What's your experience with critique been like?

The Chatters
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So, I imagine most, if not all of us, have recieved feedback on our writing before. So I have a couple questions for you.

One; what is the best constructive writing critique you’ve ever gotten? How helpful was it? Did it help you improve your writing? Was it advice you would give other writers or more personal to you?

Two; what’s the worst critique you’ve ever gotten? Did you try it anyways or just ignore it? Did it even make sense? Was it just a useless opinion that wasn’t helpful at all and totally subjective?

Tell me about your experiences with recieving feedback on your writing.

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For me? Something that always comes up is my lack of sensory details. My worst critique was telling me not to use tge term “dark beige”.

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my favourite running critique on Gallows Humour was people having trouble deciphering what Radio was. Particularly loved “a creature”, “an alien”, and “a cat”. Radio is a human person.

the worst critiques in terms of usefulness are the single detail or single word corrections that aren’t actually accurate. Like man, don’t make me spend 10 minutes pulling up the Oxford English Dictionary for nothing.

And my least favourite is any suggestion to include a semicolon ever. Miss me with the semicolons >>:U I hate semicolons.

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Semicolons are like having meteorite insurance. Highly situational.

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hmph >>>:T

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Hmm…nothing has been exceptional, particularly. There have been nice ones that explain why they didn’t understand something or why they were confused, but not really about how to fix the thing. I’ve had to figure out how to fix it on my own without input until I was ready to show it.

The “critiques” that stand out to me are the bad ones :sweat_smile:

You need to describe everything in the room.

DON’T TALK ABOUT HER PERIOD!! (written exactly like this)

Don’t use the word “discrimination”

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Whenever people type in all caps like this, I imagine a Dalek speaking.

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I haven’t had a serious dissection of my fiction. So there hasn’t been much critique. For academic stuff I’ve been told to add introductory paragraphs to signpost the reader or whatever. I never really took that on anyway because it disrupts the flow.

I’ve gotten writing advice from my old dissertation supervisor. He knows me personally and understands my writing, and really believed in me as a writer. He’s an anthropologist so he knows how to tell a good story anyway. For a long time I was struggling with getting anything on the page so I called a meeting to cry about it (literally). He listened to me and reassured me that I’m a good writer. Then he handed me a copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and said, ‘Read Joan Didion.’ It’s the best writing advice I’ve gotten. It’s so specific to me and my writing. Now whenever I’m struggling I reach for one of her books.

Haven’t had terrible critiques, or maybe I haven’t paid attention. When I was posting on Wattpad, there would be comments about my weird turns of phrase — and I would be like yeah! That’s part of the writing style.

And other stuff: ‘You need 2000 word chapters for optimal reading’ or ‘You need a hook on the first page, and your second sentence needs to be subversive from the first…’ or ‘Don’t start with description! Start with action!’ None of this applies to W.G Sebald and so by extension, me.

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That advice seems to apply more to contemporary hoping to be a bestseller. But I, for one, have never heard to start with action and not description.

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What? That’s wild. It’s literally just a color, what would they rather you use instead?

How can you be clearer about what a character is when they are the default human person? People really jump to an alien before assuming the basics?

Omg that’s so frustrating. Like, if they can’t pinpoint the solution, is it really a problem or just a personal opinion?

This is called purple pros and while it may work for some authors, most readers don’t actually like reading about unimportant details. You should only describe what is relevant, if you ask me. Just make sure you don’t have empty room syndrome where your characters seem to be going thru the story on a plain blank white page. The setting is relevant. The dirty sock in the corner of the room just chilling for no reason may not be though.

If it’s relevant to the story ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ they can suck it up and read it. People are so weird about certain topics. It’s literally a fact of life, why not write about it?

Why tho???

That’s so cool you had support from someone like that, I’m glad you had him believing in you.

You have piqued my interest. I may have to look this book up and read it some time.

People tend to hear writing advice from various sources and take that to mean it’s a rule. But not every bit of advice applies to everyone and it’s all subjective in writing. There are no hard rules in any creative pursuit. Do what works for you. Like, yes, take advice into consideration and try to improve your writing, but don’t take every bit of advice to heart. A lot of it is BS.

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They saw “dark beige” as equivalent to “dark white” because it is a neutral color. It was in the description of a skin tone because “tanned” is not natural.

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Okay, but beige is not white? And it can have varying tints and shades. Dark Beige is totally valid as a descriptor for skin tone, or anything really.

Also, lol, black is a neutral color too, just like white, and it’s still darker than white. So like, what were they even trying to say?

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They are a writer not an artist. I suppose they would see “light black” as also a bizarre description.

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After this I used wood, meta, and other materials l for skintone descriptions.

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Still seems absurd to me. I’d take that feedback as a personal preference of theirs and not use it as writing advice.

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It is frustrating sometimes, but a lot of people don’t really know what it means to critique something. Maybe they’ve never even been exposed to it.

They think it’s enough if you say, “I was confused about this character for this reason” without giving suggestions on how the author can fix the thing. And, you know, maybe it’s not so helpful, but it’s better than telling me not to do something without a reason or giving me a weird, irrelevant suggestion :sweat_smile:

The lesser of the critiquing evils, I suppose?

YES! Exactly :grin: I’m with you on this one.

I also think it’s a stylistic choice. Perdido Street Station has such unimportant detailed minute descriptions about that vine on the rock, and The Anvil of the World doesn’t even tell you what anything really looks like apart from a few vague wooden floors and stairs, and a town made of stone and bricks, for setting, but somehow avoiding the “blank white page” syndrome.

Both, in my opinion, were pretty good books in their own ways.

Ikr? and this comment was by a female person, so, idk what her problem was. And yes, it was relevant to the story.

Because they don’t like it? :woman_shrugging: Some people are so easily offended. I don’t think being offended is a good reason to comment about it. They have to then take a step back and think, “okay, is this relevant to the story? Is this something that would also offend other people and maybe I should mention it to the author so they can be aware?”

Then the person should also breakdown why they feel offended, so the author can figure out what to do about it.

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okay, well, now, the reader who thought it was an alien was also convinced the book was set on Not-Earth. So I added stuff to clarify the setting.

in total fairness, I wrote Radio with inhuman vibes on purpose. And gave it it/its pronouns. And made it mute, so there wasn’t any speech to indicate it was a person. To a certain degree I do want the audience to feel as though it’s questionably a person in the beginning. But perhaps not quite to the degree that it’s msitaken for a cat, so I added some more physical descriptions lol. Made sure it did some human shaped movement.

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wh… why not? :sob:

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No idea :sweat_smile: Comment by a female person, btw.

Not a single other person has ever taken issue with this

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:skull: you need that bo burnham audio clip

:notes: shit like this brings the movement down :notes:

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