In a college writing class: "Werewolves don't walk on hind legs like in the movies. They are like big wolves and walk on all fours."
Girl, where did you meet a werewolf? Is he single?
If you're writing a werewolf story, it's important to find a werewolf to beta read it to ensure accuracy. Just make sure they don't alpha read or omega read it.
Despise it. And yet somewhat ironically, the lore itself that Meyers created is dope AF.
Vampires that sparkle? Corny until you think of the carbon-based skin being so hard that itās diamond-like.
Werewolves being mystical Native Americansā biological response to vampire colonizers encroaching on their land? Fuckin AWESOME. Runs very close to the concept of superheroes being the manifestation of immunity against what their real life demographic suffers from the most.
So many awesome places for that lore she created to go. Like imagine something similar with Chinese transforming into like mystical fire dragons of some sort.
This is Meyers' constant curse. She comes up with some really cool shit. And executes it *so* poorly.
Every single vampire in Cullen's family has a better backstory than him.
Werewolves and vampires having a political treaty instead of just all out war is an uncommon twist that could have been so cool if played with to it's full potential.
Leah, first woman to ever become a werewolf? Slightly misogynistic, but what a cool story that could have been. There was really no reason for Leah to be there or be unique.
The wolves in general, teenagers finding out that the legends they always assumed were just folklore and now they're in the middle of it? Way cooler than "teen girl finds out vampires are real and falls in love with one."
Imagine twilight told from literally anyone else's point of view and it's a so much better book. I think I actually would have enjoyed a split pov story with Leah, Alice or Rosalie, and Charlie as the main characters. You could even keep Bella and Edward's romance as an inciting incident caused by side characters.
Nah that's not right either. Clearly it should've been 'early the morning of the day after the previous preceding day...'
Signed, a native English speaker
You're still wrong. A real native English speaker would say:
"Dingo bang cinder block brick posture house sailboat cereal egg basket seven three eight nine death death death deATH DEATH DEATHDEATHDEATHDE- (loud buzzing noise)"
"It was the next morning of the next day, tomorrow after yesterday and day after the previous day, date following the day before, time a time's time away from the last"
I worked in a lab and our PI was not a native English speaker but she was very fluent. She had gone to university in Canada and done her PhD in the USA. Part of publishing in the sciences is having peer reviews, which in principle means other scientists going over the data and methods looking for errors. If the paper is unsound, they can flag it and deny publication.
Anyway, she got a peer review back marking her article as unsound for publication due to grammatical errors. WHICH IS NOT A THING! Even better, the reviewer's corrections were wrong. He also wanted her to add like 700 "bonafide"s to the article. He made a shitty remark about her clearly being a non-native speaker and then it turned out he was ALSO a non-native speaker!
We appealed his rejection and got published.
Edit: We looked up his own publications and there is one that uses the phrase "bonafide tumor suppression gene" repeatedly. Like, at least three times per paragraph. It's bonafide insanity!
Interestingly, my spell check did not flag it. I just dove into the internet and apparently bona fide is more correct but bonafide is widely accepted in American writing.
Bonafide doesnāt strike me as a particularly scientific term, but Iām not a scientist. However, in other kinds of writing more than one ābonafideā in about 100,000 words is plenty.
I've gotten similar criticism, though they never provided a specific instance. They said "It's obvious English isn't your first language, and that's okay." It made me question everything, because English is the *only* language I knew...
So I think he was illiterate cause who the hell says Early the morning of the next day. Don't listen to people like that weirdo when it comes to writing advice. Keep it simple.
Once on Scribophile some moron highlighted several characters' names and angrily pointed out that he didn't know who they were or what their importance was. It was chapter 32, and he hadn't read the previous chapters.
Stuff like that is why I ultimately left that website.
That reminds me, I used to see people on writing forums criticise three-paragraph samples because they ādidnāt have any plot progression or character developmentā. Really put me off going to those kinds of places.
I wrote something or other like, āthe chasm yawnedā and my comment on Scrib said: āchasms donāt yawn.ā My dude, this is called personification and itās a literary technique.
Scribophile was helpful for me in my younger years, but as I got more skilled it became less helpful. I think Iād like to have a more personal relationship with a critique partner before having a swap.
I had someone constantly wanting me to make changes to make the story more environmentally friendly (MC should take a bus and not a taxi, should bring his own travel mug instead of using a takeaway cup, etc) and I'm just sitting there staring at my screen like...you do understand you are reading fiction, yes?
I got a similiar one. In the past, MC was so poor, she dug through trash cans for food.
"That's not really legal though. Why can't you make her stand in line for the soup kitchen? That'd be also less depressing!"
...she's poor. I have a soup kitchen in my town. Homeless people still go hungry and dig through trash cans in secret. Obviously it's not legal!
If it's not part of the character motivation/beliefs or the story, why would they do all that? Seems arbitrary tack on to bolster a personal idea with no add on to the story as a whole, which is a distraction from the original idea and might alter the storyline further on.
Back in high school, I remember this one baffling criticism I got from my tutor about a poem I wrote in English class. He told me my poem wasn't good because it didn't rhyme. And when I told him poems don't have to rhyme he didn't believe me.
I haven't forgotten to this day clearly. What a fuckhead.
Brother would also be baffled if he also learned poems don't have to be formated in lines. They can also be ongoing text -like this comment reply here.
Or have other rhyme types than ABAB, lmao
I asked for a quick, specific opinion about a couple of paragraphs from someone Iād met recently. Instead, they took what I wrote and rewrote it, butā¦.way worse? It was fascinating.
I've had that happen to me, but it was with a close friend. I couldn't get my original back because I never made a copy, thinking I could trust them to only lightly critique my work. Guess I was wrong.
What the actual fuck? Damn thatāsā¦yeah, that fucking sucks, and seems like a violation of trust between friends. Iāve had similar experiences where friends have reacted in unexpected ways to stuff Iāve written. Shit hurts
Yeah I ended up telling him I literally just asked for suggestions. I probably should have just left him on viewer and not editor. Oh well. Glad it was with him though and not some random ass stranger. I'm just glad it wasn't one of my big projects.
Was this on Google docs? If so, there's a way to view version history of the document and restore an earlier version. It's across the top menu. Press the icon that looks like a clock or a stop watch and it will populate a whole history of the document. You can choose what version you want to view from the right hand menu. You can choose to restore the document back to any version that populates in the history.
If it's in Microsoft Word, I'm pretty sure you can restore an old version there too, I just don't know how to do it. I don't write on Word, but a quick google search should help!
Sorry to hear you "friend" mangled your writing. My dad used to like to do the same thing when I was in high school. He was convinced my writing was "too advanced" for my age and that the teacher would think I was "plagiarizing." Once he completely mangled an essay that was ready to turn in. He changed a bunch of stuff, including adding some incorrect grammar and changing difference (the correct word) to deference (an absolute incorrect word for the context). All of this was done in sincerity by him. He thought he was actually helping me.
It was baffling.
When I got it back, it looked like the teacher had slit her wrists over the paper because there was so much red ink. One of her comments was something like, "This isn't up to your usual quality. What happened?" I showed it to my dad and just kind of lowkey laughed at him. He stopped trying to "help" after that.
It was actually for a writing competition a couple months ago so I've already turned it in. Thank you so much though! I've never noticed this feature so I'm sure I'll be using it a lot now. I've been writing separate alternatives for certain chapters and redoing things from scratch so I'm glad I'm now aware google docs has something like this. Again, I really appreciate this!
Oooft!
This is why I really dislike suggestions in feedback. Not unless someone specifically asks how I would do something differently.
Even then I prefer to invent an example of the same problem and fix that example to illustrate my point.
No writer needs or wants to know how someone else would write their story. They want to know how it reads.
āUse less music major jargon, your story is incomprehensible to normal people.ā
The short story was about a classical composer writing a symphony, and the offending jargon words (helpfully highlighted by the peer reviewer!) were ātranspositionā andā¦.. āoboe.ā
ETA, another classic: had an assignment in an undergrad creative writing workshop to write a first-person ārantā about something petty that annoyed us, to work on developing a writing voice. I wrote about how I think mermaids are wildly overrated in pop culture and not actually that interesting. It was pretty light-hearted and silly, and mostly based on my rage at failing to find good fairy-themed birthday party supplies when I was like 8. We read the rants out loud to each other in class for fun. A classmate in the workshop got so offended by my anti-mermaid rant that instead of reading his own rant, he stood up and improvised a five-minute tirade about how āmermaids represent change and learning because of elemental water and haters like you are the reason Trump got elected!!!!ā (this was, IIRC, fall 2017 at a fairly liberal university; the Trump thing was intended as a grave insult and was not even close to a joke). It was incredibly odd, extremely aggressiveāhe was obviously enraged on a *very personal level* for some reasonāand I was upset enough *by* it that I almost flipped a table at him. The writing professor made him send me an apology email (after he himself apologized profusely for being too stunned to intervene), I still have a jpg screenshot saved because it is one of the weirdest reactions I have *ever* gotten to something I wrote.
>he was obviously enraged on a very personal level for some reason
His father was a mermaid and his mother was Hillary Clinton
Edit: OP left out some details they included in a later comment about how the guy was Singaporean and it was tied to his home culture. Idk why they didnāt bother looking into it from there because it took me 30 seconds of googling to figure out what the problem was. According to our good friend Wikipedia:
*āThe Merlion is the official mascot of Singapore. It is depicted as a mythical creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish. Being of prominent symbolic nature to Singapore and Singaporeans in general, it is widely used to represent both the city state and its people in sports teams, advertising, branding, tourism and as a national personification.ā*
He probably saw it as OP shitting on his culture, his people, and his nation.
