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That's a good piece of advice. I find it challenging, to say the least, to find someone who will read my work and not just go "yup, looks good, dude". That's not helpful at all. If you think you won't fail, you're blind. If no one will tell you when you've failed, you're a blind man being led towards a cliff.
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Oct 21, 2013 04:58
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Learning to respond to criticism is why I started doing thunderdome in the first place. It was really hard at first not to get mad when people didn't like something or even understand it. Now it feels natural and I welcome the feedback.
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Oct 21, 2013 05:50
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I really enjoyed the post about getting feedback. Who knew a guy who does game design would have such relevant advice for all the arts? This changed the way I approached feedback responses, and pushes me to work that much harder. I mean, I think I'd rather have someone read what I wrote all in one sitting and then angrily email or scream at me about how pissed off it made them and how terrible it was. ANYTHING other than a tepid response from someone who had to force themselves to read it! Nika fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2013 06:47
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I think most of the feedback stuff was golden, but I get this weird niggling feeling that game design doesn't map perfectly onto writing. It looks to have been written with UX and popularisation in mind, and these concepts do apply to writing, but I don't think he draws a clear enough line in the sand that there comes a point where an author's own opinion has to stand up and be heard. Blah, blah artistic integrity, whatever. Everything written seems staged in terms of making your work more accessible because more criticism is always beneficial and you can afford to be inclusive. More criticism is not always beneficial. For any particular passage of prose you care to write, there are people who will love it, people who will hate it and lots of people who won't really mind it either way. In an ideal world you would be able to edit in order to minimise hate and apathy, while maximising love. In the real world, that isn't always an option. By minimising people who hate your writing, you are far more likely to be manoeuvring more and more people into the apathy camp. The point is that you can't please everyone, and in my opinion it is an awful idea to even try. In the world of videogame design (SKIRTING DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO CAN OF WORMS) the general goal is enjoyment, and he clearly states he is willing to compromise in order to allow as many people as possible to enjoy his games. Videogames and books are different. I don't have the same kind of entertainment popping heads in an FPS as I do as reading a novel. They often recognisably aspire to different ends. As such, when troubleshooting a game, criticism is generally just a lot less subjective: I hate that I can't open the save menu via blah, the UI is unintuitive, these controls aren't ideal. What makes it more or less fun? I guess you could compare this sort of stuff to the 'grammar' of videogames: existing in order to make the experience smoother and more palatable. At this point I'm desperately looking for some kind of conclusion that isn't retarded. You get a lot of different kinds of critique for writing and comments on the technical and mechanical aspects of your writing should always be heard, without fail, especially if you are inexperienced. More macro criticism addressing your tone or your plot, the ball is more in your court. Be pragmatic. Does it tally with your own misgivings? Are you able to reasonably do anything about it? tl;dr: I'm not saying pick and choose your criticism. Listen to it all, but remember that you can only take on board a finite amount before you begin to dilute your work. Only you can decide when that is.
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Oct 21, 2013 14:46
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Never mind
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Oct 21, 2013 17:27
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Jeza posted:I think most of the feedback stuff was golden, but I get this weird niggling feeling that game design doesn't map perfectly onto writing. Yeah, I think you're right. It's valuable as a one-link antidote to the hugbox mentality, but you need to filter it for applicability to your own stuff. My own approach is 'assume all criticism is accurate unless you're sure it's not - because the process of becoming sure is how you make your writing better'. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 21:27
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I think maybe a key difference between the excellent video game advice and writing advice is that if your philosophy in game making leads to confusion, your player may actually not get to the next area of your game and give up, whereas if somebody doesn't like something your writing because of a stylistic difference, they can at least keep reading and move on to the next chapter. Sometimes I've been reading books where I didn't like a small part of subplot, but I kept reading anyway. So I think we can get away with a tiny little bit less of "writing by committee" and stick with stuff we like even if others hate it. Obviously if your whole piece is filled with that poo poo people are going to put it down 10 pages in, so stick it near the middle 
crabrock fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 22:11
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sebmojo posted:Yeah, I think you're right. It's valuable as a one-link antidote to the hugbox mentality, but you need to filter it for applicability to your own stuff. Mad Revolt fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 06:52
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Mad Revolt posted:Criticism from readers tends to be a lot more helpful than criticism from writers I don't think that's his implication at all. Especially since any writer worth asking reads more than most readers, and loves it.
