[ SECRET POST #2183 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2183 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Sorry for late, overslept.

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 067 secrets from Secret Submission Post #312.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - 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.

Comments

[biohazardgirl]

See the problem with comments in terms of 'concrit' that I see is that 99% of the time, the criticism is "I didn't like this" then they list the reason and give no way to fix it. Occasionally it's very helpful, but for the most part it's not, and also a lot of the time they even conflict with positive comments other people have given where the negative comment ends up just confusing the author (re: a thread that I posted in GC yesterday where conflicting comments confused yours truly!). Not saying comments can't be useful, especially for ttle errors (I've had some truly lovely people in the past point out tiny things to me that I totally missed), but for the most part they're not.

If you really care about improving someone's writing and working intimately with them to create art, offer to beta. People who really want crit will be thrilled with your offer because betas are hard to come by and good betas are even more difficult to find. And, really, even if they already have a beta they may still want you to look at their work anyway. I know I've had several works that I worked on with three or even four people.

[kruger]

part of the responsibility to improve comes from effort on the writer's part to understand the criticism, even if it's not phrased well

e.g. if there's a chef that's asking what a person thinks of a dish and the person says "needs more sugar", the chef will have to interpret that not as "needs more sugar" but as "needs to be sweeter" and then act on the intent behind the words rather than the words themselves

same principle

also i'm working on the assumption that you're talking about actual crit instead of Y THIS NO MY SHIP, which is just a shitfit and should be ignored

[biohazardgirl]

But even your chef metaphor: that request is still simple. It's easy to infer that sugar=sweeter. If someone says to me though "The way you wrote this character sucked" which, again, is most of the 'crit' that I see, I don't feel like that's proper crit. Because obviously when the writer wrote it they (usually) didn't think "oh this character sucks", usually they are of the opinion that they wrote the character well. The way towards improvement is following up on the comment; you can't just say "this character sucks" and expect the author to know how and why you thought so.

Again, I'm all for crit, and I take in account all of the crit I get, even the stuff where I disagree with it, even badly written crit, but I don't think authors should be blamed for not taking badly written crit to heart or judged for wanting good crit instead of crappy crit.

[kruger]

i wouldn't really classify that as proper crit, though

for me crit is only legitimate when it's specifically referring to the story in question, an indicator of which would be drawing specific examples from the story itself to illustrate a point

if you can take the comment and superimpose it on any other piece of fiction, it's less crit and more a whiny bitchfest, which again you should ignore bc it's probably written by a 12 year old who can't tell their ass from their elbow

[(Anonymous)]

I think the problem is that fandom in general doesn't seem to understand what is and isn't concrit, and a lot of people tend to want to act like assholes but then claim they were just leaving concrit. We need to have some sort of fandom seminar where we sit everyone's ass down and teach them about how to give honest, constructive criticism and the proper way to peer review. Lol.

[(Anonymous)]

THISTHISTHISTHIS

Thank you. seriously I see as many entitled critics as I see entitled authors.

I'm so sick of "this fucking sucks, go play in traffic" "geez rude much?" "TEH INTERNET ISN'T YOUR HUGBOX OKAY?"

I won't deny that authors need to be prepared for rude comments. But that doesn't mean it's okay to leave them.

[(Anonymous)]

See, if something is phrased flatly as 'I didn't like X, Y, Z,' that doesn't actually say there's anything objectively wrong with the fic. It's often just the reader's preference and some people's entitlement at thinking writers are making fic to order. This ain't no MacDonald's, yo. And it's not a fanfic author's JOB to do anything. This is not work.

[(Anonymous)]

It may not mean there's anything wrong with the fic, but as an author it can be worth taking a look at X, Y and Z to see if there are any underlying reasons that make them unlikeable, especially if that wasn't the intention of your writing. (For example, if someone says they didn't like a character that you wrote to be sympathetic, it might be worth examining why they aren't coming off as sympathetic to readers.)