I'm saying is; don't toss out a review for something, just because it's easy prey. That writer probably isn't interested in criticism—constructive or otherwise—and you'll have wasted your time even typing up a comment. I know it hurts, but sometimes you just have to let those go.

No one likes to be babied. A good writer knows that constructive criticism is going to sting from time to time. It's like a shot in the arm. It'll hurt for a minute, but later on it'll make them better. Bad critics like to inflict hurt on writers. Good critics won't break the needle off in the arm to get their point across. Realize that life is a series of constructions and deconstructions. Buildings get wrecking balls, not stories. It is not the job of the reviewer to destroy all novels. If that's the case, then you are an unsatisfied dickhole, and you should go find something that makes you and everyone else... less miserable.

A writer will usually frown at a comment that's only interested in finding the typos. If that's as far into the depth of the story as you've gotten, then it makes the writer assume that you didn't even read the story, you spent all of it looking for mediocre flaws. That's the wrong approach to criticism. As a critic, you approach something from the point of view that it's going to be good. You want it to be good. Then when it isn't, you explain why you didn't like it. You explain what was wrong with it that made for a bad reading experience. Sometimes it actually is just not a story for you. That doesn't mean it's a terrible fic, and that they should feel bad for writing it.

There's more to a story than just grammar.

Shocking isn't it? Well, it's the truth. A writer wants to know what you thought of the story as a whole. When I ask someone to tell me what they thought, I expect them to be able to tell me about such-and-such character; did the intensity of the story work as I expected; was the reveal a little too early; how about that fight scene? What we really don't care about at this phase in the story, is grammar.

Good writers have editors. We don't need the critics to be our editors. We want to know about the whole thing as an experience, not that He slammed his foot on the gas pedal, took off, and was gone! is a redundant sentence. Trust me, we know what a redundant sentence is. We know what show don't tell is. I could care less if you found my writing to be self-insert or weather report. Fragmenting a review to such a degree isn't actually helpful. It's annoying.

So many times on this site, it's been suggested that writers go read more books, and learn about the creative process. Well that's a two-way road buddy. I've read my fair share of critical reviews, and I rarely see where a reviewer mentions grammar, or prose, or sentence structure, or those idiotic nicknames for things like weather reports, or show and tell. It just doesn't happen.

Many times trying to fix a section of purple prose would mean a complete re-write of an entire scene, or chapter. Sure it's easy to point and cry, “PURPLE PROSE ALERT!” But you try changing just that one thing and see how it's fubar'd the whole story now. So what if it gets a little off key, sounds like prose, tells a little too much. That's all artistic license. I will not show more than I want to. You as a critic should know this. If I put it in my story, it's there for a reason. Your job is to tell me that you liked it, or you thought it was shit.

Now, I fully realize that because of the unique nature of this site—what with everybody and their momma with a keyboard, rushing to write Fluttershy and her friends—it's easy for the editorial process to get shifted into the critical process. Many of these kids want to write better. And as I've stated over and over again; it won't happen on a site like this. Sorry. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and too much bad advice, the poor undergrad student with a “D” average grade selling writing courses for the less than amateur high school student, isn't going to help create the next Milton or Dostoyevsky. They'll be creating the next hot wet mess.

Here's a sample piece of criticism for you.

Xenophilia was one of those stories that took me a while to wrap my head around. My first impressions were: “Oh god, it's pony on human sex.” I figured, well this must mean straight up clop right? Wrong. Despite my annoyances with a main character named Bellerophon (Lero for short) after Bellerophontes the hero of Greek mythology, I found that the story took a unique shape.

I was actually interested in how a relationship with a human and pony could evolve to the point of sex. And surprise after surprise, the author exposed all those places that I wanted to go in this story. There was no shame, no apology, and I found myself immersed completely.

This isn't going to be a story for everyone. People that are turned off by sex in pony fiction will be put-off, they may even call it porn. But from where I sit, it's nothing of the sort. It's a chronicle of a man named Lero, and the ponies that love him.

This is the sort of criticism that a writer wants to read. This tells the writer two things. 1.) the critic read the whole thing before passing judgment. 2.) the critic knows the subject matter.

Think of every critique as a sort of essay. If you were being graded on it, and this were for your class; there are several things that must be compiled before you begin your thesis statement. You need a source, you need to know your subject, and you need references. If you were instructed to write an essay on Twain, you would get a failing grade for just pointing out the over-usage of the word, ni****. Or finding typos in the 1986 edition of the print. So why would you offer anything less than your full attention to a writer that has sat down and worked for hours on a piece of literature?

