Lessons From Workshopping: Being Critical and Being Rude · 4:08pm Sep 1st, 2020
This blog doesn't really deal much with ponies, but it does deal with writing, and this is a writing site, so... I'm being a bit indulgent, here. Credit to Yakovlev-vad.
When I started taking several creative writing workshops in college, I expected to be greeted with more than a few gems of writing, as well as a few dull pieces. Having worked already as a consultant editor at the school's writing center, and therefore having experience with muddling through students' half-baked, 5AM essays, I believed, perhaps naively, that I would be getting a break from the mediocre quality of that sort. After all, those who joined the creative writing program tended to do so because they loved the craft and because they wanted to improve themselves. I thought that that meant that, at the very least, the average student who joined it, had the grit and talent to become better writers, without so much hand-holding.
I... was weirdly wrong.
Most certainly, there were great stories there, and a number of them truly inspired me to look critically at my work and dig deeper. But there was also a smattering of stories where, just from storytelling technical standpoints, each one suffered. It was disheartening to find numerous syntactical errors and flawed "internal logic" among my peers, especially since each one had the passion and drive to be writers. If I had to be honest, I've read many fanfictions far better than the stuff that I had to read in those courses, so you can imagine my partial wonderment and disappointment.
Of course, in such a workshop setting you could never get away with comparing "fanfiction" to "fiction." And the teacher didn't allow for overly harsh criticisms, no matter how valid. Part of it, I think, was the principle of the thing: if you were going to be harsh enough to ruin a person's drive and passion, you might as well leave, because part of being able to get a writer to change their thinking about their story is being able to communicate the validity of your perspective without diminishing whatever inspired the writer to write it in the first place. But another part was just the fact that this is a liberal college; at the risk of making a blanket statement, the average student is sensitive about their work (as any who loves their work should be), and it's easy to take criticisms of the story as criticisms of the soul.
I thought, me being me, that I would have trouble adhering to this guideline, but surprisingly I found it a lot easier to not only conduct, but follow. Searching for one good thing was difficult, but it challenged me to look critically at stories and observe where the potential for something great could be. It represented a shift in the dynamic between being simply an editor and being a fellow workshop member: I was not someone who had a position of authority so much as I was someone who was working tangentially with my fellow writers, however disparate the skill levels were.
For instance, there was one peer's story that they said was part of a planned trilogy of novels. An ambitious goal for many, but as I was reading their excerpt, I couldn't help but note how flawed both the premise was and how weak the writing was. It ranged from overly melodramatic to laughably cringey, with an angry female red-haired protagonist (as always) taking up the task of avenging her family at the behest of a God of Power. It was supposed to be a high fantasy story, I think, and featured, in a second submission, an intense personal training session, where the protagonist had to learn how to control her newfound, god-granted powers.
This is, of course, a rough summarization, but the point is, the writing did not match the ambition. Both from being a first-person perspective and being evidently inspired by anime and other action-oriented mediums, it was clear that the technical aspects that make up a good story were shoved to the back while the fantastical and explosive took the forefront. It's a criticism I have with a lot of new writers who say they want to write the next big adventure story, writers who also say they were inspired by any number of action flicks, animations, and so forth.
Something that I observed, then, with this story, was a lack of understanding of how prose functions in narratives. We may be image-oriented creatures, but good prose and good stories within prose are perfectly capable of emulating, or even enhancing, the nuances of existence, if done well. Writing a story via prose - paragraphs, dialogue, text, description, action, etc. - does not equate to writing the perfect action sequence in your head, and the number of fanfictions and fictional texts that I've read that don't understand this is rather alarming.
Regardless, I knew I wanted to bring this up to the author. But I struggled to find a way to do so that didn't say that I found them severely lacking in the writing department. I had to think critically and get past my own prejudice - overcome what I understood as "good" writing and simply provide the tools which I hoped would lead the author to a similar conclusion.
Eventually, I was able to figure out that for all its scope, the story did have a good cinematic sense. And I do mean that in the movie sense - the atmosphere and descriptions present aided the reader to "seeing" the scene. Tone and attitude came naturally when the writer did not have an ounce of character interaction, when all that was there was a blank narrator laying out the world beyond the page. This was the one positive I could find, and which I thought the writer ought to know.
Once I informed them of this, it became natural to then bring up the "other side" of things. By pointing out the cinematic feel that the story provided, I could break that down and use it to say why the rest of the story didn't work. I used specific examples and pointed out where the syntactical scope and storytelling perspective failed to meet the cinematic expectation. The writer understood what I meant, the sentiment was agreed upon by the workshop, and we moved on to another peer's work, without anyone's feelings getting hurt.
I felt good, both because I felt that my criticisms were valid, and because I felt that they were heard.
To simplify: I found one positive, and from there could work towards explaining where and why I found negatives of a story.
As a reviewer for the My Little Reviews & Feedback Group, this has been my method. Though I've handed out some low scores, I've tried to do so without outright saying that a story is utter garbage, and I've tried to explain what works and what doesn't work, to the best of my ability.
Granted, that often comes in the form of some rather lengthy reviews that dissect plot, characterization, and syntax, using a variety of literary lenses and rhetorical devices. Sue me. :P
I've also made clear that I won't score below a 4 / 10, under the principle that if I were to give a story such a score, then I have more or less said that there's very little that would be worth salvaging. 1, 2, and 3 are unhelpful numbers, and really they become meaningless at such a fraction. They also assume that what I've read isn't even a story by any sense of the word, but I have some faith that what comes my way passes the very basics, at the very least.
