Re: Critique rules

On Jan 15, 10:27 pm, Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
ShellyS <shell...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
ShellyS <shell...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
ShellyS <shell...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And those AOL writers boards were full of people so quick
to give advice, even if you didn't ask for it and were just
venting and argued with you if you didn't thank them
properly. And I can do a long post just on the arguments
over outlining. The outliners on that board outnumbered
those of us who don't outline by a ratio of 5 to 1 or
thereabouts. I learned through painful experience to just
step back and find another topic to discuss. ;)

Sounds like the people here insisting you had to have a plot
planned out, rather than just following the character
around.

There are people like that all over cyberspace. They'll give
advice and you have the choice of how to react.

Saying that now isn't going to change what effect the WCH had on
you, or that a similar attitude killed my story.

No, of course not, but it gives me insight I can share with others and
hopefully, if possible, help them avoid the frustration and
discouragement.


There are people who simply think their way is better or that
their way is the only possible way because how could anyone
else, for example, write a whole novel without an outline
because they can't do it.

They're also yelling 'nine and sixty ways'. Right here, and then
they turn round and prescribe their kind of writing, learning,
characters. If you point out that there are other options, they
get hostile towards your option.

I am not going to discuss things I don't have firsthand knowledge of.
No one's done that to me since I got here. And since you mentioned you
have a problem with Patricia, all I can do is what I did, discuss my
opposite experience with her here and on AOL. That's all I can discuss
about it.

If more people agree with them than you, you're in a no-win
situation IME if you keep arguing it or getting upset at them.

I'm not arguing it, just pointing out what happens. The people
who do this are right here, after all, still not admitting to
any of it. (Just ask them on one of the subjects they do this,
and they'll confirm that their way is the only way.) That means
they don't know what they're doing, and the danger of doing the
same thing to new writers is still existent.

That hasn't been my experience here. Nor have I seen it. I have seen
threads reduced to political posturing and I ignore those as soon as
it happens.

(snip)

I mostly posted such questions on AOL, not here, but the few
times I have here and most of the time on AOL, when I did, I
got both sorts of answers and enough of them were helpful and
sufficient to teach me all the stuff I've already mentioned I
learned about writing and dealing with comments and critique.

While I'm no wiser about how to write better. (As opposed to a
regular here still claiming that you get better when you write
more; that's a lie.)

I don't know. It's worked for me. Practice usually helps you improve.
At some point, that probably ceases and something more might be
needed.

(snip)

They don't need to know I don't take their advice. I don't
understand your analogy at all.

It's someone demanding that you do something utterly loony, with
no idea what he's talking about, and then someone else saying
it's rude to object to that.

Huh? Are they showing up at your door and waving something in your
face? Are they threatening you until you comply? If you think it's
loony, ignore them. It's just a newsgroup. If it's someone offline in
a crit group, then I would find a different crit group. Oh, wait. I
did that. I quit the WCH and didn't do another in-person group. It's a
lot easier, I've learned, to ignore people online.


And telling people their advice stinks does no good.

It wasn't advice. It was the demand to do something their way,
as that's the only way, with no knowledge of the subject. (The
one fact that was mentioned was ignored, after all.)

Maybe they saw it as advice. But I won't discuss something I haven't
experienced here because I read and participate in this newsgroup and
I want to keep things congenial.

(snip)


It's not easy to pick out posts that might contain interesting
stuff when the subject isn't changed. Besides, some people are
just not worth reading, because nothing they have to say could
possibly have any value. They simply have no credibility
whatsoever.

A quick glance usually tells me all I need to know about a post, then
I read it or scroll past. And I learned in my first month on AOL to
ignore subject lines after the first couple of posts. ;)

-- Shelly
.

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