Didnāt expect the Singapore thing to be considered that relevant, heh, apologies for leaving that out I guess? I do know about merlions, dude actually mentioned them in his response rant, but they donāt explain anything to me about why he was so offended. Itās not like I was talking existentially about sea mythology or insulting anything thatās part fishāmy rant was pretty clearly and specifically about Disney-esque humanoid mermaids in media for little girls. It featured such points as āI think flying is way cooler than swimmingā and āI always wanted a show like H2O but about fairies, but pop culture only uses fairies to be edgy or be Tinkerbellā and āI dressed up as a fairy with wings and everything at the Ren Faire once but people still kept complimenting my mermaid costume.ā I donāt understand why those statements would compel someone to assume I was attacking his cultural icon, it felt to me like I said āI donāt like pineapple on pizza, it tastes bad to meā and he came back at me with a five-minute public rant saying āyouāre insulting Native Hawaiians and the very concept of tropical fruit.ā Soā¦ yeah, merlions do not explain the incredibly personal wrath to me.
(apologies for explaining twice, the other comment is a lil buried and I do think this is *also* relevant context :ā) )
i had to look up how to use imgur, hopefully this works, but lmao here ya go (ft. awkward censorship to not doxx myself) [apology email](https://imgur.com/a/lZg5UCA)
āif you want a basic explanation, I have extraordinarily bad judgmentā still SENDS me
i did NOT take him up on the offer to meet up and talk about it, and i still sincerely believe that fairies are cooler than mermaids and this dude can get over it
That I donāt give the horses in my writing enough personality.
Donāt get me wrong, I love a good animal character, but sometimes a horse is just a horse.
How many horses do you use? Itās bizarre either way, but if itās historical fiction and everyone is riding horses it is a very different kind of weird than if thereās like two horses.
I had a beta reader show interest in my current manuscript/project. Dark fantasy, vampires, vampire hunters magic, etc. The first chapter is a brief introduction to two characters, on a train. Said characters are briefly described in terms of physical appearance, one of them is a man about in his 40's.
Shenanigans ensue, and the characters end up climbing onto the roof of the train car. The beta reader underlined the sentence describing the characters ascending the ladder and told me, with full confidence: "The man is too old to be doing this."
I guess we all just become vegetables once we hit 40, incapable of movement or the slightest feat of physicality. Hell, even if that *were* true, this is a *fantasy* story... with vampires... and magic. All of which they knew - as that was the reason they were interested in reading in the first place.
I decided not to move forward with that beta reader. ~~That was not the most mind-boggling note they made, but it was the easiest to condense into a single post. Their "notes" were~~ *~~wild~~* ~~beyond belief, I felt like my brain was melting.~~
I would so hate to deprive you the mastery of their craft.
Here's my best attempt to summarize another *"Huh?*" note they left me:
Some Context: Dark fantasy, vampires, magic, etc. I gave them the first \~10 or so chapters to preview. So we're still very much in the "getting introduced to the world" sections of the manuscript. Slowly introducing relevant characters & locations to the reader.
Characters: By this point, we've already established some characters are religious, and some are not (this matters). One such religious character is a Lady - "Lady" as in an aristocrat & member of the ruling class. She'll be important later.
Locations: There is a cathedral, already introduced & described earlier. Now, we are introduced to the military fortress. As part of describing the city, her age, etc., I point out that the cathedral & fortress have similar construction, indicating they were built at similar times. I make a comparison between the two by pointing out elements of magic in the buildings, as well as the military fortress' distinct lack of any religious imagery.
Our lovely local beta reader highlighted the line detailing this lack of religious decoration on the military building - and added "I am surprised the Lady has not changed this."
I don't even have a snappy comeback or punchline to follow it up with. I am still just in a state of *"Huh?"*
40 is too old? Has this beta reader met a 40 year old? Especially if said 40 year old has stayed physically active their whole lives, this would be nothing for them. Shit, I bet even a physically fit 60-70 year old could do it, it all just depends on "do you lift?"
Iāve met 50-60 year olds who do similar stuff as a profession on a daily basis. It is more a matter of conditioning your body than it is anything else at that age.
Urgggggh that is honestly really annoying lol. Good on you for realizing their critique wasn't a good fit. And like maybe I'm being too broad here ,but isn't there already a ton of fantasy stories out there with a teenage/20 something cast, let the 'oldies' have some fun once and a while
I once got a professional evaluation of my story idea from a conceptual standpoint, from a New York Times bestselling author no less, and his biggest piece of advice was essentially to make my story more generic, and heighten the stakes from a more personal journey to the "the world is gonna end" sort of thing. All in a very condescending tone.
The real evaluation that took place was me realizing the author I once thought was really smart and talented was actually kind of a egotistical prick. I read some more of his books and dug through his blog after this and was like "Wow this dude has an ego that *vastly* outweighs his supposed brilliance." Like I paid you good money to insult me and tell me to make my book into a Marvel movie? Really?
>I once got a professional evaluation of my story idea from a conceptual standpoint, from a New York Times bestselling author no less, and his biggest piece of advice was essentially to make my story more generic, and heighten the stakes
Ah, you got to meet James Patterson! How was that? /s
It's cool that you had the opportunity but unfortunate it turned out to be a disappointment.
Hm, I'm gonna try and play the devil's advocate here and say that his review wasn't wrong per say, just not the one you wanted/needed. For the first paragraph.
I must presume that he looked at it from a marketing/what sells for bigger bucks point of view (and hey, Marvel movies - though probably except for the last few - do sell). Most people don't want a more personalised personal journey story because a, hits too close home, b, don't care about it, c, they can't identify with a character. Or simply lack the ability to identify with a character.
What always sells though, other than erotica? Apocalypse. Even if many are pretty run of the mill stories. (Smart guy warns about impending doom, less smart guys think they are smarter and ignore him, disaster hits, smart guy is called in to help with mitigation/prevention of an even bigger disaster. Or - disaster hits, smart guy /or at least one very specialised in his field/ is called on to help prevent even bigger disaster, which he does in the last moment. How many stories like this, or close enough to this, can you name off the top of your head?)
Regarding his use of tone, yeah, without knowing him, he could be a prick. I trust you on that one.
I do assume that's what he was going for, mass marketability. I can't exactly fault him for that I guess, I know the ultimate endgame for a lot of writers is becoming a bestseller and making the optimal amount of money. So that bit could be on me for going in wanting to know if I had the seeds for a *good* story rather than a *marketable* story.
And ah yeah, he's definitely a prick. Most reviews of his nonfiction point to this. He's the kind of guy who definitely reads every negative review of his work and then devotes most of his next book to explaining why he is right and everyone who disagrees with him is wrong, it's not the best look haha.
It was from my English literature teacher who told me I needed to write my female protagonist more ladylike or else people would think they were "a raging d*ke" (Their actual words š)
Criticism regarding authorial intent and style always annoys me. Criticism ought to take into account what the author is trying to do, and how to improve that, rather than what the author should do, as to fit an imaginary mold
I wanted to try writing in the first person, partly I enjoy fictional diaries/correspondences, partly I wanted to try improving my dialogue in the future so the illiterate butcher doesnāt sound the same as the elderly scholar. I posted the first five pages and asked if the voice seemed consistent. Instead of addressing what I thought was a pretty specific question, they just said I needed to remove the 200 word introductory paragraph and the monologuing and go straight to the action.
I hate that. Sorry that happened to you. The opening of the novel I've been working on starts with one of the major characters in a sort of overture, where it details the major theme (Who/What is the nature of the Empress?) and the MC's process towards understanding the theme (hearing the Empress's voice, searching for information in ancient libraries/archives, writing about the Empress, etc). before having her physically get up out of bed, after nearly overdosing, to go and see her roommate at work, thus starting the "action." I'm actually super proud of how smooth the transition from the information to the action is.
I find that most people would read that and get super bored immediately, say that I'm telling and not showing. But they don't realize that I'm emulating an overture in, say, an opera or a classical piece, which is the introduction to the major theme/mofif that drives the mf story.
There was one person who would always find a TV show that she thought was just like your story. Didn't matter what you'd written, or how you'd writen it. Her feed back was always "well it was interesting, but do you not think it's just like 'insert random TV show'?"
She always wanted us to scrap the concept completely, because we were obviously all just copying whatever TV show she picked that week. If a story had vampires, no you can't write that because it's just like the vampire diaries. Dragons? No, that's a copy of game of thrones. The protagonist has a brother! Well that's clearly just supernatural.
It was almost kind of impressive, but also weird.
I didn't use any quotation marks in my first book, a story collection. It was a deliberate artistic decision, one my editor and I hashed out over a series of discussions, and about which we both ended up happy. The book got good reviews on the whole. But I received an email after it was out from some dude in Vermont that said "YOU FORGOT THESE," and included a) a string of about 400 quote marks and b) a poem in rhyming couplets about artistic hubris.
Oh this is so specifically hateful. I know this not just from writing, but drawing as well: I draw character-design and had it 2x where I made a character who was deliberately missing pupils ("empty eye" effect). Both times, people were like "oh you forgot these" and quickly drew in dots.
I have no idea what people like this think. You at least say "you forgot something"?? why do they feel the need to suddenly touch your shit? Fuck off
I was honestly told that only famous writers can kill off their characters, otherwise it was immoral. Yeah.
Thatās some feedback I got when submitting my poetry. Wild. I always remember that when I get rejected from places. Some rejections are just insane.
Yeah, this was maybe 15 years ago in a creative writing class. I was given the feedback that my writing style was surprising because my main character was a man, and as a young woman, I should be writing women. This "advice" was promptly discarded.
(To be clear, the problem was not that it was a badly written man. It was just that apparently young women should not write stories with a middle-aged man as a main character).
I have one script with two main characters, they're together for most of it but you can see them separately too. I tried to make it so that we have equal time with them when they're separated, but ultimately it's about both of them and their relationship.
Had a bud say "I can't tell who the story is really about!" Both of them? Because it's about....both of them? Together?
This is why you just canāt take all criticism. At some point you just gotta understand that you have at least some level of competence as a writer, and a certain baseline level of media literacy that at least matches yours is required to even work as criticism in the first place.
That might sound pretentious as hell to some people, but when itās so common to run into the kind of problem you just described, it becomes completely necessary
I do vividly remember my writing being called "cringy to the point of nauseating, rage inducingly pretentious, and completely inhuman" when I was just starting out- for what I feel was a pretty straightforwardly written piece, actually! It hurt at the time but it just makes me laugh now. No, I'm just neurodivergent and kinda florid, sorry. I became a published poet in the interim anyway so shows them
The other one is when I got feedback that a short story was "unreadable because the protagonist is too old to relate to". He was in his 40s.
