Category: criticism

I really like this title, even though it makes me think of the conservative talk show host in V for Vendetta.

So, a question was posed in the comments a few weeks back—how do you deal with criticism?  Specifically, how do you tell good, useful criticism from questionable opinions, and how do you weight those opinions to tell which are worth listening to and which are just… well, wrong.

I think that was the question, anyway. If I’ve completely missed it, Chris, feel free to point and laugh at me in the comments. Until then, though, this is what I’m going with…

This is kind of well-timed, too.  Back in May I handed in my new book to the publisher, and near the end of the month I got back notes from my editor.  Lots of notes.

Pages of notes.

 I won’t lie.  It stung.  It never feels good to have someone pull out lists of reasons why months of work needs… well, even more work.

Here’s the thing, though.  He was right on about 85% of what he said.  And I knew it.  My editor’s a smart guy, and he picked up on a lot of things—small things, really—that didn’t work in the story. But these small things snowballed into three or four big problems.

(Which I am now about halfway through fixing…)

So… how did I know he was right?

Assuming I’m actually open to receiving some honest criticism, one thing I can immediately look for is if this criticism is objective or subjective.  Is it a factual, provable point, or is it just a reader’s opinion.  If I use the wrong spelling of canon, drop commas in weird places, or don’t have a single transition anywhere… these are real problems that have a right or wrong answer.  This is objective criticism, and if I’m going to get argumentative about something like spelling, well… my writing career is going to take a while to get going.

Which takes us to subjective criticism.  This is when my editor or beta readers express their opinions on my writing.  And opinions can be taken with a grain of salt. Or several grains.  Sometimes a spoonful.

For example, some opinions are informed.  My agent doesn’t think this is a good time to try selling an urban fantasy book.  He spends his time talking to different editors and looking at recent market trends, so he’s probably got a pretty good sense of things.  That doesn’t mean selling a UF book right now is a guaranteed failure, but it’s probably a good way to approach things for now.

On the other hand, some people’s opinions are a bit… less informed.  I think zombies suck.  Maybe you could give her a dog?  Or a cat?  I feel like this sex scene could be cut.  Have you considered ending the book on Chapter Six and just making it a novella?  Have you considered giving this up and going back to investment banking?  These are all critical statements, but there’s nothing backing them up except one reader’s opinion.

And don’t get me wrong.  Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, and their opinion is (usually) totally valid.  But at the end of the day, some opinions carry more weight than others.  Neil deGrasse Tyson’s opinions on moon colonies carry more weight than mine, even though I once did a whole month of research for a zombies-on-the-moonbook.  Pretty much every woman on Earth has better thoughts than me about the struggles, barriers, and sexism they encounter as a woman.  On the plus side, my opinions on G1 Transformers and Micronauts carry more weight than my brother’s (he was more into sports when we were kids…and as adults, too).

But how do I tell objective feedback from the subjective stuff? There are so many rules and accepted standards!  It could take years and dozens of drafts to learn them all!

Well, here’s one easy rule of thumb.  If I’m giving you feedback for something, and my notes have a lot of phrases beginning with–

“I think…”
“I feel…”
“This didn’t do it for me.”
“I just don’t…”

–my critique probably isn’t that objective.  Just because my personal reading preference may be for casual dialogue, implied sex and violence, or clever twists doesn’t automatically mean these things are right for a given story.  And it doesn’t mean a lack of them is wrong.  So when I’m saying “I think you need this,” I’m not offering advice based on facts or rules, just off my own thoughts and feelings.

However…

Yeah, there’s always a however…

As I’ve mentioned before, some people will try to soften the blow with criticism because they don’t want to hurt my feelings when I read their notes. So even though they’ll have a perfectly valid, solid point to make, they’ll lead it with one of those phrases I mentioned above.  “Not 100% sure, but I think you may want to check if Schwartzenagger is the correct spelling.”  I’ve done this to other writers.  Readers have done it to me.  It’s just human nature.