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Oct 22, 2013 07:52
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Symptomless Coma posted:I don't think that's his implication at all. Especially since any writer worth asking reads more than most readers, and loves it. A writer is more likely to try to tell you how to fix it though. It's not that a writer's crit is worse, but you do have to sift through an extra layer of, "If I were you..." Seb gave me a good crit a few weeks ago, and I found his offered solution completely wrong for me, but his gut reaction about the bad pacing and lack of character motivation present on the page was absolutely right. Often readers can't even give you that much though, just, "This is where I stopped reading." That alone isn't always helpful. Most of my first readers stopped somewhere in the middle, but Sebmojo was the first to point out how the problems started right from the beginning and stretched out from there. The middle was just the point where their eyes could drag no more.
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Oct 22, 2013 08:11
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Mad Revolt posted:There's also Neil Gaimans idea that someone saying a piece didn't work for them is almost always right, but when someone tells you what exactly is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. Criticism from readers tends to be a lot more helpful than criticism from writers
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Oct 22, 2013 08:29
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I agree that I think one of the most important parts of crit is simply identifying the problem areas and then trying out how to fix it mostly on your own. With small tweaks, anyway. Sometimes some gold stuff can come from throwing a ball back and forth with another writer regarding plots or jokes or something.
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Oct 22, 2013 21:10
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in our writing group we tend not to tell people how to fix something, just what to fix. Although sometimes you can't help it.
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Oct 22, 2013 22:12
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The worst feedback I've ever gotten on a story was being told to remove the antagonist and rewrite it in a way that adhered more to a traditional three-act structure. I think my reaction was fairly understandable. "If I remove the antagonist, where will the tension come from? And what kind of advantages to the story could a restructuring of the plot bring compared to what I might lose?" To which he responded, "I dunno, it's your story!" I don't go to him for critiques anymore.
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Oct 24, 2013 03:14
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One thing I am sure of is that nobody can write a sentence for somebody else. You can tell somebody what the problem is to any number of decimal places, but nobody can ever rewrite a story on someone else's behalf, because the words will simply not be correct for the original writer. At the end of the day, the original writer has to repair his or her own thing. Which is to say that the "what" can come from critics, but the "how" always must come from the writer.
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Oct 26, 2013 00:24
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qntm posted:One thing I am sure of is that nobody can write a sentence for somebody else. "Hey, instead of holding a sword it'd be better if she was holding her big fat dick." "oh, that makes perfect sense, and actually flows better with my story. Thank you person, for telling me how to fix my story."
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Oct 26, 2013 01:18
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qntm posted:One thing I am sure of is that nobody can write a sentence for somebody else. You just put a lot of editors out of business! And things in the literary world are tough enough as it is... I've had readers suggest ideas to me that have worked for a story, or have at least inspired me to look at things from a new angle. As I still have the freedom to accept or decline their advice, and as I do the rewriting myself, I'm totally comfortable with that. Also, in the case of the ex-reader, that he was pointing out problems without offering solutions was only part of the issue. What frustrated me more was that he didn't cover the "why" either. As in "As for why don't I like your antagonist, I'm not gonna tell you."
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Oct 26, 2013 02:32
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So what do folks here think about present vs. past tense writing? I've really been struggling with my thunderdome entries recently and was having a lot of trouble with my last entry in particular. Then, inspired by the fact I recently picked up "Wolf Hall" by Hillary Mantel, I decided to try writing in present tense. I immediately found it easier to write and also ended up feeling like the prose was a lot stronger and more interesting. Sentences that felt really flat and dull when they were written in past tense suddenly felt more lively and engaging. Has anyone else ever found that they were really stuck on a story until they changed up the way they were writing it?
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Oct 30, 2013 02:54
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Well, the workshop answer is that it gives things a sense of immediacy, which is true. On the other hand, most of your non-academic, non-literature-nerd audience is more familiar with the past tense (i.e., most fiction best-sellers hang out in the past) so you run the risk of alienating potential readers. But that being said, if audience isn't your thing, yeah. Present tense is a blast to write in. I find it a lot more fluid and a lot more clear--no worries about odd phrasings (e.g., "Jack had had two beers before he tripped and broke his face"), no ambiguity about action in scene. In my experience, though, it isn't always sustainable for long-form stuff like novels,* so my first-draft tense tends to lean present for short stories and past for anything over about eight thousand words. But that's not really a rigid rule, because sometimes tone of the story will dictate the tense rather than length. *I'm trying a novel now in first-person present, and it's kind of a bitch, not gonna lie.