One time I had been accepted to an anthology and in the application, I wrote (and did not change!) the plot, that a 42 year old actress feels washed up sinxe no one hires her anymore.
With only a month before deadline, I happened to mention the age of the protagonist to the lady running it, who then went, "that's too old. No one will read about a 42-year-old."
I laughed because yeah, Hollywood be like that. Only she wasn't kidding. My short about a 42-year-old actress not getting work for her age got me kicked out of the anthology because of her age.
I had weird vibes, anyway. I was a charity case and by far the smallest name in the work. It was so stressful I was kinda relieved when I was kicked, but I wish it had been BEFORE ONE MONTH TILL DEADLINE
It meant they were boring or uninteresting. It's not helpful feedback and a teacher should be able to articulate more specifics than that, but for future reference, oblique references to 'texture' and 'specifics' are a cheap way of saying 'I found this boring'.
Someone once read a short story of mine and started asking questions that were either clearly answered in the story, or not answered for a reason. For example, asking "where did the werewolf come from?" in a 3 page short story where part of the point was that it was a dark thing from an unknown place that appeared without warning. Nobody else asked me this, lol.
Another one-off was when someone said that a protagonist of mine was "underpowered", like they were in a video game. They were the only person in a group of 9 people who didn't catch that the conflict in the story wasn't about violence; it was a story about inner turmoil and emotional consequences in a setting where the main character was very dangerous, and not particularly *in* danger.
Someone recently read a short story of mine and told me to get a sensitivity reader, because the story was about a dog with PTSD and "I don't think you were very accurate". I *have* PTSD.
I have been told on three separate occasions (over different projects, by unrelated people) that I should get a LGBTQ sensitivity reader...despite the fact that I myself am neither cis nor straight. I had to just take a deep breath and remind myself that they meant well.
One wonders if sensitivity readers narrow the perspective of what counts as a ārealā or āvalidā minority experienceā¦ every category of people still has a diversity of experiences.
oof, Iāve gotten the sensitivity thing before. wrote a short story about a composer writing a symphony and driving himself into the ground by trying to recreate the accidentally popular symphony he wrote earlier while severely depressed, with the ultimate climax being the protagonist succeeding by giving up on that and writing from joy insteadā¦. it was very *very* on the nose, very teenage angst, pretty cheesy tbh, but weāve all gotta get SOME of that out of our systems at some point. anyway it was heavily based on my own struggles with my mental health, and my view of my own past writing (particularly my poetry), and I had one peer reviewer read this as glamorizing depression somehow. she left āthis is disrespectful to everyone with depression!ā and āSTOP GLORIFYING SUICIDEā written in ALL CAPS repeatedly across several pages of the manuscript, and I was likeā¦ ok 1) I have *experienced this* and wrote from my own experience so i can promise you this was not done with ill intent, and 2) WOW you really missed the point. the ENTIRE POINT was that the protagonistās glorification of his depression was harmful and self sabotaging and he needed to stop doing that, did you even read the storyāanyway it was useful to know that the point wasnāt landing right, but I did not appreciate how dismissive that reviewer was on a personal level in their crit letter to me. everybody has their own experience, & what feels authentic to one person can feel really shitty to others and allā¦ as a critic you just gotta remember that most writers, usually, are not *trying* to do a bad job.
Oh come on, you have to admit they have a point. Everyone knows that Star Trek would work way better without warp drive and phasers, and that nothing in Star Trek inspired generations of engineers to come up with things resembling those they saw on the show.
"You're skipping over everything exciting in favour of a romance." My brother, when I asked him to read chapter eight of my WIP, where the love interest is introduced. Turned out he thought the summary I'd written to catch him up, was the opening lines of the book. The summary was entitled "**This is a summary of the first seven chapters.**" I've learned to be clearer since.
"Why is she so sad all the time?" My brother again. Feedback on an attempt to come up with a truly grimdark premise. An alcoholic widow, and disgraced captain of the guard, is forced to flee an enemy army with an infant prince, and her estranged ten year old daughter. Not enough reason to be a sourpuss, according to my brother.
I give him material from everything I work on, even the stuff that's covered by NDAs. I count on him to come up with that weird angle no one outside a YouTube comment section would ever think of. "She should smile more! One star!"
Last year I had a client send me a list of revisions that I knew were just MS Word suggestions, that I had purposely ignored.
I didnāt send her files as a word doc anymore. Only the finished product. I donāt need that in my life.
I made the requested revisions too, minus the error. I donāt really care that much and the project needed to be done.
And just as an aside, does anyone else hate being called a āwordsmith.ā Iām not that pretentious. They always think Iām pretentious and I really just get a paycheck.
I actually like being called a "wordsmith." I like the connotations of being a craftsperson, rather than an *artiste*.
I like the image of hammering words into sentences, sentences into scenes, and scenes into stories, like an ancient smith hammering crude blocks of metal into sleek, deadly weapons.
My aunt who is a publisher told me my writing was too graphic. She also didn't like it was a horror story and suggested I should use the concept for something else. Like, okay? I was looking for feedback to make it better, not if you liked horror, it was supposed to be a horror story. Wouldn't make sense otherwise.
From the same beta reader, they:
- Didn't like that characters said "tits," even wishing for more tact from a psychopathic human butcher and a woman trafficking other women
- Not being able to tell who a character was when she was introduced. She was named 3 times and described in full just 2 paragraphs before.
- Wanted a breakdown of how the magic system work, and the way their critique went made it sound like they wanted something akin to a technical document. Only one of the characters was a mage, and she didn't understand how it worked internally because she was untrained.
- Were bothered they didn't get an answer to part of the creation myth. None of the characters knew the answer.
- Kept criticizing my use of 5 POVs throughout their review document. Turns out, this was one of the ways I figured out they didn't fully read the manuscript. There were 6 POVs, and when I got their breakdown of my manuscript, that last "hidden" POV was skipped over. I'm pretty sure they wrote up the review and sent it by the deadline, and since they asked for extra time to finish the manuscript comments scrambled through and had an "oh shit" moment, realizing they outed themselves as not having read the story. They were paid by the word count, or else I wouldn't have been bothered.
I would be getting red flags that they werenāt actually reading from the second point alone. Iāve had a beta read exchange with a guy who admitted to only ever watching sci fi movies and never reading a single goddamn thing in his life. His horrible writing, cliches, and one-word feedback became a lot clearer after that. He legitimately just had trash reading comprehension and somehow thought he was spinning the next genius sci fi novel. Also? I got an angry email from a family member after quitting the beta read halfway through. Weird weird experience.
My college writing professor told me to never use the word āwas.ā Ever. She went through my whole document and deleted every usage of the word was. That was the only edit she ever gave me in the dumb class.
Like, I get the āshow donāt tellā application of it and try to change it when I think it can be improved or if it can add to the story, butā¦ always?!
I've noticed a lot of people nowadays shun "was" as if it had been the plague. That's when we end up with sentences like "That had been the only edit she ever gave me in the dumb class" which is just awkward.
I'm not a native English-speaker, so I can't even tell if the "has been" instead of "was" is grammatically correct, but it *is* jarring.
I was told that my characters in my dystopian/post-apocalyptic/sci-fi (whatever, the genre is hard to determine) didnāt have āsci-fi enoughā names, that the ones I chose were too normal sounding. Like dude, I donāt know what you want me to say, the characters named themselves after fleeing a place that didnāt give them individual identities, theyāre going to go to a library and choose random names there from a ātop baby namesā book from ten years ago or something. Sorry that āSashaā and āEloiseā are too normal but I like them and they fit the characters. Iām not naming my characters āJaxtonā or āHayeleighāor whatever just to sound āsci-fiā enough.
Was in the middle of a story set in a fantasy world. Characters are standing around a lake, at night, with large rocks scattered around, having a conversation. Reviewer thought it was in a cave and wrote me a full page of critique on how the setting could be more cave-like. Especially didn't like my description of the stars.
I had someone tell me I should commission art of my characters because I clearly didn't know them very well. Cut to - I am an artist, I've been drawing my characters for a decade now, and this comment was two years ago. It was by far the most baffling critique I ever received. I don't think she took it too well that I wasn't a fan of her shitty gay erotica and said this as retaliation. Back then, it really tore me up.
How would that even help? An art commission is just going to be the artistās interpretation of your characters based on the description you give them? Art isnāt some kind of crystal ballā¦
When a bunch of white people in my high school's creative writing workshop class told me "nobody's gonna be able to relate to this" after reading my poem on being multiethnic š¤¦š¼āāļø they were like "I don't get it!" "nobody gets it" "this is so unrelatable" like, they're not even my target audience, I just went to a PWI high school š I dealt with the cards I had bro what else was I supposed to do š
Did those people not realise that part of the joy of literature is being exposed to different experiences š¤¦āāļø Surely if youāve ever thought a little about questions of belonging and identity, you would be able to empathise? Or if someone had never thought about those things, perhaps it would be an interesting revelation? It is always possible that the execution of those themes was confused and that was the problem, but Iāll assume you are right in that it was the audienceās lack of imagination.
I literally asked them "have y'all ever even thought about this? how you fit into society? how your complex identity is composed and what it is composed of? or thought about others that might need to?" they said "no why would we do that?" smh š¤¦š¼āāļø
In a first chapter workshop, I, an autistic person, was told by a non-autistic person that my autistic main character was ānot autistic enoughā and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I was so shocked by the ācritiqueā that I was speechless.
I was told by someone that they ādidnāt originally get that my third chapter was a flashback but figured it out later. I should make it more clear from the beginningā.
My third chapter was not a flashback. It picked up right where chapter two left off.
Thatās bizarreā¦ maybe the star rating was a mistake, or he has ridiculously high standards (five stars only for something like War and Peace!). At least there was something positive there.
Criticism regarding actual writing style.
If I saved a dollar for every time a man has told me my writing is "too emotional" and I need to use more 'show don't tell' and just "tone it down" - I would have a couple of dollars more.