Except…

The flipside of this is the people who don’t realize they’re just voicing their opinions or some half-understood advice. And these folks will declare with absolute certainty that I must change this character’s name or move that comma or turn all my zombies into witches because, seriously, who still writes about zombies?  It’s over, people. Witches are the new hot thing.

So when I’m wading through my feedback, I need to be able to sort good opinions from bad ones.  And real objective criticism from heartfelt opinions.  That’s part of my job as a writer.

Now, all that being said… there are times someone’s personal opinion might hold a little more weight.  If some producer wants to pay me to rewrite my screenplay to include an alien love-child, or to rewrite the main character of my civil war slave story to be a white guy…that’s their call.  If a publisher wants to buy my Agent Carter fan-fic with all the names and a few genders swapped, I probably won’t tell him no.  If someone wants to pay me actual money to do something that could very well ruin my story…  well, getting paid is nice.  A lot of writers cover their monthly bills that way.  Especially in Hollywood.

Y’see, Timmy, the bad news is that a huge amount of knowing how to sift through criticism and make these choices is just plain experience. It’s the ugly process of writing, getting feedback, rewriting for the feedback… and realizing two or three drafts later some of that critique could’ve been ignored.  Then having this happen again… and again.  And again.  The only way to learn this is through writing and rewriting and learning exactly how all of this word-stuff fits together and then writing some more and having it suck a little less.

Also, it’ll help a lot if I read more.  Lots of things in lots of genres.  If I can name a hundred manuscripts that have done the same thing as mine with a character, with structure, with dialogue, that’s probably a good sign that what I’m doing is acceptable. But the only way I’m going to know that is if I’ve read lots and lots of material.

By the same token, if I read a hundred books a year and not one of them has done what I did with dialogue… well, it might mean I’m a visionary, but odds are it means this isn’t really an acceptable practice.  If I find one or two out of that hundred that do it, they’re probably the exception than proves the rule.  Again, though, the only way I’ll know is to read.

Yeah, this sounds like a lot of work.  It is. I didn’t figure all this out overnight, or even in the eight or nine years since I started this blog.  This is actual decades of experience, stretching back to the early ‘80s when I first started screwing up this stuff with fanfic, comic book scripts, and lizard man stories.  And I screwed up and got rejected a lot.

As I’ve mentioned before, experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.

Speaking of not getting what you want…

There will be no post next week because I’m going to be down at San Diego Comic Con.  If you happen to be there Saturday, though, I will be part of a panel on worldbuilding and storytelling, so you could show up and mock me in person.

And I’ll probably put up a few photo tips to make up for the lack of actual post.

When we do meet again, though, I’d like to talk about chefs.

Until then… go write.

Running a little late. Sorry.

Hey, last week there were two posts in a row. You’ll survive. Really.

Anyway, let’s talk about the system you’re using.

I think one of the harder things to find is an honest opinion. Odd to say, I know, with all the folks who like to shout about the truth on the internet, but I think there’s a certain level of honesty that’s difficult to get from people. Most of us don’t like saying “No.”  Everyone worries about offending someone and the possible ramifications it could have, especially these days when so many comments are taken out of context and so many folks are ready and waiting to be offended by… well, anything.

My time in Hollywood taught me that a lot of folks have almost brainwashed themselves against saying “no” or offering any kind of negative feedback. My differing opinion can get me fired, after all, so I keep it to myself. The person asking “Do you like this?” could end up deciding whether or not I get health insurance and a new office next year, even if they’re just the office PA right now. They don’t always say yes, but pretty much nobody says no. No is all but forbidden.

Unless you’re one of the lucky few who has a partner, writing is something we have to do alone. The odd conundrum here is that one of the very few ways we can improve as writers is to get feedback. People need to read our work and express their thoughts and opinions about it. I need to have an audience. A real audience.