If you can say it in under three hundred words, then don't say it. Just like the site has a minimum word limit to the stories that can be submitted, there should be a limit to the amount of words you can use and still call it a review or critique.

Of course, I'm not talking about comments that are more or less encouraging or supportive, or what-not. I'm saying that, you can't justify calling your comment a review or critique if you don't put in some effort.

Editors are objective. Critics are subjective. You can't be both.

Let me tell you about my editor. My editor is an actual person I come to face to face. I can argue my points with this person. I can demand satisfaction from this person, and I can bully them just as much as they can bully me. At the end of the day, we BOTH sit down quietly and go over the objectivity of the work at hand. This means we examine the harsh truths of the fundamentals of writing, and see if what I wrote can come close to meeting those standards.

Sometimes what I write meets the acceptable level, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, I really want to have a sentence read a certain way; despite the fact that it breaks every known rule in the universe, and I get my way. It's my way or the highway after all. My art, my canvas, and my risk to take.

This is the nature of editing. To be objective. Sure a good editor will know the audience. That's part of their job. They are who they are, because they love literature just as much as the writer.

To be a critic, means to be subjective. It means that you are going to be clouded by the nature of the things that you've just read, are reading, or will read. Your whole stance on the critique will be inspired by your experiences, and your own biases and personal prejudices. It will be this way. You cannot tell someone if something is good or bad if you don't have a personal opinion about what you the critic believes should qualify as good or what qualifies as bad.

So what happens when the story is riddled with typos and grammar problems?

Well, the way it works on this site, is for the critic to shout out, “GET AN EDITOR YOU HACK!”

But then you've got a certain level of responsibility as to whether you should review something that has bad grammar and spelling. Like I pointed out earlier, if something is tattered with editorial problems, then your best approach it to do nothing. The voting system will eventually do its job, as will the comments. If you put your hard work out there and critique a story that the author clearly hasn't worked hard on, then you are wasting your time.

Sure there are going to be those writers that want an honest opinion, and in those instances, you have their permission to scald them with the honest truth. Let them know that they first need to consider the editorial before they can be considered for the critical.

Masochistic writers erroneously believe that a good critic can help them write better. And there is absolutely nothing further from the truth; even on a site comprised of writers and editors. Why? Because a critic should only be able to tell you what they like about it, or whether they enjoyed it. An editor is capable of objectively approaching the mechanics of writing, and offering aid.

One thing I pointed out a while back was that, you need to wear the right hat when you switch roles. Do not wear your critic hat when you edit. Do not wear your editor hat when you critique. I know that this sounds counterproductive to the finished product. But too many times we may let our personal wants to bleed into the creative process of another's work if we don't squelch our subjectivity.

The last thing I want to point out to critics, is that you do not speak for all audiences or genres. If you think you do, then you really need to check your ego at the door, and do some self-evaluation. It takes years and years of dedicated work to get into the scene of the audience; and considering that the popularity of genres is an ever-changing fickle mistress, you will have to work doubly hard to keep up with the trends.

Just because you like, or don't like a certain aspect of literature, e.g. clop, grimdark, fluff, self-insert, HiE, PoE, etc., doesn't mean that you personally speak for the whole community when you critique a work. I like reading mild lesbian romance, but that isn't my forte at all. I can't really write it. And, I've read a ton of it.

Just because you are familiar with something doesn't by any stretch of the imagination make you an expert on it. Remember. “Years and years of dedicated work.”

Your only goal as a critic is to inform other readers about what you just read. It is not to make the writer better. A good writer will take your constructive criticism to heart and may or may not make changes to his or her future endeavors. When you as a critic take on the writer, you are essentially asking them to kick your ass. You are a cursed person. You are scum. You tell people bad things about other people's work, and tell them it's either good or bad. You are a thing to be loathed by all writers everywhere. You do NOT want to call them out in a public forum.

That's why you speak to the readers, not the writers. When you write a review, you do so as though you are speaking to the readers. Sure the writer will take note. But when you direct the flaws and personal likes or dislikes back at them, well, then you should just run for your life now. I certainly would have little patience for someone that told me to scrap and toss my novel that I just spent the past eight months writing. I'd probably want to murder them in their sleep. They'd have to give me a damn good reason for it. And if your only reason was something stupid like “show don't tell,” prepare to be murderized.

You would be the same way. No one likes a critic. So be careful, be cautious, and be as constructive and tactful as possible. Scathing reviews will get you about as much popularity as the nitwit that keeps writing three hundred word stories about “My Little Dashie: Alternate endings.”

***further reading***
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/how-to-be-a-critic.html