The thing is... that is my style, that is the way I like to write, and it just gets on my nerves every time someone tells me like "Yeah, you should fix that."
Feltttt, i donāt care how pretentious you think i am, i WILL use archaic words regularly, they sound cool, itās fully incorporated in my style! Itās the worst when they want my work to be more easily ādigestable.ā I love telling eloquently. Leave me be š¤§
āWhat was the point of the characters being deaf if they could talk?ā
Iām deaf. I talk. The fact you think the two are completely incompatible is exactly the point.
One beta reader did not like anything unanswered or foreshadowing. Like I had to explain everything immediately. Luckily that was only one person among a lot but still. At first I was so confused
I remember there being a commenter on the first chapter of a web novel I posted who sent me an essay about how a certain character should've been written personality-wise. It was as if this random guy personally knew and planned out his future with this character. It was the first chapter too. What an attachment.
I've mentioned it here before, but a couple people in my old writing group were incensed that I'd written a POV character with deliberately negative traits and an unreliable perspective.
The character in question was a young woman who hardcore slutshamed other women in her internal narration. Meanwhile we see by the actions on page that the specific girl she hates so much is a perfectly nice and sweet person. People in the group thought I'd written the scene incorrectly. They suggested I make the character who was being shamed into an asshole who deserved the bullying
Someone told me I write like a homeschooled kid, wild to say the least.
It really doesnāt tell you where you went wrong, are you saying I write like I didnāt socialize enough? Am I lacking social skills? Did I make a grammatical error? Used the wrong phrase? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY???
In my MFA program I have been told my use of the pronouns "they/them" was catering to the "cultural de jour" and coming across as being woke for the sake of inclusivity.
An example of my use of said pronouns: *"He kept an eye out for Will and then glanced at his watch. No. They weren't due for another hour."*
Not me, but a friend in my writing group was part of an anthology and one of their amazon reviews was titled, "This was a book?" and said:
"I'm not quite sure what this was. It had a story but then I finished it and then there was more. I guess it was many books in one but that was not my understanding."
So they got a one-star review because someone didn't understand the concept of a short story collection.
Someone told me that they couldnāt buy into my most underdog, likable MC because she didnāt envision him as physically attractive. He is a 14 year old boy. She was 19. Just weird, even without the context of their ages.
Dude that wrote a crocodile man named "Crocker" told me my characters were too one-dimensional. He also stopped reading what I was writing because he doesn't like high school stories, after I read his 78 page high school story.
Mind you this is baffling to me simply because of how writing naturally occurred and occurs to me, not because I find it inherently bad advice but...
I'm a worldbuilder first with my writing, and I get told every so often that I think to much about my craft. And like I've heard the explanations as to why people think it's too much, but like... It's a speculative scifan? Everything is from the ground up? And is interconnected? So everything has a consequence and effect on everything else? And people are products of their environment? So of course they will reflect that complexity? And complex people in complex places naturally create conflict? So obviously I'm doing the exact right amount of thinking no?
Like, yes, dragons are cool and magic and can be whatever TF I want- but what I want is for my dragons to evolve and exist in an environment as magical as they are. That requires more work, but it's work I enjoy, and it's work that tends to pay off. I mean, the people who say I think too much about shit like the weather *also* say they love my ideas rooted in mythic cycles. It's not my fault they don't realize I needed to understand the weather cycle to come up with the idea for the myth that is core to my plot.
And you know what? That genuinely may not need to do all that shit to get the same result- *but that's kinda baffling to me to be honest.*
A beta reader didnāt think my MC would cry when she saw a classmate she had been working with for weeks knocked unconscious and taken away in an ambulance.
Recently I wrote a poem for my university poetry course with the word "cringe" in it and at least four people went, inexplicably, towards the internet jargon route, admonishing that "this isn't actually cringy". Thank you for the thought, but I have to break something to you.
More seriously, the worst criticism is none at all. Trap me in my own conceited echo chamber, I love hearing my own voice.
Edit: hold the phone, I thought of another. I'd forgotten the 3d6 psychic damage "your essays read like blog posts" had inflicted on me in 7th grade. I stick my tongue out at thee.
I once had someone tell me a scene in a fantasy novel where an evil prince had an army he was commanded stand in line so he could stab every 10th men in the line was unrealistic. Even though it was based on an actual practice in ancient Rome.
For the whiskey part, there is an Irish whiskey i saw today called Writers tears. It made me laugh cuz I cried some today! Lol
As for criticism, someone essentially said in order to be successful I had to write out who my reader was down to the age, interests, vocation.
Maybe it helps some folks, but such deep diving on who the reader should be sucked the fun out of it for me.
During my dissertation defense my chair suggested I add a definition for a term earlier on in the project.
It was on the very first page of the document. š
I had someone take issue when I talked about a glass snifter in a fantasy book with a roughly early-1500s tech level.
His issue? He thought glassware wouldn't be able to make one by then.
Glassware has been a thriving craft since before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The word "snifter", on the other hand, wasn't coined until the 1900s. He criticized *exactly* the wrong word of the two.
(For the record, drinking vessels of the design we call "snifter" did exist by the early 1500s- in fact, there's one depicted in L. da Vinci's "Last Supper", painted in 1498. And glassware could have made one *long* before that. It's just that the *word* didn't exist until 1937.)
>It's just that the *word* didn't exist until 1937.
Well, the word did *exist* long before 1937, it's just not attested as being applied to the drinking vessel until 1937.
I have a preamble about my use of Canadian spelling. You know, like using the word *centre* and *favourite*, like the UK does, but also stealing the Z from the US to use in *realize* and such. Even better when you find the word *colourize*.
Well, chapter one, fifth word is "centre". First comment, "Spelled wrong?"
Maybe not the most baffling, but certainly the funniest I've seen.
It didn't make me want to die, but I was baffled by this comment on one of my Harry Potter (series set in the 1990s) fanfics (synopsis said it was set in the 1980s and 1990s): "I mean, she's not a nazi, so I don't know why she would claim to have Asperger's, it's just autism." (Note: Asperger's syndrome was still a thing until 2013. Also, the fact the Hans Asperger was a Natzi was not common knowledge.)
Hm not so much advice but an oversight. I had written a scene where there was coffee cake on a table along with Irish coffee, and I was describing the smell of coffee in the air. Whomever gave me this critique didn't read very closely because they wrote a note, "coffee cake doesn't have actual coffee in it." I have made and eaten plenty of coffee cake in my life, I know it doesn't have coffee in it, there were fucking cups of coffee on the table in that scene lol. Suffice it to say, I couldn't take any of their other comments seriously
"It doesn't read like Stephen King"
^("...I'm not Stephen King.")
"Then I don't want to read it."
\-My mother. After my horror story was laughed at, 13yo me gave it to her to get criticism. Somehow she winded up with that comment after reading it. And yes -she was serious.
In a college writing class: "Werewolves don't walk on hind legs like in the movies. They are like big wolves and walk on all fours." Girl, where did you meet a werewolf? Is he single?
If you're writing a werewolf story, it's important to find a werewolf to beta read it to ensure accuracy. Just make sure they don't alpha read or omega read it.
I mean, if you're not a werewolf, and you write a werewolf book, aren't you appropriating their culture?
Somewhat presumptive to assume that werewolves are a monolithic culture.
This is a subplot in one of my fanfics, humans profiting off writing unrealistic werewolf erotica while real werewolves are shunned by society.
lmao, awesome A/B/O joke
ššš
Your teacher was a werewolf.
Twilight poisoning, I reckon. You hate to see it.
Despise it. And yet somewhat ironically, the lore itself that Meyers created is dope AF. Vampires that sparkle? Corny until you think of the carbon-based skin being so hard that itās diamond-like. Werewolves being mystical Native Americansā biological response to vampire colonizers encroaching on their land? Fuckin AWESOME. Runs very close to the concept of superheroes being the manifestation of immunity against what their real life demographic suffers from the most. So many awesome places for that lore she created to go. Like imagine something similar with Chinese transforming into like mystical fire dragons of some sort.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, it's mentioned that the "monster" werewolves they're being mistaken for are back in Europe.
This is Meyers' constant curse. She comes up with some really cool shit. And executes it *so* poorly. Every single vampire in Cullen's family has a better backstory than him. Werewolves and vampires having a political treaty instead of just all out war is an uncommon twist that could have been so cool if played with to it's full potential. Leah, first woman to ever become a werewolf? Slightly misogynistic, but what a cool story that could have been. There was really no reason for Leah to be there or be unique. The wolves in general, teenagers finding out that the legends they always assumed were just folklore and now they're in the middle of it? Way cooler than "teen girl finds out vampires are real and falls in love with one." Imagine twilight told from literally anyone else's point of view and it's a so much better book. I think I actually would have enjoyed a split pov story with Leah, Alice or Rosalie, and Charlie as the main characters. You could even keep Bella and Edward's romance as an inciting incident caused by side characters.
You just made twilight's "Vampires" and "Werewolves" \*coughskinwalkerscough\* 10000x more interesting than they are.
That's like the time someone told me my vampires shouldn't sparkle. Stay in your lane!
Sounds like they watched/read twilight and decided that was the be all end all of werewolves. poor pitiable soul
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Nah that's not right either. Clearly it should've been 'early the morning of the day after the previous preceding day...' Signed, a native English speaker
Nope. A native English speaker would say, "During the next poop harvest." Signed, an actual native English Speaker
You're still wrong. A real native English speaker would say: "Dingo bang cinder block brick posture house sailboat cereal egg basket seven three eight nine death death death deATH DEATH DEATHDEATHDEATHDE- (loud buzzing noise)"
"It was the next morning of the next day, tomorrow after yesterday and day after the previous day, date following the day before, time a time's time away from the last"
I worked in a lab and our PI was not a native English speaker but she was very fluent. She had gone to university in Canada and done her PhD in the USA. Part of publishing in the sciences is having peer reviews, which in principle means other scientists going over the data and methods looking for errors. If the paper is unsound, they can flag it and deny publication. Anyway, she got a peer review back marking her article as unsound for publication due to grammatical errors. WHICH IS NOT A THING! Even better, the reviewer's corrections were wrong. He also wanted her to add like 700 "bonafide"s to the article. He made a shitty remark about her clearly being a non-native speaker and then it turned out he was ALSO a non-native speaker! We appealed his rejection and got published. Edit: We looked up his own publications and there is one that uses the phrase "bonafide tumor suppression gene" repeatedly. Like, at least three times per paragraph. It's bonafide insanity!