What counts as a real audience? Well, it’s people who will give me an honest opinion. People who are willing to say no. A solid beta reader, as they’re often called, won’t mince words or spare my feelings, because they understand I need to know what’s wrong with my work so I can improve it. Kindness and white lies don’t help me at all.  They only undermine my attempts to get better.

A little story…

When I was a kid, my mom read pretty much every piece of half-finished crap I wrote. And believe me, I wrote a lot of it. She slogged through at least three versions of Lizard Men from the Center of the Earth between third and seventh grade. There were also a few good-sized pieces of Boba Fett and Doctor Who fanfic (long before there was such a term). Plus a bunch of short stories and a truly awful sci-fi “novel” called A Piece of Eternity that had cosmic rays and mutants and cute little robots and bug-aliens that were shamelessly ripped off from the old Marvel Micronauts comics.

Now, there’s no question in my mind that I wouldn’t be where I am today if my mom hadn’t kept reading this stuff and encouraging me to write more. None at all.

However…

I eventually realized something. My mom was pretty much always going to say she liked what I was writing because she’s my mom and that’s what good mothers do. It didn’t matter if the material was good, bad, or borderline nonsensical, my mom would congratulate me on it.

Which is when I realized I needed to start getting other opinions.

Now, granted, this is an extreme example. I’m not saying my mother should’ve told the eleven-year-old me that my writing was childish and predictable and I didn’t have a chance of ever getting published. That would’ve just been cruel, and also a bit unfair. In one way, this blind kindness was a good thing.

However, this kindness can also be a trap. And many people, willingly or not, fall into it.

Dot, for example, surrounds herself with people who won’t give her honest opinions. She’ll only show her writing to immediate family members, or friends who are so close they’ve got all the same interests and background. Parents, siblings, friends, lovers—people with a strong desire not to hurt her feelings, and, on some level, a vested interest in keeping her happy.

Is it really that surprising to learn these people all say Dot’s writing is great. Her mom and dad think it’s wonderful.  Her friends got all the jokes. Her brother Yakko loves it. Her boyfriend (or maybe girlfriend—Dot’s very open-minded) thinks she should send it out to some magazines or agents.

Are they all lying to her? Possibly not. There’s always that chance Dot is the next Harper Lee or Ernest Hemingway, unable to produce anything except Pulitzer-level material when left alone with a word processor. Maybe she really is a writing savant, able to put down words on the first try that are going to make the Nobel Committee weep tears of joy.

But, as they say in Vegas, I wouldn’t put money on it.

Worse yet, sometimes these well-meaning folks will tell Dot to ignore the good criticism she is getting. Did Phoebe’s feedback sting a bit? Did it make Dot question her abilities a little? Well, just ignore it. What does she know, anyway?  She’s just one person, and she’s probably jealous of Dot’s talent. That’s why she’s tearing the story apart like that.

We all start out rough. Our first works suck. Usually our second works, too.  But we can’t get past that until we admit it and really consider some of the feedback we’re getting… and the people we’re getting it from.

Finding a real, honest audience for your work can take years. Some folks mean well, but are coming from a place of no education and/or no experience. A few of those folks are coming with no education or experience and they’ll ask you for money. And some of them… well, let’s be honest.  Some people are just jerks. They like to look down their noses and criticize people—sometimes for no real reason, sometimes so they can feel superior. They’ll give an opinion and expect you to treat it as fact.

Over the years since Mom read all my stories, out of the hundreds of people I’ve met in the film and publishing industry, I’ve found maybe a double handful of people whose opinions I really trust. They have the education, they have the experience, and at the end of the day they want to see my writing improve almost as much as I do. Several of them are merciless and blunt to a point that could make small children cry, and I consider myself lucky for that.

And, for the record, Mom still likes a lot of my stuff, too. But she only sees the final version.

Speaking of my mom, next time I’d like to tell you my story. It’s the most interesting thing ever. Really.

Until then, go write.