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Oct 30, 2013 05:59
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The Hunger Games is told in first-person present, so there are obviously plenty of people who don't mind it. I don't even remember noticing it when I read it. Personally, I find writing in past tense to be a lot easier, though I tend to think of my past tense as "a second ago," not from the end of the story. I haven't tried switching to present, but I've found switching between first and third helpful.
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Oct 30, 2013 06:32
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I got directed here via a critique and I could use some help. I've been trained to write with the fat completely severed and to make things sound conversational. Broadcast scripts. I'm trying my damndest to start writing a novel. I understand that trying to hit a 70k word book as your first real project is pretty unrealistic and will be difficult. My biggest problem is stretching the words out. I can tell the story effectively in about 10-25 thousand words, and I'm not sure how I can make it. I don't think it would do it any justice making that short. I can post what I have so far, then give an overview of what the story is supposed to be so you all can have an idea of where I can add word count and "fat" to make it longer. Thanks in advance!
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Oct 30, 2013 10:25
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Helsing posted:So what do folks here think about present vs. past tense writing? I honestly don't notice the tense after a short acclimatisation when it shifts dramatically, and I'm not at all convinced the choice of time often has the effects authors like to ascribe to it. So write whatever's easiest for you and see where it takes you. My favourite story was written in first person present which was a departure for me but felt totally natural for the content. Writing it any other way felt intuitively wrong. Soulex posted:I got directed here via a critique and I could use some help. Never pad out your story for the sake of it. Every word should do work. This doesn't mean your writing needs to be ultra-compact - adding tone and rhythm and atmosphere is work. But if you think you can tell the whole story in 10-25k, try that and see what it gives you, you might be surprised. If nothing else it will be good practice for longer pieces. God knows we have too many hideously bloated books out these days.
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Oct 30, 2013 11:43
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Peel posted:Never pad out your story for the sake of it. Every word should do work. This doesn't mean your writing needs to be ultra-compact - adding tone and rhythm and atmosphere is work. But if you think you can tell the whole story in 10-25k, try that and see what it gives you, you might be surprised. If nothing else it will be good practice for longer pieces. Pretty much this. You'll basically need three times as many plot points and plot ideas to form a 75k-word story than you would a 25k-word story. Simple math. There's plenty of ways to do this - can you show other interesting parts of your main plot from other points of view? Can you add subplots that deepen interesting characters? Are there interesting consequences to be explored - is the climax to your first plot also the inciting incident for a second plot? It's a common formula for the first 20-30% of your story to be an inciting plot that, when resolved, leaves larger issues for the characters to confront and launches the main plot arc. When reading these days, I often find myself looking down at my e-reader's completion bar when I hit major plot points. Sure enough, around 20-25%, what appeared to be a subplot resolves itself and kicks off a larger plot. At 70-80%, there's a big turnaround or twist to set up the climax at 85-95%.
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Oct 30, 2013 11:51
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Helsing posted:So what do folks here think about present vs. past tense writing? Personally, I very much dislike present tense. I don't know if it's just a preference thing or what, but any time I'm reading a story and realize it's present tense I immediately groan. It just smacks of "artistic" writing where you change up conventions just for the sake of it. Admittedly, sometimes it can work, but I think more often it doesn't. It's kind of like not using quotes or whatever. Yes, Cormac McCarthy does it, but that doesn't mean you should. In fact, McCarthy shouldn't do it either. I'm a big William Gibson fan, but his present tense in Pattern Recognition bothered me all the way to the end. Like McCarthy's no punctuation, it takes me out of the narrative instead of helping immerse me in it. Present tense is not nearly as bad as no punctuation, but it's on the same dark path. Soulex posted:I got directed here via a critique and I could use some help. Don't post your entire story here, if that's what you were thinking of doing. Post it in a dedicated thread if you want to put the whole thing out there. And do not, do not pad your story out for the sake of a longer word count. And what is your word count at this point anyway? 10-25k is not very specific, 15 thousand words is a lot of words. Either way, you're looking at a novelette or novella depending on who you ask. There's nothing wrong with that, and both forms are marketable. You don't always have to write a doorstopping monster.