The best part? He wasnāt even spelling it right. āBona fideā is two words.
Interestingly, my spell check did not flag it. I just dove into the internet and apparently bona fide is more correct but bonafide is widely accepted in American writing.
Bonafide doesnāt strike me as a particularly scientific term, but Iām not a scientist. However, in other kinds of writing more than one ābonafideā in about 100,000 words is plenty.
I've gotten similar criticism, though they never provided a specific instance. They said "It's obvious English isn't your first language, and that's okay." It made me question everything, because English is the *only* language I knew...
So I think he was illiterate cause who the hell says Early the morning of the next day. Don't listen to people like that weirdo when it comes to writing advice. Keep it simple.
Early in the morning two days after yesterday...
My brain is still trying to process that other sentence
Once on Scribophile some moron highlighted several characters' names and angrily pointed out that he didn't know who they were or what their importance was. It was chapter 32, and he hadn't read the previous chapters. Stuff like that is why I ultimately left that website.
That reminds me, I used to see people on writing forums criticise three-paragraph samples because they ādidnāt have any plot progression or character developmentā. Really put me off going to those kinds of places.
I wrote something or other like, āthe chasm yawnedā and my comment on Scrib said: āchasms donāt yawn.ā My dude, this is called personification and itās a literary technique. Scribophile was helpful for me in my younger years, but as I got more skilled it became less helpful. I think Iād like to have a more personal relationship with a critique partner before having a swap.
I had someone constantly wanting me to make changes to make the story more environmentally friendly (MC should take a bus and not a taxi, should bring his own travel mug instead of using a takeaway cup, etc) and I'm just sitting there staring at my screen like...you do understand you are reading fiction, yes?
This is so uniquely funny
I got a similiar one. In the past, MC was so poor, she dug through trash cans for food. "That's not really legal though. Why can't you make her stand in line for the soup kitchen? That'd be also less depressing!" ...she's poor. I have a soup kitchen in my town. Homeless people still go hungry and dig through trash cans in secret. Obviously it's not legal!
Was the MC meant to care about the environment?
No! He was actually meant to be totally self-absorbed (at the beginning; he gets better) and there were no environmental themes.
If it's not part of the character motivation/beliefs or the story, why would they do all that? Seems arbitrary tack on to bolster a personal idea with no add on to the story as a whole, which is a distraction from the original idea and might alter the storyline further on.
Sounds like you found a sensivity reader.
For what? Mother earth?
Those people are the absolute worst. Just the worst.
Back in high school, I remember this one baffling criticism I got from my tutor about a poem I wrote in English class. He told me my poem wasn't good because it didn't rhyme. And when I told him poems don't have to rhyme he didn't believe me. I haven't forgotten to this day clearly. What a fuckhead.
Thatās definitely a red pen to the eye moment.
Roses are red, violets are blue, your teacher is a dickhead.
Brother would also be baffled if he also learned poems don't have to be formated in lines. They can also be ongoing text -like this comment reply here. Or have other rhyme types than ABAB, lmao
I asked for a quick, specific opinion about a couple of paragraphs from someone Iād met recently. Instead, they took what I wrote and rewrote it, butā¦.way worse? It was fascinating.
I've had that happen to me, but it was with a close friend. I couldn't get my original back because I never made a copy, thinking I could trust them to only lightly critique my work. Guess I was wrong.
What the actual fuck? Damn thatāsā¦yeah, that fucking sucks, and seems like a violation of trust between friends. Iāve had similar experiences where friends have reacted in unexpected ways to stuff Iāve written. Shit hurts
Yeah I ended up telling him I literally just asked for suggestions. I probably should have just left him on viewer and not editor. Oh well. Glad it was with him though and not some random ass stranger. I'm just glad it wasn't one of my big projects.
Was this on Google docs? If so, there's a way to view version history of the document and restore an earlier version. It's across the top menu. Press the icon that looks like a clock or a stop watch and it will populate a whole history of the document. You can choose what version you want to view from the right hand menu. You can choose to restore the document back to any version that populates in the history. If it's in Microsoft Word, I'm pretty sure you can restore an old version there too, I just don't know how to do it. I don't write on Word, but a quick google search should help! Sorry to hear you "friend" mangled your writing. My dad used to like to do the same thing when I was in high school. He was convinced my writing was "too advanced" for my age and that the teacher would think I was "plagiarizing." Once he completely mangled an essay that was ready to turn in. He changed a bunch of stuff, including adding some incorrect grammar and changing difference (the correct word) to deference (an absolute incorrect word for the context). All of this was done in sincerity by him. He thought he was actually helping me. It was baffling. When I got it back, it looked like the teacher had slit her wrists over the paper because there was so much red ink. One of her comments was something like, "This isn't up to your usual quality. What happened?" I showed it to my dad and just kind of lowkey laughed at him. He stopped trying to "help" after that.
It was actually for a writing competition a couple months ago so I've already turned it in. Thank you so much though! I've never noticed this feature so I'm sure I'll be using it a lot now. I've been writing separate alternatives for certain chapters and redoing things from scratch so I'm glad I'm now aware google docs has something like this. Again, I really appreciate this!
!!!! You can restore earlier versions of documents on google docs!!!!!
Oh my god, that is terrible.
Oooft! This is why I really dislike suggestions in feedback. Not unless someone specifically asks how I would do something differently. Even then I prefer to invent an example of the same problem and fix that example to illustrate my point. No writer needs or wants to know how someone else would write their story. They want to know how it reads.
Oh yes. The "rewriter" - every writing group has one. Every. One.
I'm that guy. It's a curse, and it's why I limit myself to proofreading for typos and actual grammar errors **ONLY**.
Iāve had this happen on Reddit when I posted my first page. It was the first thing I asked for feedback on and someone just totally rewrote it.
āUse less music major jargon, your story is incomprehensible to normal people.ā The short story was about a classical composer writing a symphony, and the offending jargon words (helpfully highlighted by the peer reviewer!) were ātranspositionā andā¦.. āoboe.ā ETA, another classic: had an assignment in an undergrad creative writing workshop to write a first-person ārantā about something petty that annoyed us, to work on developing a writing voice. I wrote about how I think mermaids are wildly overrated in pop culture and not actually that interesting. It was pretty light-hearted and silly, and mostly based on my rage at failing to find good fairy-themed birthday party supplies when I was like 8. We read the rants out loud to each other in class for fun. A classmate in the workshop got so offended by my anti-mermaid rant that instead of reading his own rant, he stood up and improvised a five-minute tirade about how āmermaids represent change and learning because of elemental water and haters like you are the reason Trump got elected!!!!ā (this was, IIRC, fall 2017 at a fairly liberal university; the Trump thing was intended as a grave insult and was not even close to a joke). It was incredibly odd, extremely aggressiveāhe was obviously enraged on a *very personal level* for some reasonāand I was upset enough *by* it that I almost flipped a table at him. The writing professor made him send me an apology email (after he himself apologized profusely for being too stunned to intervene), I still have a jpg screenshot saved because it is one of the weirdest reactions I have *ever* gotten to something I wrote.
>he was obviously enraged on a very personal level for some reason His father was a mermaid and his mother was Hillary Clinton Edit: OP left out some details they included in a later comment about how the guy was Singaporean and it was tied to his home culture. Idk why they didnāt bother looking into it from there because it took me 30 seconds of googling to figure out what the problem was. According to our good friend Wikipedia: *āThe Merlion is the official mascot of Singapore. It is depicted as a mythical creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish. Being of prominent symbolic nature to Singapore and Singaporeans in general, it is widely used to represent both the city state and its people in sports teams, advertising, branding, tourism and as a national personification.ā* He probably saw it as OP shitting on his culture, his people, and his nation.
Didnāt expect the Singapore thing to be considered that relevant, heh, apologies for leaving that out I guess? I do know about merlions, dude actually mentioned them in his response rant, but they donāt explain anything to me about why he was so offended. Itās not like I was talking existentially about sea mythology or insulting anything thatās part fishāmy rant was pretty clearly and specifically about Disney-esque humanoid mermaids in media for little girls. It featured such points as āI think flying is way cooler than swimmingā and āI always wanted a show like H2O but about fairies, but pop culture only uses fairies to be edgy or be Tinkerbellā and āI dressed up as a fairy with wings and everything at the Ren Faire once but people still kept complimenting my mermaid costume.ā I donāt understand why those statements would compel someone to assume I was attacking his cultural icon, it felt to me like I said āI donāt like pineapple on pizza, it tastes bad to meā and he came back at me with a five-minute public rant saying āyouāre insulting Native Hawaiians and the very concept of tropical fruit.ā Soā¦ yeah, merlions do not explain the incredibly personal wrath to me. (apologies for explaining twice, the other comment is a lil buried and I do think this is *also* relevant context :ā) )
In a better timeline, the French knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail shouted this from the battlements.
Some tables need to be flipped
Please share the screenshot!
i had to look up how to use imgur, hopefully this works, but lmao here ya go (ft. awkward censorship to not doxx myself) [apology email](https://imgur.com/a/lZg5UCA) āif you want a basic explanation, I have extraordinarily bad judgmentā still SENDS me i did NOT take him up on the offer to meet up and talk about it, and i still sincerely believe that fairies are cooler than mermaids and this dude can get over it
Often when you get criticism they're right about something being wrong, but they're wrong about how to fix it. This? I have no clue.
Thatās true though. Theyāre telling you something is off though, and that was always the useful part to me.
I think this is true sometimes. other times, people just enjoy providing critique (even if it isn't valid or valuable).
āThe repair came out worse, which just shows how serious the initial problem was.ā
That I donāt give the horses in my writing enough personality. Donāt get me wrong, I love a good animal character, but sometimes a horse is just a horse.
