Re: Beautiful woman want to be your wife

"Bill Swears" <wswears@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11s2denbntvk858@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Catja Pafort wrote:
<snip>
>> Bill, a general remark about critting: it's never a good idea to rewrite
>> somebody else's story, for several reasons.
>>
>>
>> Have you ever come across the German word 'verschlimmbessern'? It means
>> 'to make better and worse at the same time' and quite often that's what
>> happens - a second writer might pick up on one flaw and suggest an
>> improvement, while destroying something that worked. In this case, I
>> find 'eyes going narrow' clumsy, and would substiture 'stared with
>> narrowing eyes' or somesuch - but as for the rest of the sentence, there
>> are a lot of stylistic choices involved, and yours is no better than the
>> original, only different. 'The merchant stared at the man asking the
>> question' with the rest of the paragraph zooming in on that man and
>> watching the merchant come to conflusions is fine. As a critter you
>> should avoid giving the impression that one perfectly adequate choice is
>> superior to another; if you must rewrite a sentence, try prefacing it
>> with 'I would prefer' or 'in this situation, I would write'. Also, the
>> purpose of a critique is not just to find things that are
>> wrong with the text, but to enable the writer to fix them. *How* he
>> fixes them is up to the writer - pointing out the bad (and good!) bits
>> of a passage is all he needs.

> Points taken. I didn't like my version any better than I liked DrGong's.
> As you said, just different. In fact, I nearly didn't release my comments
> on his bit at all. Probably would have been better, since he didn't ask
> for crits.
>
> But, as my boss used to say, "Don't come to me and tell me something is
> broke. Don't come to me at all until you have suggestions how to fix it."

Different business.

The problem with making specific fix suggestions is that it is a rare
writer/critiquer who can successfully imitate the style and voice of another
writer. Also, the critiquer often runs afoul of his assumptions -- the
writer was aiming for 9 o'clock, but hit 12; the critiquer assumes the
writer was aiming for 1 or 2 o'clock and therefore "fixes" it to be that,
thus moving the passage further away from the writer's intent. And there
are a good many writers who find it extremely irritating to be told exactly
what to do and how, to the point where they will sometimes ignore perfectly
valid advice out of irritation/annoyance over the way it's been phrased.

In addition, if the suggestion is something that the writer can't see how to
do (either because the critic is a much better writer, or because the critic
has a significantly different style/voice from the writer) but is clearly
much better than what the writer did, the writer can get discouraged to the
point of quitting, because they don't think they'll ever be able to write
"that way" (and, in the case of different style/voice, they may well be
right -- what they don't realize is that they'll come up with their *own*
way of phrasing that'll work just fine).

The problem with *not* making specific fix suggestions is that it is often
very, very difficult to articulate a problem clearly. Often, for a given
writer, the mental process moves from "that passage doesn't work" to "Oh!
It needs *this*!" on an instinctive/intuitive level, without pausing for
analysis between. When such a person is critiquing, they can see instantly
*where* the problem is, and they can often figure out quite quickly what
*they* would do to fix it. Explaining *what* the problem is seems like more
trouble than it's worth. Also, a good many people learn better from
examples, and some people really do prefer to get specific suggestions (in
extreme cases, what they really *want* is for the critiquer to ghost-write
their novel; fortunately, we haven't had any of those folks come through
rasfc that I recall).

I usually start from the assumption that if a writer wants specific
suggestions and I don't give them, the writer will ask for them. So I try
to start off with the analysis and maybe some general examples.

> Anyway, from my perspective, criticism is more useful with examples. That
> is why I like Patricia's huge critiques so much. She provides discrete
> examples to illustrate how she would do something, without striving for a
> 'best' method. I take a lot home, without ever suffering the urge to use
> her prose instead of mine. And, her examples give me a focus to help me
> decode her message.

Thank you. But I learned a long time ago, the hard way, that if I'm going
to give examples, I need to do one of two things -- either give *more than
one* alternative, so that it's obvious that there's more than one way to
accomplish a given end (and though I always have a preferred alternative
that's the way *I* would do it, I try to vary where I put it in the
examples, so that it's not always the first one, or always the last one), or
else I provide an example that isn't a rewrite of the scene in question, but
displays the same/similar problem and a possible fix in some imaginary scene
from a non-existant work. (Of course, if the problem is with spelling or
grammar or punctuation, there's not much point in jumping through these
hoops and I just say "I think you mean 'gentle grip,' not 'genital grip.'"
or whatever.)

I'm not perfect and I do occasionally give too-specific fixes, especially
when I'm in a hurry or tired. But the above is one of the techniques I'm
consciously trying to apply when I do crit.

I think I've posted a rant on how to do crit a couple of times; it's
basically the handout I've used in classes, adjusted slightly for on-line.
Or if you want to continue the meta discussion, I can dig it out and post it
again.

Patricia C. Wrede



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Concerning Honest Crits
    ... With hindsight, I suppose this is something that ought to have been agreed with the writer beforehand, though whenever I've done crits for crit groups, eg Critters or the BSFA Orbiter or my fiction writing students, only a crit was expected, follow-up discussion was very much at the discretion of the critiquer and in some instances frowned on. ... and conveys how the reader reacts to a given manuscript; ... Many of the problems that occur between writer and critiquer are due to the writer expecting one type of response and getting another leading either to outrage that the precious prose was tampered with or disappointment that only an overall response was given. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Concerning Honest Crits
    ... outside the actual story, it's a pointer for the writer, to ignore ... It's indeed at the discretion of the critiquer. ... the reader reacts to a given manuscript; ... tampered with or disappointment that only an overall response was ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Beginnings
    ... To do it on the first draft, the critiquer would have had to know what the writer was about to write in order to offer the right suggestions to prevent them making the mistakes in the first place. ... So as Nicky said, if you want critiques, you have no choice but to buy into the idea of multiple drafts. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: An unresponsive publisher
    ... A writer might ... Or they might try to accommodate a critiquer ... stakes are lower but the plot is much more intricate. ... writing blog @ http://beyond-elechan.livejournal.com ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Could someone please read this?
    ... So we are keen to remind anyone posting prescriptive advice that what works for them might not work for the person they are advising. ... To me it seemed like a clear case of the writer needing to write their way into the story and *finish it* before starting to rewrite. ... A rewrite will often cause a rethinking of the scene, with a better scene as a result. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)