Day two of editing, but I mostly just want to bitch about one of my beta readers who failed at his one job.
I basically did a "hey anyone want to read this?" on facebook, and he said yes. He writes or at least dabbles, and I figured good to go. Send him the book, he starts reading, and ... stops on page two. He didn't like it enough.
He told me this yesterday after I asked him if he had any feedback for me.
He then wrote up a very long tirade about the importance of character voice and how the first page needs to be gripping or it isn't worth reading. I reminded him that this was a WIP and told him straight up that the first chapter was rough. That at least got an apology, which at the time was all I wanted.
At least my other reader came through. He had less feedback and more glowing praise and how he really had a fun time, which my ego needed at that point
I think some of my readers like this book more than I do.
What a great segway, because I once again want to bitch about the site
Critique Circle, a fantastic resource for a lot of people, I'm sure, but fuuuuuuuck there is a certain mentality to the critiques that I just
abhore So I've trying to bring myself out of a funk and force myself to send out this story I have that got a slew of rejections. Planning on bringing up a few more stories to sending out quality so I decided to go over there and do a few critiques to get the credits needed to actually have people look at my stuff. So I look at this person's short story, and it is pretty good, very well paced, very descriptive, overall, very good, the kind of thing that would do well in the writing challenges. They wanted advice on adding some stuff, and I basically told them be careful what you add, this is very nicely paced and adding too many more needless descriptions would slow it down. Short stories should be, short, quick, and move at a good pace.
A neat thing the site lets you do is check on other people's critiques on the same story, and I think that's actually a lot more useful in a lot of ways then recieving critiques. So this other person wrote a critique that just
pissed me off....
This is a personal pet peeve of mine with critiques (I do it too, but I don't think it's good) where people will critique as they read.... line by line... which I do not think is a very good way of doing things, because you end up
way too nitpicky early on before you even know what the story is about/what the scene is trying to do/ nitpicking details before you even realize what the big picture is. I try and limit myself on them and at the very least do it after a scene(and look back to make sure I still feel the feeling is valid).
Not everyone has my restraint. I have to reist the urge to throw out a critique if they ever begin with "well..... where are we?" Like, read three paragraphs down before you comment god damn it! Anyway, this one person's critique is everything I hate about this method and it's awful, giving the writer all sorts of bad advice (in my opinion) and being so snooty about it! "You're a writer
YOU should be the one to come up with something!" Like they're just asking for an idea on a sentence, calm down.
And this is the thing I
hate about critique circle, the advice everyone goes to because they have no idea how short stories work and saying it makes them feel like they have valid points is, "Oh, add some more descriptions, I can't visualize it" 80% of the time it comes from people doing novels, and it is the epitome of people who don't know how short stories work (ie being SHORT!) Don't get me wrong, a lot of times it's valid advice(and a lot of times needless), but this story was more than descriptive enough to get the job done. It was nice and lean and went at a good pace. Which is a thing I don't think a lot of people understand. It is rare for me to hear people on the site talk about pacing. Anyway, the critiquer who I hate said that a bunch and advised putting in a subplot with some dudes in a van (A subplot? Really? In a short story? Are you serious?). I have never seen such advice that would
destroy a stories pacing.
Another symptom of people who do the "Critique as you Read!" method that drives me crazy is they always start off soooooo detailed about every tiny little thing in the begining , BUT by the last half to last third, they stop commenting. Not. A. Singel. Thought! It becomes so obvious they stopped reading/lost steam/or lost interest in their own bad advice that I wonder how they can personally stand to send in such a woefully incomplete critique. And this
always happens with these kind of overly detailed and nitpicky critiques and I just fucking haaaaaaate them! They piss me off so much and the idea that this writer would listen to this person's awful advice enrages me! Blah!
Moral of the story: 1) Good critiques are actually pretty rare, there is an inherient sense of over-importance(especially from other writters) that your opinon is the most important thing in the world. It's less about what makes the story better, and more about how smart and experience sounding your advice is. 2) I am the best critiquer in the world! I am a master of all genres, people should only ever listen to me!
TLDR; Someone posted bad advice on a website and I don't like it