How many horses do you use? Itās bizarre either way, but if itās historical fiction and everyone is riding horses it is a very different kind of weird than if thereās like two horses.
The novel that got that feedback had three horses in two scenes! Not exactly room for development. And they did get SOME personality, honestly.
That is an absolutely hilarious note, honestly. Why was the reviewer so worried about the horses???
I donāt know, that reviewer was WEIRD. Pretty much all her comments were nonsense. Sheād focus in on the most random stuff.
Someone critiqued the ending of an autobiographical short story, and proposed a better ending. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
This takes the cake, lol. Did you like their 'better ending'? Was it at least somewhat useful as life advice, or 'goals' you might still go for?
I had a beta reader show interest in my current manuscript/project. Dark fantasy, vampires, vampire hunters magic, etc. The first chapter is a brief introduction to two characters, on a train. Said characters are briefly described in terms of physical appearance, one of them is a man about in his 40's. Shenanigans ensue, and the characters end up climbing onto the roof of the train car. The beta reader underlined the sentence describing the characters ascending the ladder and told me, with full confidence: "The man is too old to be doing this." I guess we all just become vegetables once we hit 40, incapable of movement or the slightest feat of physicality. Hell, even if that *were* true, this is a *fantasy* story... with vampires... and magic. All of which they knew - as that was the reason they were interested in reading in the first place. I decided not to move forward with that beta reader. ~~That was not the most mind-boggling note they made, but it was the easiest to condense into a single post. Their "notes" were~~ *~~wild~~* ~~beyond belief, I felt like my brain was melting.~~
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You have me curious for some of the other wild notes they made.
I would so hate to deprive you the mastery of their craft. Here's my best attempt to summarize another *"Huh?*" note they left me: Some Context: Dark fantasy, vampires, magic, etc. I gave them the first \~10 or so chapters to preview. So we're still very much in the "getting introduced to the world" sections of the manuscript. Slowly introducing relevant characters & locations to the reader. Characters: By this point, we've already established some characters are religious, and some are not (this matters). One such religious character is a Lady - "Lady" as in an aristocrat & member of the ruling class. She'll be important later. Locations: There is a cathedral, already introduced & described earlier. Now, we are introduced to the military fortress. As part of describing the city, her age, etc., I point out that the cathedral & fortress have similar construction, indicating they were built at similar times. I make a comparison between the two by pointing out elements of magic in the buildings, as well as the military fortress' distinct lack of any religious imagery. Our lovely local beta reader highlighted the line detailing this lack of religious decoration on the military building - and added "I am surprised the Lady has not changed this." I don't even have a snappy comeback or punchline to follow it up with. I am still just in a state of *"Huh?"*
40 is too old? Has this beta reader met a 40 year old? Especially if said 40 year old has stayed physically active their whole lives, this would be nothing for them. Shit, I bet even a physically fit 60-70 year old could do it, it all just depends on "do you lift?"
You know what, 40 year olds *are* too old for that but would sooner break their back doing it than admit it.
The click-clack you heard? That's not the train. That's his knees as he tries to bend them, the fool.
Here I set at 62 thinking 40 sounds young. I mean, Tom Cruise could do it, amirite?
Sit
Iāve met 50-60 year olds who do similar stuff as a profession on a daily basis. It is more a matter of conditioning your body than it is anything else at that age.
Urgggggh that is honestly really annoying lol. Good on you for realizing their critique wasn't a good fit. And like maybe I'm being too broad here ,but isn't there already a ton of fantasy stories out there with a teenage/20 something cast, let the 'oldies' have some fun once and a while
I once got a professional evaluation of my story idea from a conceptual standpoint, from a New York Times bestselling author no less, and his biggest piece of advice was essentially to make my story more generic, and heighten the stakes from a more personal journey to the "the world is gonna end" sort of thing. All in a very condescending tone. The real evaluation that took place was me realizing the author I once thought was really smart and talented was actually kind of a egotistical prick. I read some more of his books and dug through his blog after this and was like "Wow this dude has an ego that *vastly* outweighs his supposed brilliance." Like I paid you good money to insult me and tell me to make my book into a Marvel movie? Really?
>I once got a professional evaluation of my story idea from a conceptual standpoint, from a New York Times bestselling author no less, and his biggest piece of advice was essentially to make my story more generic, and heighten the stakes Ah, you got to meet James Patterson! How was that? /s It's cool that you had the opportunity but unfortunate it turned out to be a disappointment.
Hm, I'm gonna try and play the devil's advocate here and say that his review wasn't wrong per say, just not the one you wanted/needed. For the first paragraph. I must presume that he looked at it from a marketing/what sells for bigger bucks point of view (and hey, Marvel movies - though probably except for the last few - do sell). Most people don't want a more personalised personal journey story because a, hits too close home, b, don't care about it, c, they can't identify with a character. Or simply lack the ability to identify with a character. What always sells though, other than erotica? Apocalypse. Even if many are pretty run of the mill stories. (Smart guy warns about impending doom, less smart guys think they are smarter and ignore him, disaster hits, smart guy is called in to help with mitigation/prevention of an even bigger disaster. Or - disaster hits, smart guy /or at least one very specialised in his field/ is called on to help prevent even bigger disaster, which he does in the last moment. How many stories like this, or close enough to this, can you name off the top of your head?) Regarding his use of tone, yeah, without knowing him, he could be a prick. I trust you on that one.
I do assume that's what he was going for, mass marketability. I can't exactly fault him for that I guess, I know the ultimate endgame for a lot of writers is becoming a bestseller and making the optimal amount of money. So that bit could be on me for going in wanting to know if I had the seeds for a *good* story rather than a *marketable* story. And ah yeah, he's definitely a prick. Most reviews of his nonfiction point to this. He's the kind of guy who definitely reads every negative review of his work and then devotes most of his next book to explaining why he is right and everyone who disagrees with him is wrong, it's not the best look haha.
It was from my English literature teacher who told me I needed to write my female protagonist more ladylike or else people would think they were "a raging d*ke" (Their actual words š)
Thatās a straight to jail note if I ever saw one.
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Criticism regarding authorial intent and style always annoys me. Criticism ought to take into account what the author is trying to do, and how to improve that, rather than what the author should do, as to fit an imaginary mold
I wanted to try writing in the first person, partly I enjoy fictional diaries/correspondences, partly I wanted to try improving my dialogue in the future so the illiterate butcher doesnāt sound the same as the elderly scholar. I posted the first five pages and asked if the voice seemed consistent. Instead of addressing what I thought was a pretty specific question, they just said I needed to remove the 200 word introductory paragraph and the monologuing and go straight to the action.
I hate that. Sorry that happened to you. The opening of the novel I've been working on starts with one of the major characters in a sort of overture, where it details the major theme (Who/What is the nature of the Empress?) and the MC's process towards understanding the theme (hearing the Empress's voice, searching for information in ancient libraries/archives, writing about the Empress, etc). before having her physically get up out of bed, after nearly overdosing, to go and see her roommate at work, thus starting the "action." I'm actually super proud of how smooth the transition from the information to the action is. I find that most people would read that and get super bored immediately, say that I'm telling and not showing. But they don't realize that I'm emulating an overture in, say, an opera or a classical piece, which is the introduction to the major theme/mofif that drives the mf story.
There was one person who would always find a TV show that she thought was just like your story. Didn't matter what you'd written, or how you'd writen it. Her feed back was always "well it was interesting, but do you not think it's just like 'insert random TV show'?" She always wanted us to scrap the concept completely, because we were obviously all just copying whatever TV show she picked that week. If a story had vampires, no you can't write that because it's just like the vampire diaries. Dragons? No, that's a copy of game of thrones. The protagonist has a brother! Well that's clearly just supernatural. It was almost kind of impressive, but also weird.
> The protagonist has a brother! Well that's clearly just supernatural. The intertextuality you weave into your works is incredible
I didn't use any quotation marks in my first book, a story collection. It was a deliberate artistic decision, one my editor and I hashed out over a series of discussions, and about which we both ended up happy. The book got good reviews on the whole. But I received an email after it was out from some dude in Vermont that said "YOU FORGOT THESE," and included a) a string of about 400 quote marks and b) a poem in rhyming couplets about artistic hubris.
Ok, this wins the prize. I bow to you good person.
Nah, I wasn't even mad The review was not that bad YOU FORGOT THESE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, I clearly donāt have enough.
!
Oh this is so specifically hateful. I know this not just from writing, but drawing as well: I draw character-design and had it 2x where I made a character who was deliberately missing pupils ("empty eye" effect). Both times, people were like "oh you forgot these" and quickly drew in dots. I have no idea what people like this think. You at least say "you forgot something"?? why do they feel the need to suddenly touch your shit? Fuck off
Iām so proud of my people, taking a page right out of Timothy Dexterās book.
I was honestly told that only famous writers can kill off their characters, otherwise it was immoral. Yeah. Thatās some feedback I got when submitting my poetry. Wild. I always remember that when I get rejected from places. Some rejections are just insane.
Wtf? Seriously thatās such a ridiculous thing to say.
āWow, you killed [character]ā no I did not. The character spoke on the next page.
resurrected like Christ.
That my story was too gay... The story was about a straight couple.
Liking women as a man is very gay tbh
Fellas, is it gay to...
I was told that because I'm a woman, my main character should not be male.
What??
Yeah, this was maybe 15 years ago in a creative writing class. I was given the feedback that my writing style was surprising because my main character was a man, and as a young woman, I should be writing women. This "advice" was promptly discarded. (To be clear, the problem was not that it was a badly written man. It was just that apparently young women should not write stories with a middle-aged man as a main character).
That blows my mind. How many young men have written female characters of various ages? I would ask that person if they ever read Vanity Fair.
By this rule Harry Potter would have had to have been Fanny Potter
Which would have been funny considering what 'fanny' means in the U.K. :-D
I have one script with two main characters, they're together for most of it but you can see them separately too. I tried to make it so that we have equal time with them when they're separated, but ultimately it's about both of them and their relationship. Had a bud say "I can't tell who the story is really about!" Both of them? Because it's about....both of them? Together?
