Remember when we were young....

Sometimes I do do a bit of rewriting but i always make it's clear it's an example and no intended as a rewrite. I'm relatively ignorant myself and sometimes an example is the only way I can show what I mean. Usually I'm told it's helpful. I think there's a difference between showing how a paragraph looks without veil words and adverbs, and rewriting the entire story.

But I do agree that a crit never needs to be rude.

Thanks, Jo, I can't get Charles Aznavour out of my head, every time I see this thread pop up. ("Yesterday, when I was young...") But it's a very gentle tune, anyway.

It's pretty understood, once you've been here for some time, that it is the critiquers own opinion you're getting, nothing more. That's what's wanted, that's what's might be needed, to help you with your writing. When you first arrive, if you're not careful, you see experienced/published writers offering advice and you think 'they must be right, I'll change it'. You can end up writing for other people, not yourself. If twenty people tell you your pov is wandering and distracting, then it probably is*. But if one says it, and nobody else mentions it, then it's up to you as the writer, to accept or reject (or just ignore) that one comment. But if it makes you think about your writing, consider what's been said, and you still don't want to change anything, then that is you strengthening your own writing, I feel. You write for yourself, but you want it to be the best it can, that's why we ask for help/opinions/critique. If a critiquer is rude with their opinions, or tells you 'this is the way it's done, and you're not doing it correctly' then IMHO they shouldn't be offering their opinions at all. If they knew everything, they'd be million-sellers, wouldn't they?

Talking of million-sellers: many years ago (OMG, I just looked and it's 9 years ago!!!) Patrick Rothfuss critiqued my novel and naturally I listened to every word he said, why wouldn't I? But, gathering confidence as the five hour telephone conversation went on (this was the result of a charity auction in the very early days of Worldbuilders) I argued a few points. And he conceded. But then he asked me: "why did I point those out? What you've just told me (my arguments) aren't in the book." Another 'doh' moment, one amongst many. I looked at my own work completely differently after those words. I didn't change what he'd pointed out, but I made them relevant by adding to earlier sections. (I did a complete re-write after his critique, I should point out... of all the things I realized could be improved. Changed, possibly, but improved, definitely.) If Patrick Rothfuss can do a critique of a newbie and be gentle, polite, respectful, then we all can, no?

*Read Shogun: the most head-hopping, pov changing, multi-million selling book of all time. My favourite book of all time, as it happens. I cannot imagine it written 'correctly' and be the same. The head-hopping, pov changes work, it's as simple as that... I might need to read it again, now I've mentioned it.

I think in all my time receiving critiques for me the only bad one is a shopping list of faults with no explanation. Even a rude one with detail can be useful. The ones (not on here) that harangued me for my unrealistic gay police officers (only unrealistic because they were gay) at very least made me more determined to keep them as gay and it did make me rethink the level of description.

And the critic is, in my experience, nearly always right about where there is an issue but they might not always be right about what that issue is. What they do know is at that point they were taken out of the story long enough to comment.

One of the first crit I ever had of Mayhem said they wanted to know what Angus's father was doing on the other side of the door. I said thank you but laughed at the ridiculous nature of the comment - after all it was in first person and we couldn't see him. It was only later (about three years later) when I started to use all the senses that I realised we could hear him kick the door, maybe smell him smoking something, Angus could imagine what he was likely to be doing because his dad was very predictable. Although I have now deleted the scene completely that ridiculous crit was right - it was better when I wrote in what his father was doing on the other side of the scene.

AnyaKimlin said:

And the critic is, in my experience, nearly always right about where there is an issue but they might not always be right about what that issue is. What they do know is at that point they were taken out of the story long enough to comment.

Click to expand...

This is especially true, I have found, when there are two people who have a problem with the very same thing but have completely opposite opinions on why they don't like it. They are both sensing something not quite right, but they have both failed to identify what it is. It's up to the writer to figure that out, but at least they've been shown where to look.

That's one benefit to getting lots of critiques over a long period of time: as we grow in experience we learn how to better interpret them.