fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2976 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2976 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Homestuck]

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[NCIS: Los Angeles/Hawaii Five-0]

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[Left Shark (Katy Perry? Super Bowl?) and Bad-Dragon .com]

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[hindsight]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 016 secrets from Secret Submission Post #425.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I guess I don't get why that's a comment you have to leave at all? Did you expect them to change it for you? I mean, if it were a gift or commission, OK, but just on a story somebody is writing because it's a story they want to tell? It may not be flaming, but it is kind of shitty and entitled.

NAYRT, but how is it shitty and entitled? If you submit something to the internet, people are going to leave feedback. I'm in a writing group and we tell each other what to write or not write all the time. And we're one of the nicer local writing groups.

Yes, but do you tell people what to write (while they're writing it) based on what you personally enjoy or based on what is objectively more solid story telling?

But if you don't think it's shitty to be "just so you know, your story annoys me," I don't know what to tell you. Other than (to OP) stop reading it.

Exactly.

It's not just shitty, but plain unhelpful. It's bad feedback. Why does XYZ annoy OP? Is it because of personal reasons or is it a genuine flaw with their writing that they should work on fixing? If it's just a personal thing, then it's a pointless comment to leave; you can't realistically expect them to excise every random anon's personal annoyances from their fics. If it's a genuine story telling problem, then it's good to bring to their attention, but describing it as "annoying" is neither nice nor helpful.

To avoid drama and maximize the chances of your advice sticking, you have to be very careful about how you word it. Otherwise you might as well not bother leaving feedback, for all the good it's going to do. As OP has learned, being careless about how you word your reviews will often just cause the author to raise a stink about flamers, which doesn't get anybody anywhere.

This. I'm surprised it's so difficult for the OP to understand. "XYZ annoyed me" isn't concrit. It's not helpful at all, unless the author's sole aim in writing is to please that one person.

Frankly, if I were in a writing group who said things like "You should write X" or "don't write Y", instead of actually addressing specific issues in the writing, I'd leave it. It doesn't sound like a nice writing group at all.

Yet nobody complains about vague unconstructive postive comments.

Positive comments don't come with air of "you should have done this differently."

DA

People who leave vague, non-constructive positive comments have never claimed to be anything other than cheerleaders, whereas people who leave "constructive" criticism purport to be leaving feedback intended to help authors improve, even when they're leaving utterly useless and/or rude comments. Why complain about the former being non-constructive when it never pretended to be?

Also, people do complain about vague non-constructive positive comments. Sure, not in this thread, but if you lurk on any community or forum dedicated to fanfic writing you'll eventually see people complaining about all the useless "this is so good!" or "more plz!" comments they receive.

It isn't shitty or entitled. As a rule, feedback includes both positive and negative comments, and if the writer does not want to receive either one, they should mention it.

Just because you CAN leave a comment, doesn't mean you should. And I should add, I have no problems with "I like your story, but I think xyz is out of character, etc." is fine. But that's not the comment OP apparently left.

Just because an artist is a whiny little bitch doesn't mean you shouldn't tell them they suck.

your comments are so embarrassing

I think he's pretty on with that one though.

If you're going to leave negative feedback, it's always a good idea to say what you would change or give suggestions. Otherwise it's just 'lol this sucks.'

OP

I did try not to just be 'lol this sucks' but more like "I don't understand why all these characters went from A to G without showing how they got there, it's kind of a cheat if you don't show the process"...but you're probably right that it might have gone over better with more concrete suggestions. But still, I didn't figure the author would take it half as seriously as they did!

ayrt

Well, I didn't notice it at first so I thought they probably didn't either?? I've had people harshly review my stories before, like "I thought your story is pretty good until I got to xyz part and I thought you got that character COMPLETELY wrong, like amazingly wrong, and that completely killed my enjoyment." And even though I didn't really agree I PM'd them to thank them for their review and tell my point of view on why I wrote the character that way--and I was more careful how I wrote him after that. I don't think it's 'shitty and entitled' to critique a fic...is it 'entitled' if I go "Dude, you may not realize this but EVERY TIME x character speaks you say 'x mumbled' and I'm getting really tired of his mumbling, what's wrong with 'x said'?"

"Dude, you may not realize this but EVERY TIME x character speaks you say 'x mumbled' and I'm getting really tired of his mumbling, what's wrong with 'x said'?"

That's not necessarily entitled, but it's also not what you said you said.

what I said is not exactly like either of them, I'm paraphrasing. I don't want to be like "Author JANE DOE and story WHATEVER is like this way!" so I'm trying to keep it vague.

[ SECRET POST #2976 ]

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