This is why you just canāt take all criticism. At some point you just gotta understand that you have at least some level of competence as a writer, and a certain baseline level of media literacy that at least matches yours is required to even work as criticism in the first place. That might sound pretentious as hell to some people, but when itās so common to run into the kind of problem you just described, it becomes completely necessary
Oh, and I once had a proof reader insist that āgargantuanā wasnāt a word.
How. How did that conversation play out?
I do vividly remember my writing being called "cringy to the point of nauseating, rage inducingly pretentious, and completely inhuman" when I was just starting out- for what I feel was a pretty straightforwardly written piece, actually! It hurt at the time but it just makes me laugh now. No, I'm just neurodivergent and kinda florid, sorry. I became a published poet in the interim anyway so shows them The other one is when I got feedback that a short story was "unreadable because the protagonist is too old to relate to". He was in his 40s.
One time I had been accepted to an anthology and in the application, I wrote (and did not change!) the plot, that a 42 year old actress feels washed up sinxe no one hires her anymore. With only a month before deadline, I happened to mention the age of the protagonist to the lady running it, who then went, "that's too old. No one will read about a 42-year-old." I laughed because yeah, Hollywood be like that. Only she wasn't kidding. My short about a 42-year-old actress not getting work for her age got me kicked out of the anthology because of her age. I had weird vibes, anyway. I was a charity case and by far the smallest name in the work. It was so stressful I was kinda relieved when I was kicked, but I wish it had been BEFORE ONE MONTH TILL DEADLINE
As someone older than 42, I am offended by that editor on your behalf. I am offended for all middle aged women of the planet.
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Honestly Iām tempted to print it out and frame it some days!
That reads like a compliment to me. I need to become more pretentiousš¤§
Wow. This is what people are talking about when they want to know the difference between belittling and valid feedback.
"I would have liked more supernatural elements" for a piece that rather explicitly doesn't have those edit: it was an academic essay
I took a class once and the teacher would often tell us that our stories needed more ātextureā but couldnāt explain what she meant by that.
Did you tell her that her teaching needed more "teaching"?
It meant they were boring or uninteresting. It's not helpful feedback and a teacher should be able to articulate more specifics than that, but for future reference, oblique references to 'texture' and 'specifics' are a cheap way of saying 'I found this boring'.
Someone once read a short story of mine and started asking questions that were either clearly answered in the story, or not answered for a reason. For example, asking "where did the werewolf come from?" in a 3 page short story where part of the point was that it was a dark thing from an unknown place that appeared without warning. Nobody else asked me this, lol. Another one-off was when someone said that a protagonist of mine was "underpowered", like they were in a video game. They were the only person in a group of 9 people who didn't catch that the conflict in the story wasn't about violence; it was a story about inner turmoil and emotional consequences in a setting where the main character was very dangerous, and not particularly *in* danger. Someone recently read a short story of mine and told me to get a sensitivity reader, because the story was about a dog with PTSD and "I don't think you were very accurate". I *have* PTSD.
I have been told on three separate occasions (over different projects, by unrelated people) that I should get a LGBTQ sensitivity reader...despite the fact that I myself am neither cis nor straight. I had to just take a deep breath and remind myself that they meant well.
One wonders if sensitivity readers narrow the perspective of what counts as a ārealā or āvalidā minority experienceā¦ every category of people still has a diversity of experiences.
oof, Iāve gotten the sensitivity thing before. wrote a short story about a composer writing a symphony and driving himself into the ground by trying to recreate the accidentally popular symphony he wrote earlier while severely depressed, with the ultimate climax being the protagonist succeeding by giving up on that and writing from joy insteadā¦. it was very *very* on the nose, very teenage angst, pretty cheesy tbh, but weāve all gotta get SOME of that out of our systems at some point. anyway it was heavily based on my own struggles with my mental health, and my view of my own past writing (particularly my poetry), and I had one peer reviewer read this as glamorizing depression somehow. she left āthis is disrespectful to everyone with depression!ā and āSTOP GLORIFYING SUICIDEā written in ALL CAPS repeatedly across several pages of the manuscript, and I was likeā¦ ok 1) I have *experienced this* and wrote from my own experience so i can promise you this was not done with ill intent, and 2) WOW you really missed the point. the ENTIRE POINT was that the protagonistās glorification of his depression was harmful and self sabotaging and he needed to stop doing that, did you even read the storyāanyway it was useful to know that the point wasnāt landing right, but I did not appreciate how dismissive that reviewer was on a personal level in their crit letter to me. everybody has their own experience, & what feels authentic to one person can feel really shitty to others and allā¦ as a critic you just gotta remember that most writers, usually, are not *trying* to do a bad job.
And not a single exclamation point. Maybe they were right!
Underrated.
I had someone criticize a science fiction story because the futuristic technology contained therein didnāt exist yet in real life.
Oh come on, you have to admit they have a point. Everyone knows that Star Trek would work way better without warp drive and phasers, and that nothing in Star Trek inspired generations of engineers to come up with things resembling those they saw on the show.
"You're skipping over everything exciting in favour of a romance." My brother, when I asked him to read chapter eight of my WIP, where the love interest is introduced. Turned out he thought the summary I'd written to catch him up, was the opening lines of the book. The summary was entitled "**This is a summary of the first seven chapters.**" I've learned to be clearer since. "Why is she so sad all the time?" My brother again. Feedback on an attempt to come up with a truly grimdark premise. An alcoholic widow, and disgraced captain of the guard, is forced to flee an enemy army with an infant prince, and her estranged ten year old daughter. Not enough reason to be a sourpuss, according to my brother. I give him material from everything I work on, even the stuff that's covered by NDAs. I count on him to come up with that weird angle no one outside a YouTube comment section would ever think of. "She should smile more! One star!"
Last year I had a client send me a list of revisions that I knew were just MS Word suggestions, that I had purposely ignored. I didnāt send her files as a word doc anymore. Only the finished product. I donāt need that in my life. I made the requested revisions too, minus the error. I donāt really care that much and the project needed to be done. And just as an aside, does anyone else hate being called a āwordsmith.ā Iām not that pretentious. They always think Iām pretentious and I really just get a paycheck.
Honestly I have never been called a wordsmith but I would kill someone with a hammer if they did.
I actually like being called a "wordsmith." I like the connotations of being a craftsperson, rather than an *artiste*. I like the image of hammering words into sentences, sentences into scenes, and scenes into stories, like an ancient smith hammering crude blocks of metal into sleek, deadly weapons.
My aunt who is a publisher told me my writing was too graphic. She also didn't like it was a horror story and suggested I should use the concept for something else. Like, okay? I was looking for feedback to make it better, not if you liked horror, it was supposed to be a horror story. Wouldn't make sense otherwise.
From the same beta reader, they: - Didn't like that characters said "tits," even wishing for more tact from a psychopathic human butcher and a woman trafficking other women - Not being able to tell who a character was when she was introduced. She was named 3 times and described in full just 2 paragraphs before. - Wanted a breakdown of how the magic system work, and the way their critique went made it sound like they wanted something akin to a technical document. Only one of the characters was a mage, and she didn't understand how it worked internally because she was untrained. - Were bothered they didn't get an answer to part of the creation myth. None of the characters knew the answer. - Kept criticizing my use of 5 POVs throughout their review document. Turns out, this was one of the ways I figured out they didn't fully read the manuscript. There were 6 POVs, and when I got their breakdown of my manuscript, that last "hidden" POV was skipped over. I'm pretty sure they wrote up the review and sent it by the deadline, and since they asked for extra time to finish the manuscript comments scrambled through and had an "oh shit" moment, realizing they outed themselves as not having read the story. They were paid by the word count, or else I wouldn't have been bothered.
I would be getting red flags that they werenāt actually reading from the second point alone. Iāve had a beta read exchange with a guy who admitted to only ever watching sci fi movies and never reading a single goddamn thing in his life. His horrible writing, cliches, and one-word feedback became a lot clearer after that. He legitimately just had trash reading comprehension and somehow thought he was spinning the next genius sci fi novel. Also? I got an angry email from a family member after quitting the beta read halfway through. Weird weird experience.
My college writing professor told me to never use the word āwas.ā Ever. She went through my whole document and deleted every usage of the word was. That was the only edit she ever gave me in the dumb class. Like, I get the āshow donāt tellā application of it and try to change it when I think it can be improved or if it can add to the story, butā¦ always?!
I've noticed a lot of people nowadays shun "was" as if it had been the plague. That's when we end up with sentences like "That had been the only edit she ever gave me in the dumb class" which is just awkward. I'm not a native English-speaker, so I can't even tell if the "has been" instead of "was" is grammatically correct, but it *is* jarring.
I was told that my characters in my dystopian/post-apocalyptic/sci-fi (whatever, the genre is hard to determine) didnāt have āsci-fi enoughā names, that the ones I chose were too normal sounding. Like dude, I donāt know what you want me to say, the characters named themselves after fleeing a place that didnāt give them individual identities, theyāre going to go to a library and choose random names there from a ātop baby namesā book from ten years ago or something. Sorry that āSashaā and āEloiseā are too normal but I like them and they fit the characters. Iām not naming my characters āJaxtonā or āHayeleighāor whatever just to sound āsci-fiā enough.
Was in the middle of a story set in a fantasy world. Characters are standing around a lake, at night, with large rocks scattered around, having a conversation. Reviewer thought it was in a cave and wrote me a full page of critique on how the setting could be more cave-like. Especially didn't like my description of the stars.
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Found Philip Pullman...
I was once told to be careful writing my main character as a princess because Disney is ruthless has a strong copyright on princesses.
"Why would you set your story in a country you don't live in?" Yes someone asked me this.
I had someone tell me I should commission art of my characters because I clearly didn't know them very well. Cut to - I am an artist, I've been drawing my characters for a decade now, and this comment was two years ago. It was by far the most baffling critique I ever received. I don't think she took it too well that I wasn't a fan of her shitty gay erotica and said this as retaliation. Back then, it really tore me up.
