I'm going to say something really unpopular.
Are you ready for it?
But DO feel free to fantasize in your own mind that you're telling a certain critique to go walk the plank and imagine all those words swirling around like yummy little alphabet cereal.
Because guess what...
Unless you're getting a critique from a trusted alpha or beta, the person (who is most likely the sweetest, most selfless person ever) doesn't know enough about you or your writing style to give you worthwhile advice.
Now, I'm not talking about grammar mistakes or glaring problems that are easy to pick out.
What I am talking about is the nitpicky stuff. The stuff that a person picked out because it's a critique forum and they want to be helpful, so they really go searching for something, ANYTHING. The stuff that essentially means, "Well...I wouldn't have written it this way."
This is why the fly-by-night critique forums full of people who are there for a week and you probably won't ever meet online again are 98% useless. The 2% of helpfulness comes from the fact you get a chance to meet people who could potentially become your trusted alphas or betas.
And believe me when I tell you that I am absolutely, 100% guilty of giving really bad critiques in forums like these. Like everybody else, I was just trying to be helpful.
But as the years have gone by, I've realized something. You really can't give good advice unless you've read several pages and gotten a good handle on the writer's personal style. The only help you're going to give is helping that writer come up with a cookie cutter version of a novel.
And though there are very wonderful, important rules to crafting a novel, the amount of variety writers can come up with is far more vast than cookie cutter advice can come up with. There are rules to painting, too, but you can tell one artist's work from another. We should be able to do the same with novels.
I joined one of those forums about a year back (the kind that's there for a week as part of something bigger) and a writerly friend of mine joined as well. At the end of the week, and after getting a lot of different forms of advice, my friend wrote a very sad blog post about how he/she thought that he/she should just give up on the story.
The story is brilliant, readers. Brilliant.
And those are the critiques that should be ignored. Instead of seeing how brilliant the story was, all everyone saw was how it was different and not how "they" would do it.
Critique is good and open, accepting minds are great, but get your critiques from people who know you and have read more than the first page of your work.
But don't be rude to these fly-by-night critiquers. They really are trying to be helpful. Take to heart what is useful, but silently (so silently you're the only one who knows it) ignore what is not.
Are you ready for it?
There are some critiques you can tell to go kiss your butt. And online fly-by-night critique forums are 98% useless.
Now, don't go out there and start telling a bunch of people who were just trying to help you out that they're wrong and you're right and Emily White told you so.
But DO feel free to fantasize in your own mind that you're telling a certain critique to go walk the plank and imagine all those words swirling around like yummy little alphabet cereal.
Because guess what...
Unless you're getting a critique from a trusted alpha or beta, the person (who is most likely the sweetest, most selfless person ever) doesn't know enough about you or your writing style to give you worthwhile advice.
Now, I'm not talking about grammar mistakes or glaring problems that are easy to pick out.
What I am talking about is the nitpicky stuff. The stuff that a person picked out because it's a critique forum and they want to be helpful, so they really go searching for something, ANYTHING. The stuff that essentially means, "Well...I wouldn't have written it this way."
This is why the fly-by-night critique forums full of people who are there for a week and you probably won't ever meet online again are 98% useless. The 2% of helpfulness comes from the fact you get a chance to meet people who could potentially become your trusted alphas or betas.
And believe me when I tell you that I am absolutely, 100% guilty of giving really bad critiques in forums like these. Like everybody else, I was just trying to be helpful.
But as the years have gone by, I've realized something. You really can't give good advice unless you've read several pages and gotten a good handle on the writer's personal style. The only help you're going to give is helping that writer come up with a cookie cutter version of a novel.
And though there are very wonderful, important rules to crafting a novel, the amount of variety writers can come up with is far more vast than cookie cutter advice can come up with. There are rules to painting, too, but you can tell one artist's work from another. We should be able to do the same with novels.
I joined one of those forums about a year back (the kind that's there for a week as part of something bigger) and a writerly friend of mine joined as well. At the end of the week, and after getting a lot of different forms of advice, my friend wrote a very sad blog post about how he/she thought that he/she should just give up on the story.
The story is brilliant, readers. Brilliant.
And those are the critiques that should be ignored. Instead of seeing how brilliant the story was, all everyone saw was how it was different and not how "they" would do it.
Critique is good and open, accepting minds are great, but get your critiques from people who know you and have read more than the first page of your work.
But don't be rude to these fly-by-night critiquers. They really are trying to be helpful. Take to heart what is useful, but silently (so silently you're the only one who knows it) ignore what is not.
