Rachel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kleenexwoman) wrote2006-08-04 01:14 pm
kleenexwoman) wrote2006-08-04 01:14 pm
Your thoughts on criticism? (and a bit of storywhoring)
So I'm looking over ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fandom_wank, and there's a lot of nittering over what's appropriate in concrit. Here is a debate topic for today: What is the point of leaving concrit on a final draft? Do authors routinely fix errors right on the entry? (I've seen this in a few fic communities with people pointing out minor grammatical or factual errors.) Is concrit on one story applicable to future stories, something to keep in mind when writing your next epic? Not making the same mistakes? How does one apply story-specific concrit to one's body of work in general? DISCUSS.
I'm not that used to receiving concrit, myself; the only time I've ever gotten a thorough critique of a story was in Fiction Collective. Thus, I'm also not used to editing my stories, and I don't really know what to do with concrit that's not extremely specific. I can't tell what suggestions to take, and I don't know how to implement the suggestions that I do take. Is there a class for this? Editing Your Stories 101? Or is it just a skill that comes with time and effort?
For example, I have a short story I've been considering submitting to the Central Review. I just put it up on my writing journal; the story is All the Pieces.
I originally wrote it to explain to an ex-girlfriend why I felt our relationship didn't work out; she didn't seem to understand it when I told her in plain language, and she was given to writing Storygrams in metaphor, so I thought she might understand a metaphor better. She read it and thought that it was my way of writing a "romantic" story, but was highly offended by what she thought the implications were, got some of her friends to flame it on FictionPress, and then stopped talking to me, which was pretty much what I wanted in the first place, so everything turned out OK after all.
I've been opening up the document, staring at it, staring at the notes I took for how to improve it, and then giving up and closing it down every week for the entire summer (and I've been doing the same thing with some poems I wrote and the critiques from Poet's Collective). This has been going on all. Summer. Long. "Time to edit! Uh. What do I do? Shit, let's watch a movie instead." It's probably one of those things that are easy to do once you get started, but, as with many things, it's difficult to pick a place to start. (And I'm not even sure if I want to edit the thing at all. Again, how do you tell good concrit from bad concrit? Rather, how do you pick out things you want to change and leave alone the things you don't?)
fandom_wank, and there's a lot of nittering over what's appropriate in concrit. Here is a debate topic for today: What is the point of leaving concrit on a final draft? Do authors routinely fix errors right on the entry? (I've seen this in a few fic communities with people pointing out minor grammatical or factual errors.) Is concrit on one story applicable to future stories, something to keep in mind when writing your next epic? Not making the same mistakes? How does one apply story-specific concrit to one's body of work in general? DISCUSS. I'm not that used to receiving concrit, myself; the only time I've ever gotten a thorough critique of a story was in Fiction Collective. Thus, I'm also not used to editing my stories, and I don't really know what to do with concrit that's not extremely specific. I can't tell what suggestions to take, and I don't know how to implement the suggestions that I do take. Is there a class for this? Editing Your Stories 101? Or is it just a skill that comes with time and effort?
For example, I have a short story I've been considering submitting to the Central Review. I just put it up on my writing journal; the story is All the Pieces.
I originally wrote it to explain to an ex-girlfriend why I felt our relationship didn't work out; she didn't seem to understand it when I told her in plain language, and she was given to writing Storygrams in metaphor, so I thought she might understand a metaphor better. She read it and thought that it was my way of writing a "romantic" story, but was highly offended by what she thought the implications were, got some of her friends to flame it on FictionPress, and then stopped talking to me, which was pretty much what I wanted in the first place, so everything turned out OK after all.
I've been opening up the document, staring at it, staring at the notes I took for how to improve it, and then giving up and closing it down every week for the entire summer (and I've been doing the same thing with some poems I wrote and the critiques from Poet's Collective). This has been going on all. Summer. Long. "Time to edit! Uh. What do I do? Shit, let's watch a movie instead." It's probably one of those things that are easy to do once you get started, but, as with many things, it's difficult to pick a place to start. (And I'm not even sure if I want to edit the thing at all. Again, how do you tell good concrit from bad concrit? Rather, how do you pick out things you want to change and leave alone the things you don't?)
no subject
If it's something I can do easily, as it is on lj, yeah. I've also been known to fix minor errors on ff.net and the like too.
I'm also planning on editing (and have already begun) what I've done so far for Bag of Mice, mostly because that one tends toward having really awkward syntax and wordy construction. I don't really consider anything I've posted on the web to be 'final draft,' necessarily. There are some things I'll never go back to, but that doesn't make them finished.
Is concrit on one story applicable to future stories, something to keep in mind when writing your next epic?
Fuck yes. Particularly if you're a regular writer in a fandom, I'd think notes on characterization especially would be awesome. But this applies to any aspect of a piece, fan or original. I think of it as being parallel to art-critiques: pointing out what doesn't entirely work in a finished piece still gives the artist information he can use on his next piece. It helps you to get a better hold on what your strengths and weaknesses are. And story-specific concrit will still be related to the major points of any piece of writing: plot, characterization, pacing, dialogue, grammar and syntax, overall point, etc. Therefore, you should theoretically be able to transpose what story-specific crit is saying to your subsequent writings.
I think editing is definitely a skill that you learn more by trial and error than by being taught (unfortunately). What helps me to get started is knowing what other people generally find annoying (even just something mundane like overuse of adverbs) and start from there. As I go, I tend to find more stuff that I can change or subtract or whatever.
Overall, though, I feel your pain. For years I did pretty much zero editing at all and I'm only now starting to take the whole process more seriously.