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Oct 30, 2013 11:58
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I find the present tense is great for writing fights and action.
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Oct 30, 2013 12:34
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The present tense is like a hose for fiction - it sorts of sprays out sense-experience at the reader. Which is fine (especially for a YA audience like The Hunger Games), but for that reason I think it's a little harder to control. First person present is a different beast, though. I'm trying to be slightly tricksy with my current story, where a lot of it is about the main character remembering things. So he does very present-tensey things, but then he's minded to remember something, so you get a bit of first-person past tense. God knows if it'll work.
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Oct 30, 2013 12:50
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A writing tutor once told me that they thought third-person past tense was the most "invisible" to the reader.
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Oct 30, 2013 17:35
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I agreed.
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Oct 30, 2013 18:22
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PoshAlligator posted:A writing tutor once told me that they thought third-person past tense was the most "invisible" to the reader. Exactly. It's my opinion that you should never let your writing get in the way of the story.
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Oct 30, 2013 20:54
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blue squares posted:I agreed. He agreed.
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Oct 30, 2013 21:26
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Martello posted:Exactly. It's my opinion that you should never let your writing get in the way of the story. But writing is part of the story, otherwise you're basically just writing a play or movie script. I mean, if nothing else, surely fiction benefits from having more than one widely accepted style of storytelling. I totally get why some writers would aim for the most transparent style of prose imaginable, but should that really be a universal objective? Personally I'm finding I really enjoy the sense of immediacy and dynamism that comes so naturally when writing in the present tense. There's a kind of urgency in that prose that I don't think is as automatic or as easy to conjure when you're writing in the past tense. I think its a bit unfair to compare authors who write in present tense to authors who lack of punctuation or quotation marks. In those later cases the author is removing a convenient tool that allows the text on the page to be more easily read. I feel like a more apt comparison would be the difference between first and third person writing. And like first person vs. third person storytelling, I feel like there's plenty of room for people to experiment with both types since they each have different inherent strengths and weaknesses.
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Oct 30, 2013 22:16
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I'm a frequent present tense writer. I find it feels more natural when I know I'm going to end the story in such a way that the POV character wouldn't be able to retell/reflect. But some people like Dr. K interpret past tense as "a second in the past" which works too. For me, tense becomes invisible, regardless of which it is, if it's consistent. I've even seen books successfully switch between past and present, and even like 3rd person past to first person present. I think it boils down to using tense with intent; like most things, doing it specifically to sound more stylistic or literary, whatever the hell that means, is stupid usually obvious. Also, when I'm telling a story casually, it feels natural to drop into present tense, like: 'So I'm schlepping around Main street waiting for the bus when this guy with the stump of a third leg growing out of his hip, all with one tiny custom pant leg for his little fleshy outcrop of a leg nubbin, he comes up to me and says, "give me your shoes..."' So for certain kinds of stories, it feels natural to do the same.
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Oct 30, 2013 22:17
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How does this forum generally handle getting critiques on work they are hoping to submit later for possible publication? Some magazines only want unpublished work and consider a forum posting "being published." I have a flash fiction story I want to submit to a literary magazine, and I could really use some outside feedback first but don't want to decrease my chances of getting the work accepted. I was also wondering if getting a copy of Writer's Market is worth it. I was planning to buy a copy but checked out the reviews first and quite a few people had complaints about the formatting of the book and how up-to-date some of the information was. Would I be better off signing up for the online version? I'm interested in several of the articles in the current edition, but maybe I can find the same information from online sources?
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Oct 31, 2013 06:09
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I think the tense thing depends a lot on genre. I read a lot of YA and first person/present tense is par for the course there; I don't find it remotely distracting within that genre. It works for the conventions of YA--heightened emotions, stepping into the protagonist's shoes, strong voice, etc. If I'm reading literary fiction, though, it's harder for me to get into a present-tense narrative, because (for example) the protagonist's voice doesn't necessarily matter to me as much as the author's voice/I'm not necessarily being asked to identify with the protagonist/the emotions are more restrained--and I think you can do a lot more interesting things with the past tense/third in literary fiction than you can with the first person/present. In general I find that tense/person are almost invisible to me unless they're done really, really badly, though. You could ask me about my favorite books that I've read 10 or 15 times, and there are some of them that I still wouldn't be able to tell you if they were first person or third, past or present.
