Criticizing Another Member's Writing/ Comfortable or Not?

Oh God!
See!
Because I am such a crappy communicator, I m left to worry that I may have been the one who seemingly jumped down Phoenix's throat!!

I am communicatively retarded!! Maybe you should start that thread, Phoenix.

I have been roundly criticised for my 'tone'. (OK, way in the past, but I thought my content should speak for me...)

* I ALWAYS think people who point out misspellings and grammatical mistakes are assholes. I should probably try to improve this in myself, but what are the options....? Why would anyone do this?

Sofia- You are not a crappy communicator, you are a crappy listener. I absolutely agreed with what you had said!

Crappy listener.....ohmy.....I'm roflmao.....

Sometimes, she listens TOO well!

I think Vivien makes a really good point about the importance of dialogue in a critique. I like to know what someone is going for, what level of criticism/ reaction they want. For example, some people are perfectly happy with, "Wow, the emotions in that piece really spoke to me." Period. Others are going for something more like, "You matched the flow of the writing with the emotional intensity really well; the sentence structure became short and choppy when the protagonist was frustrated, long and lyrical when he was lost in a romantic reverie, etc. The one point this really broke down, for me, was the end. The short and choppy sentences may have meant to convey heightened emotions, but they were jarring and artificial to me, and took away from the excellent story you were telling."

(That is totally made up.)

My B.A. is in English with an emphasis on creative writing, and I was lucky enough to have some truly stellar professors who guided us in how to best give (and receive) constructive criticism, and I really enjoy it. But, to get back to Vivien's point, if someone is looking for the first response and I give him or her the second response, it can get ugly. So I try to ask a lead-in question or two to get the lay of the land, and go from there.

Sometimes I hear things people haven't said!
Woe!

So - I think it was Sophia who picked up my comment about writing technique topics...in whatever forum. I think that in a tutorial situation people would be effectively asking for analysis of their writing. For me the basic question is, is the original writing forum where this should happen....should we start tutorial topics? [Note: never use a series of dots in your sentences, it is a lazywoman's way of communicating.....]

..... concur

me too....... c.i.

I think she's.....oh I don't know.....got a point.
Osso, I can't keep up with this burgeoning metropolis. Do we not have a writing tutorial? I think it would increase membership astronomically and provide a great service! We have so many talented, experienced, and fledgling writers.

'Twood behove, no?

I don't know who the forum specialist is in Original Writing. Is that you, Phoenix?

Could you/we talk with Craven and Jespah re preferences? I am ignernt, don't know if this forum is usually used for crit.

It sounds as if Sozobe understands creative writing crit well. I can imagine that if it were handled well, it could get to be a useful (no doubt lively) aspect of talking about writing. And I agree, many many people on a2k are expressive writers in the English language, whether they know it or not.

The original art forum may have a similar situation. I admit to not going there much, even though I am interested, and do sometimes. Except when I am checking things I am supposed to as a "specialist", I am basically relaxing here, flapping about in shallow water.

I have done writing workshops online before, but they are a bit of work for me (e. g. time I don't really have). But I do enjoy them and I think the participants get something out of them. This forum is mainly for postings but the participants clearly want someone to say - something.

It's important to not destroy people, I believe. Writing is very personal, and tossing your writing out there to a bunch of folks can be akin to tossing your baby in the air and waiting to see if anyone will catch him/her.

So, if I start the workshops again, they will come out somewhat slowly, as I'm just not loaded with time. But I don't mind starting 'em up again.

Ossobuco- Not me. Imagine a forum specialist on the Original Writing Forum who's intimidated by writing criticism!

Some people who post poetry or prose do, I note, ask for feedback.

It is then awful to see it sit there with nary a comment.

I wonder if it might be helpful for our writers to indicate whether they want people to really critique their work or not and whether by PM or in a public post? There might be a few guidelines for such feedback, perhaps, but there is no controlling what people may say!

I am extremely hesitant to say anything negative - but also unable to be positive if I do not feel that what I am saying is true - I therefore tend to avoid original writing quite a bit, in a very cowardly way, although I know it must be a pain when writers see a number of visits, and no comments. It was great to have the bits of feedback I got for the couple of pieces of reportage I popped in, and I do go to original writing from time to time and make the odd comment.

Writers' Workshop #1: http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8155

Oh, hey!

Not having visited the link yet -- I am very much in the same boat as dlowan. I hate being put in the position of telling somebody else what I think of their writing, especially as I am, when put to it, a very critical person. This is nothing personal; I tend to be much more critical of my own work than I am of others'.

Face to face with a writer (or an editor, for that matter) with whom I've developed a bond of trust, be it through a personal relationship or through the action, say, of having enrolled in the same writing class, is another matter entirely, because I am in contact with the person and it is understood that there is a degree of professionalism there. The gf and I have been writing statments of purpose (ack!) in the past year, and have both been very capable of telling the other when they're going in the right direction and when what they've got is crap. I simply could not do that in a forum such as this one, which is why I am both hesitant to post any of my own work (and subject it both harsh criticism and to an even more humiliating shower of false praise) and to respond to others' work.

An anecdote: I once gave (when I was 19) a script I'd been working on at college to the producing director of a theater I'd worked at and asked him if he could be troubled to look it over and give me some pointers. He, apparently misunderstanding or simply not wishing to be bothered, passed it on to the dramaturg they'd contracted to evaluate submissions for their series of original works. The response I got, from someone who was not only evaluating the script alongside dozens submitted by grown-up "real" playwrights but was looking for something heavy and important to be premiered in a regional theater (where mine was a little wannabe absurdist sketch written specifically for a tiny venue), was that the script was not even suitable for wiping one's ass. (I had a number of off-stage bathroom bits, so this was not as callous as it might seem.)

I was perfectly aware of this, and would not really have minded if the person I'd entrusted the script to had told me this. But to read it from an anonymous, impersonal hand was a pretty unpleasant experience, though he did commend the "naturalness" of the dialog (which he also excoriated for being liberally laced with profanity); not something I'd wish to subject anyone to here...

I participate in a more explicitly arts-based site, and one thing I did there that was somewhat useful was a "visible edit". I am also merciless with my own writing, and thought it might provide some interesting context if I thoroughly edited a piece of my own, in public. I wrote a new poem, onscreen, in the moment, and then did all of my revisions in subsequent posts. It got a good response, and freed me to be more natural with my critques for a while -- "See, THIS is what I do to myself!" (The editing was not just word changes but commentary along the lines of "could that be any more cliched??")

Just can't bring myself to critique writing -- personal writing, not a business letter or whatnot -- without personal contact, without being able to communicate "look, I respect you enough to tell you what I really think."

And now that I think back on it, even in my own college creative writing courses I'd only really tell somebody if I thought they were competent and confident enough to take it. There's really no way to gauge that here.

My ex is a screenwriter and playwright. I usually liked his first drafts better, however great the subsequent changes were individually. He took suggestions by others almost too well. Most of the people who would read his drafts were his old writing teachers, other writers, friends who directed, and so on. Well, I did read all of them too, but my comments were mostly on choice of words, believability of this character saying that particular statement, and of course the long day's journey into typo hunting. Based on others' comments about the work's organization, pacing, etc, and sometimes long or sometimes short discussion, one play would turn into another. He did preplan the stories and the shaping of them, but there are soooo many ways to go after an original idea.

This kind of revolving happens in painting too. I am not really saying it is a bad thing. Hard though.

Another thing that can be done - how about asking people if they want constructive criticism?