Dealing With Writer-Criticisms
Feb. 18th, 2011 10:04 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theferrettMy Viable Paradise writer-buddy Miranda Suri wonders: "How do you deal with a tough critique of your story?"
I feel bad about this, because I may or may not have inspired that entry. I'm currently in the middle of critiquing her novel chapter-by-chapter, giving my responses as I go through it, and my last set of feedback was particularly scathing - not that I was trying to be mean, but rather honest in acknowledging that at this point, I had lost all sympathy for a key character. But it's still a good book, and I'm reasonably sure I'll see it on shelves in a few years from now. Or on an e-book. Or in the thought-patterns Amazon then uses to beam the book directly into our corpus callosum. Because Miranda's a damn good writer.
But the larger question remains: when your crit group gives you a harsh critique, how do you recover from it? And my answer was a little odd to me:
I don't really get harsh critiques these days.
Which is not to say my writer-groups love whatever I do. I often hear that my story isn't working. But for me, the sting of "harsh" comes from the surprise of finding something didn't work that I thought did - and the more confident you are that this shit is awesome, the more stinging it is to hear that it really, really isn't.
By the time I put my stories on the block at this stage, I'm usually fairly conversant with their flaws. For example, in the last story I submitted to the Cajun Sushi Hamsters, I thought, This story is very weak at the beginning, when it's trying to establish characterization, but once the ghostpigs show up then it's strong until the end." And lo, the critique I got? "Rework the beginning. Liked the ending."
There were a lot of little surprises along the way, usually story points that needed amplification or clarification, but I pretty much got what I thought I'd get. It's still useful, because clarifying those vague story points is often the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, and my groups often suggest ways to fix the broken bits in ways I hadn't considered...
...but I'm not shocked. I don't know whether it's because I know my critiquers well enough, or because I'm at the stage where I'm so hyper-critical I can't be surprised, but to me the hurt comes from thinking this is brilliant and finding it was shit. Which doesn't happen often. I usually know what's shit, or at least what they're going to think is shit, even if I don't know how to strain it out of my manuscript.
But when I did get harsh critiques that came out of nowhere, I think Miranda's advice is spot-on, with one heavy reminder: a good writer group is there to help you. Sometimes they're wrong about how to fix something, sometimes they home in on things that you don't care about, but when they're critiquing you they do it because they want this story to be the best damn story it can be. Right now I'm going through Miranda's novel with a harsh hand because it's good, but I want it to be absolutely great, because I want her to be as absolutely great as she can be. And so I pummel with love, and hope she continues to endure the inevitable percussive feedback in the spirit that it's given: that you are gonna make this great.
I feel bad about this, because I may or may not have inspired that entry. I'm currently in the middle of critiquing her novel chapter-by-chapter, giving my responses as I go through it, and my last set of feedback was particularly scathing - not that I was trying to be mean, but rather honest in acknowledging that at this point, I had lost all sympathy for a key character. But it's still a good book, and I'm reasonably sure I'll see it on shelves in a few years from now. Or on an e-book. Or in the thought-patterns Amazon then uses to beam the book directly into our corpus callosum. Because Miranda's a damn good writer.
But the larger question remains: when your crit group gives you a harsh critique, how do you recover from it? And my answer was a little odd to me:
I don't really get harsh critiques these days.
Which is not to say my writer-groups love whatever I do. I often hear that my story isn't working. But for me, the sting of "harsh" comes from the surprise of finding something didn't work that I thought did - and the more confident you are that this shit is awesome, the more stinging it is to hear that it really, really isn't.
By the time I put my stories on the block at this stage, I'm usually fairly conversant with their flaws. For example, in the last story I submitted to the Cajun Sushi Hamsters, I thought, This story is very weak at the beginning, when it's trying to establish characterization, but once the ghostpigs show up then it's strong until the end." And lo, the critique I got? "Rework the beginning. Liked the ending."
There were a lot of little surprises along the way, usually story points that needed amplification or clarification, but I pretty much got what I thought I'd get. It's still useful, because clarifying those vague story points is often the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, and my groups often suggest ways to fix the broken bits in ways I hadn't considered...
...but I'm not shocked. I don't know whether it's because I know my critiquers well enough, or because I'm at the stage where I'm so hyper-critical I can't be surprised, but to me the hurt comes from thinking this is brilliant and finding it was shit. Which doesn't happen often. I usually know what's shit, or at least what they're going to think is shit, even if I don't know how to strain it out of my manuscript.
But when I did get harsh critiques that came out of nowhere, I think Miranda's advice is spot-on, with one heavy reminder: a good writer group is there to help you. Sometimes they're wrong about how to fix something, sometimes they home in on things that you don't care about, but when they're critiquing you they do it because they want this story to be the best damn story it can be. Right now I'm going through Miranda's novel with a harsh hand because it's good, but I want it to be absolutely great, because I want her to be as absolutely great as she can be. And so I pummel with love, and hope she continues to endure the inevitable percussive feedback in the spirit that it's given: that you are gonna make this great.