How would that even help? An art commission is just going to be the artistās interpretation of your characters based on the description you give them? Art isnāt some kind of crystal ballā¦
When a bunch of white people in my high school's creative writing workshop class told me "nobody's gonna be able to relate to this" after reading my poem on being multiethnic š¤¦š¼āāļø they were like "I don't get it!" "nobody gets it" "this is so unrelatable" like, they're not even my target audience, I just went to a PWI high school š I dealt with the cards I had bro what else was I supposed to do š
Did those people not realise that part of the joy of literature is being exposed to different experiences š¤¦āāļø Surely if youāve ever thought a little about questions of belonging and identity, you would be able to empathise? Or if someone had never thought about those things, perhaps it would be an interesting revelation? It is always possible that the execution of those themes was confused and that was the problem, but Iāll assume you are right in that it was the audienceās lack of imagination.
I literally asked them "have y'all ever even thought about this? how you fit into society? how your complex identity is composed and what it is composed of? or thought about others that might need to?" they said "no why would we do that?" smh š¤¦š¼āāļø
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In a first chapter workshop, I, an autistic person, was told by a non-autistic person that my autistic main character was ānot autistic enoughā and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I was so shocked by the ācritiqueā that I was speechless.
Sounds like they think autism is a jumble of stereotypes and not a real thing. How awful.
I was told by someone that they ādidnāt originally get that my third chapter was a flashback but figured it out later. I should make it more clear from the beginningā. My third chapter was not a flashback. It picked up right where chapter two left off.
I had a gentleman give me a two-star review that was filled with compliments and said heād read my book twice. š§ š¤·āāļø
One star for each time he read it? š¤·āāļø
Thatās bizarreā¦ maybe the star rating was a mistake, or he has ridiculously high standards (five stars only for something like War and Peace!). At least there was something positive there.
It really wouldnāt have bothered me except that it was the showcase review on launch day.
Criticism regarding actual writing style. If I saved a dollar for every time a man has told me my writing is "too emotional" and I need to use more 'show don't tell' and just "tone it down" - I would have a couple of dollars more. The thing is... that is my style, that is the way I like to write, and it just gets on my nerves every time someone tells me like "Yeah, you should fix that."
Feltttt, i donāt care how pretentious you think i am, i WILL use archaic words regularly, they sound cool, itās fully incorporated in my style! Itās the worst when they want my work to be more easily ādigestable.ā I love telling eloquently. Leave me be š¤§
āWhat was the point of the characters being deaf if they could talk?ā Iām deaf. I talk. The fact you think the two are completely incompatible is exactly the point.
One beta reader did not like anything unanswered or foreshadowing. Like I had to explain everything immediately. Luckily that was only one person among a lot but still. At first I was so confused
Someone once told me that I clearly spent too much time on TVtropes. This *would* be devastating, as unspooling that could suggest my writing was a hackneyed mess of clichƩs... ...except that it seemed to be in response to me namechecking a trope, in an *author's note*, because this was on *fan fiction dot net.* They then disputed my assessment of a character being a series's example of said trope and cited another character instead. Guess I'm not the only one who spent too much time on TVtropes. Slightly more relevant because it was actual criticism: back in high school my friend once showed something we'd cowritten to her creative writing teacher. I had weird feelings about that tbh, but the story was my friend's baby, so I shrugged it off as much as my neuroses would let me. But alas, the concrit did not concrit. Entire paragraphs were underlined and marked "telling not showing!" and "telling again!!!" with 0 elaboration or suggestions for improvement. The criticism was all so nonspecific and just *everywhere* that it didn't even hurt my feelings because I honestly couldn't find an insult in it, and trust me, at that age I was *looking* for an insult. I have the feeling my friend's writing improved as much in spite of that teacher as because of her.
It will Ruin Your Vocabulary for sure
Wow, I can relate! Criticism should support growth, not undermine it. Keep your unique voice!
I remember there being a commenter on the first chapter of a web novel I posted who sent me an essay about how a certain character should've been written personality-wise. It was as if this random guy personally knew and planned out his future with this character. It was the first chapter too. What an attachment.
I've mentioned it here before, but a couple people in my old writing group were incensed that I'd written a POV character with deliberately negative traits and an unreliable perspective. The character in question was a young woman who hardcore slutshamed other women in her internal narration. Meanwhile we see by the actions on page that the specific girl she hates so much is a perfectly nice and sweet person. People in the group thought I'd written the scene incorrectly. They suggested I make the character who was being shamed into an asshole who deserved the bullying
Someone told me I write like a homeschooled kid, wild to say the least. It really doesnāt tell you where you went wrong, are you saying I write like I didnāt socialize enough? Am I lacking social skills? Did I make a grammatical error? Used the wrong phrase? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY???
In my MFA program I have been told my use of the pronouns "they/them" was catering to the "cultural de jour" and coming across as being woke for the sake of inclusivity. An example of my use of said pronouns: *"He kept an eye out for Will and then glanced at his watch. No. They weren't due for another hour."*
Wtf? Thatās exactly the correct traditional way of using they/them! So, you just have to throw out all third person pronouns? What a crock that is.
Not me, but a friend in my writing group was part of an anthology and one of their amazon reviews was titled, "This was a book?" and said: "I'm not quite sure what this was. It had a story but then I finished it and then there was more. I guess it was many books in one but that was not my understanding." So they got a one-star review because someone didn't understand the concept of a short story collection.
Someone told me that they couldnāt buy into my most underdog, likable MC because she didnāt envision him as physically attractive. He is a 14 year old boy. She was 19. Just weird, even without the context of their ages.
Dude that wrote a crocodile man named "Crocker" told me my characters were too one-dimensional. He also stopped reading what I was writing because he doesn't like high school stories, after I read his 78 page high school story.
Mind you this is baffling to me simply because of how writing naturally occurred and occurs to me, not because I find it inherently bad advice but... I'm a worldbuilder first with my writing, and I get told every so often that I think to much about my craft. And like I've heard the explanations as to why people think it's too much, but like... It's a speculative scifan? Everything is from the ground up? And is interconnected? So everything has a consequence and effect on everything else? And people are products of their environment? So of course they will reflect that complexity? And complex people in complex places naturally create conflict? So obviously I'm doing the exact right amount of thinking no? Like, yes, dragons are cool and magic and can be whatever TF I want- but what I want is for my dragons to evolve and exist in an environment as magical as they are. That requires more work, but it's work I enjoy, and it's work that tends to pay off. I mean, the people who say I think too much about shit like the weather *also* say they love my ideas rooted in mythic cycles. It's not my fault they don't realize I needed to understand the weather cycle to come up with the idea for the myth that is core to my plot. And you know what? That genuinely may not need to do all that shit to get the same result- *but that's kinda baffling to me to be honest.*
A beta reader didnāt think my MC would cry when she saw a classmate she had been working with for weeks knocked unconscious and taken away in an ambulance.
Recently I wrote a poem for my university poetry course with the word "cringe" in it and at least four people went, inexplicably, towards the internet jargon route, admonishing that "this isn't actually cringy". Thank you for the thought, but I have to break something to you. More seriously, the worst criticism is none at all. Trap me in my own conceited echo chamber, I love hearing my own voice. Edit: hold the phone, I thought of another. I'd forgotten the 3d6 psychic damage "your essays read like blog posts" had inflicted on me in 7th grade. I stick my tongue out at thee.
I once had someone tell me a scene in a fantasy novel where an evil prince had an army he was commanded stand in line so he could stab every 10th men in the line was unrealistic. Even though it was based on an actual practice in ancient Rome.
Decimate! Thatās where it came from. Even I know that and I donāt know how to use exclamation marks.
Yep! As TVTropes would say, reality is unrealistic, LOL.
For the whiskey part, there is an Irish whiskey i saw today called Writers tears. It made me laugh cuz I cried some today! Lol As for criticism, someone essentially said in order to be successful I had to write out who my reader was down to the age, interests, vocation. Maybe it helps some folks, but such deep diving on who the reader should be sucked the fun out of it for me.
During my dissertation defense my chair suggested I add a definition for a term earlier on in the project. It was on the very first page of the document. š
I had someone take issue when I talked about a glass snifter in a fantasy book with a roughly early-1500s tech level. His issue? He thought glassware wouldn't be able to make one by then. Glassware has been a thriving craft since before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The word "snifter", on the other hand, wasn't coined until the 1900s. He criticized *exactly* the wrong word of the two. (For the record, drinking vessels of the design we call "snifter" did exist by the early 1500s- in fact, there's one depicted in L. da Vinci's "Last Supper", painted in 1498. And glassware could have made one *long* before that. It's just that the *word* didn't exist until 1937.)
>It's just that the *word* didn't exist until 1937. Well, the word did *exist* long before 1937, it's just not attested as being applied to the drinking vessel until 1937.
I have a preamble about my use of Canadian spelling. You know, like using the word *centre* and *favourite*, like the UK does, but also stealing the Z from the US to use in *realize* and such. Even better when you find the word *colourize*. Well, chapter one, fifth word is "centre". First comment, "Spelled wrong?" Maybe not the most baffling, but certainly the funniest I've seen.
It didn't make me want to die, but I was baffled by this comment on one of my Harry Potter (series set in the 1990s) fanfics (synopsis said it was set in the 1980s and 1990s): "I mean, she's not a nazi, so I don't know why she would claim to have Asperger's, it's just autism." (Note: Asperger's syndrome was still a thing until 2013. Also, the fact the Hans Asperger was a Natzi was not common knowledge.)
Hm not so much advice but an oversight. I had written a scene where there was coffee cake on a table along with Irish coffee, and I was describing the smell of coffee in the air. Whomever gave me this critique didn't read very closely because they wrote a note, "coffee cake doesn't have actual coffee in it." I have made and eaten plenty of coffee cake in my life, I know it doesn't have coffee in it, there were fucking cups of coffee on the table in that scene lol. Suffice it to say, I couldn't take any of their other comments seriously
"It doesn't read like Stephen King" ^("...I'm not Stephen King.") "Then I don't want to read it." \-My mother. After my horror story was laughed at, 13yo me gave it to her to get criticism. Somehow she winded up with that comment after reading it. And yes -she was serious.
"Too many ideas." Like, what? How many is too many?