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Oct 31, 2013 07:48
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I've been in maybe five writer's groups in my life. They all flared-out spectacularly with a lot of anger and unhelpful criticisms. Some of the best advice I ever got about criticism is this gem: >>Be careful who you give you writing to.<< And it's corollary: >>Be careful whose advice you take.<< We as writers tend to view criticism as something that should be addressed. It is very difficult to shrug it off because we are emotionally invested. Put it this way, if you go up to just about any parent on the planet earth and say with absolute sincerity, "your kid is ugly," you are either going to be in a fight, hear an earful, or be dead. Their kid might indeed be ugly and there is nothing that the parent could have done to change that, but they will still defend their child. So don't give your writing to someone who is merely going to say it's ugly. There are people who hate Shakespeare. Absolutely despise him. Basically anyone aged 13-15 and sitting in English class right now. That doesn't mean Shakespeare sucks or Macbeth needs a polish. Reviews are just opinions. When I wrote my book: http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Luck-Hank-Screw-Galaxy/dp/1492974900/ I was in a writer's group trying to get feedback. One writer said he didn't understand the subtitle: Screw the Galaxy. Hank never "screwed the galaxy." Like literally kicked the galaxy's rear end. At that point I realized, I gave my work to someone I shouldn't have. He will NEVER get it. And that's totally fine. My writing isn't for him. Doesn't mean I suck or he sucks or the galaxy sucks. But don't beat yourself up over reviews that don't matter. Don't get ANY review you can, because in many cases they are harmful. In fact, I would say at any given point 80% of the reviews you get will be not beneficial to your writing. Unless they are really awesome super professional reviewers and writers, in which case you aren't on SA reading this poo poo post.
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Oct 31, 2013 07:49
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violetdragon posted:How does this forum generally handle getting critiques on work they are hoping to submit later for possible publication? Some magazines only want unpublished work and consider a forum posting "being published." I have a flash fiction story I want to submit to a literary magazine, and I could really use some outside feedback first but don't want to decrease my chances of getting the work accepted. The most recent round of thunderdome handled that nicely - we submitted as google docs, with the link in the post. I guess it's still breaching some sort of technicality, but it's that much harder to find and it'd be easy to make the link private after critting's done, and still keep the comments people made. In fact, gdocs lends itself particularly well to line edits.
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Oct 31, 2013 10:50
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DukeRustfield posted:We as writers tend to view criticism as something that should be addressed. It is very difficult to shrug it off because we are emotionally invested. Put it this way, if you go up to just about any parent on the planet earth and say with absolute sincerity, "your kid is ugly," you are either going to be in a fight, hear an earful, or be dead. Their kid might indeed be ugly and there is nothing that the parent could have done to change that, but they will still defend their child. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point you're making here, but it seems like you're suggesting that any review that comes to the conclusion that a piece of writing is bad should be assumed to be false. That's not what you're suggesting, is it? Because that would be a crazy thing to think.
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Oct 31, 2013 13:21
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Chairchucker posted:Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point you're making here, but it seems like you're suggesting that any review that comes to the conclusion that a piece of writing is bad should be assumed to be false. That's not what you're suggesting, is it? Because that would be a crazy thing to think. I think it's pretty obvious that isn't what he's saying at all. He's just saying some people are just not your audience, so don't fight them about it.
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Oct 31, 2013 13:29
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It's not obvious at all. It sounds like he's saying that since his writing buddy didn't like his SCREW THE GALAXY book, that meant he wasn't the audience for it. Which is a ridiculous thing to say. If he's saying something different, he needs to say it differently.
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Oct 31, 2013 16:56
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Just as a heads up, saw that a brand new publisher is looking for dystopian submissions. I know some TD entries have this flavor and a long time ago it was a prompt. It's pretty vague but I figured I'd pass it on: http://www.reddit.com/r/dystopianbooks/comments/1pk6wm/searching_for_dystopian_and_postapocalyptic/
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Oct 31, 2013 19:12
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