It's not a view common to the more critical reviewers, not just in the group but out of it. Sometimes I wonder if there is a kind of elitism going around when one says they are a reviewer or a critic: that they somehow know the true path of art and anything that deviates from it is both aesthetically wrong and morally horrible. Certainly there are stories that are God-awful, and I would be remiss to say that I have never come across bad writing and been almost offended by the quality, but I don't think that such a perspective should be applicable to the philosophy of reviewing and critiquing work. Snobbiness is a sin of art rather than a virtue from it, I believe; acting superior in your judgement only means that you're limiting yourself to one perspective, further clouding your ability to judge.
Part of it, I think, is the idea of The Death of the Author, a theory posited by Roland Barthes as to explain the role of the author, and then the critic, when it came to interacting with a published piece. In the case of critics, I sometimes get the feeling that they would happily ignore this perspective, in the fear that it makes their own somehow invalid. To quote Barthes:
Once the Author is gone, the claim to 'decipher' a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause... This conception perfectly suits criticism, which can then take as its major task the discovery of the Author... beneath the work... Once the Author is discovered, the text is "explained": the critic has conquered...
Paradoxically, what the author means to say and what the author does say are both valid concerns, and I think both can and should be used interchangeable to widen the breadth of interpretation. But I doubt if diminishing the worth of a story through one lens or the other is as useful as some may think.
It's the difference between being critical and being rude.
Credit again to Yakolev-vad
Perhaps that places me as an outlier. I can't claim professionalism, because I'm an amateur who's just trying to do his best with both his writing and reviewing. But I also can't say that it's impossible to be critical without being rude about it. It entirely is, and we have analytical tools that allow us to do so without being utter jerks.
I'm of the sentiment that there are no bad ideas, just bad execution, so perhaps the same can be said about being critical and being rude.
Being rude involves a lot of personal attacks on both the story and the author. Its justification is emotional rather than analytical. It loves to hype up the disappointing factors and the observed grievances of a work whether or not those things are justified. It paints not in plain view, but in often hyperbolic language, the many "sins" that a piece has to share, and many bemoan about the piece's existence, calling it blasphemous and offensive to the soul of the aesthetic.
Being critical can say more or less the same things, but in a different way. It can say that a piece of text goes on for far too long by pointing out the number of words, paragraphs, or sentences, and demonstrating where a break might be required. It will analyze why something doesn't work by going over each part and thinking about what effect is being achieved and whether or not that's conducive to the story. It will reason out its criticisms, test whether or not they can be justified in an argumentative setting, and then settle for what is clearly communicable rather than emotional. More to the point, being critical is actually helpful, rather than destructive, though it can and will skirt the fine line between.
Perhaps a critic (ha) of this idea might say, "Well, if the writer didn't want to be torn apart, they shouldn't have put their stuff out in the first place." That's maybe true. And a critic might also say, "They asked me to tear their story apart." In which case, fine, go do that. Or - more commonly - "There's nothing redeemable about this story, no matter how hard I try to find one!"
Certainly, that would be most disappointing, but if that really is the case, then you still owe it to yourself and to the author of the work you're reviewing to convey that in a way that makes sense, preserves the integrity of the reviewer, and still maintains a mutual understanding of how vulnerable the creator is. Though we are free to say what we want, we are not without consequences; being blunt is no excuse for being mean.
My point is that we as reviewers have a different responsibility when it comes to reading stories. Being destructive isn't one of them: being clear and reasoned in our observations is. It's entirely possible - I repeat, entirely possible - to rip out the roots of a story, twist them into a knot, and present it to the writer in a neat package, with all the flaws and failures on display, without telling them implicitly to give up.
People write because they're probably passionate about something, and it's a greater immoral act to destroy that passion rather than attempt to educate the person to do better within it. Reviewers and critics aren't supposed to be gatekeepers to good art. If they're really good at what they do, then they'll be able to educate the artists how to improve upon themselves and figure out what makes art good.
Let us critique in a way that promotes growth, not pity; let us review in a way that promotes progress, not pessimism.
Credit to harwicks-art
Wow! How do you favourite a blog post? I'd totally do that a thousand times here
I'd like to think that I've stayed away from being too rude in my reviews, but among the few twos, threes and fours I've given you could probably find some instances of that. It's certainly food for thought!
Also you should totally post this on some forums, it's definitely useful stuff
5346850
Thank you. I've been meaning to write something like this for a time, but I could never quite get the words out.
I considered posting this in a few groups, but I wasn't sure if it would really be allowed. This is more of a personal essay / perspective and not many groups that I know of would allow for a blog post to fill the forums.
5346861
Well there are personal experiences inside it, but the meat of it is still about criticism of stories, which I'd say fit into most groups here. I'd compare it to a speaker using personal anecdotes to spice up their speech
If you aren't convinced it'd fit in the Writer's Group or something, at the very least it'd definitely fit in MLRaF!
5346873
I'm not sure a certain boss dragon would like a forum post that isn't a review.
5346938
I'm pretty sure I specifically remember that certain boss dragon saying he doesn't mind people making non-review threads
Besides, it's in the rules that you're allowed to make your own thread as long as you don't spam the forum