Greetings! Last week Tara the Antisocial Worker talked about the value of having a group of writers to offer criticism and advice. It can not only be helpful in itself, it can make you better able to evaluate your work when you're on your own.
By coincidence, I was inspired by a recent column I ran across to think about the value and uses of criticism as well. (More on the source below.) I'm going to be coming at it from a more general perspective. More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
The immediate reaction for most people to the word criticism is that it's generally going to be something negative; someone who's critical all the time is not pleasant to be around, and so on. Yet criticism is part and parcel of critical thinking, the disciplined effort to think about things and evaluate them in a larger context. It's about making value judgements, recognizing not just the bad, but the good and the ugly as well - and beauty too I expect. So, part of writing involves dealing with criticism. Consider...
Write On! is about developing skills to recognize how you can become a better writer, learning how to deal with common writing challenges, and finding ways to meet those challenges while getting helpful feedback.
Or to put it another way...
Write On! is about recognizing how badly you can suck as a writer, realizing that writing can be a fool's game filled with booby traps, and putting together an arsenal of "cheat codes" to get around them while getting cheered on by co-conspirators.
The above descriptions of Write On! are two very different ways of framing it, value judgements phrased in a way that puts it in very different contexts. Writers need criticism at some point in their efforts - the question is, how to think critically about it!
If you are writing for anyone aside from your own personal enjoyment, at some point you are going to either wish to or have to share it with someone else for their input. There's painful truth to the old saying about people being their own worst critics, and there are multiple sides to that observation. Let me enumerate just a few of the possibilities:
1) You've fallen into some habitual writing patterns without noticing, such as using the same phrasing over and over.
2) You have gaps in your story - because you know too much about where you're going with it. It can be easy to skip over story elements that need more exposition.
3) You have too much in your story - it's cluttered with irrelevant details, too many characters, too many ideas you're pursuing.
4) You've got a plot hole or two you're overlooking.
5) You're not critical enough/are too critical to fairly judge your own work.
6) You are a good writer, but... (fill in the blank)
7) You are a terrible writer, but... (fill in the blank)
The list is potentially endless. The point is, you have to not only develop the ability to think critically about your work - assess its good and bad points - you also have to consider how others will receive it, and what you are going to do with their input. Be crushed by it? Take it under advisement? Ignore it? Accept it and act on it? Pick and choose? It's even more difficult if you factor in how subjective it can be.
The two descriptions of Write On! above are noticeably different; which one would you find more credible as an opinion? Your reaction might be based on A) which one you agree with, and B) who it's coming from. If you're going to deal with criticism, part of the deal is the credibility you give to the source. If, for example, it's coming from someone you respect or someone who is a recognized expert, you're liable to give more weight to it than from, say Aunt Flo's second cousin.
Seeking advice from others can be helpful - or not. Familiarity can breed... disinterest. Shankar Vedantam on NPR recently detailed research suggesting that asking someone for an opinion on something can be affected by where they perceive it to be coming from. While the subject of the study was judging creative ideas, it would not be surprising if a similar effect occurred when asking someone to evaluate writing.
There's also the problem of how good the people you are asking for help are, relative to your own abilities. Vedantam looked at a study from the Air Force Academy where they placed weak students with strong ones, and put the middlers in a separate group. The results were not what they were expecting; the poorer students actually did worse. The gap was too big for them to bridge. And the middlers... did a little better on their own.
You've also got to remember who you are writing for - the audience for your work. How your writing is evaluated should reflect in part what they want/need, and what's appropriate. Genre, age group, source material, etc. - all of those can be factors that set the line between what works, and what doesn't. Critical reactions can be a tricky thing; studies have found that the way the human brain develops opinions about something can be influenced at levels far below consciousness.
Maria Konnikova reports on work suggesting that something as subtle as touch can have a big effect on perception. Someone may be put off by your work because a word choice or image triggers something within their mind. Even the act of asking someone to explain why they like something can be problematic. Research suggests decisions are based on emotional responses; asking someone to explain what they like/don't like involves the logical part of the brain - and their reasoning may not actually match up with their emotional logic. They may be telling you what they honestly think - but contradicting what they feel; as a writer, you're often trying to invoke an emotional reaction in your readers. Getting it wrong can be like getting sand in the reader's mental gears.
Presentation and expectation can make a big difference as well; this TED Talk discusses why we are influenced to like or not like things for reasons that, well, have not a lot to do with reason, but more with the way we are wired and conditioned by experience. We all have an internal set of standards for evaluating things, and those standards are not necessarily objective or immutable.
If you have gotten to the point where you have an agent, or even better, an editor at a publisher, you've already gotten past the initial phase of dealing with criticism. They've seen enough of your work to think it is acceptable - and marketable. But that doesn't mean they are going to give you carte blanche at that point. Before anyone cuts a check or arranges for printing, they're going to insist on some kind of input. (And you better hope that includes proofreading that has been done and done right. I've run across more than one book by established best-selling authors with a clunker here and there.)
It's not easy getting to that point - nor is it an objective process. There's been more than one story about J. K. Rowling's search to find a publisher willing to take on the first Harry Potter book - or the later book she published under another name in part because she wanted reaction to the book on its own merits, not as "Rowling's latest." (And as an example of how criticism can vary, here's a different take on Rowling's choice of a pen name.)
Week after Week Ellid has been gifting us with tales of Books So Bad, They're Good, literary horrors that nonetheless have seen print and even sales beyond all reason. Plus sequels! It's hard to escape Sturgeon's Law.
And you should keep in mind that not all criticism you receive is useful, helpful, or even applicable - because not everyone sees the world in the same way, and writing is an art, not a science. As an exercise, go to Amazon.com and pick some book you've read. Compare favorable and unfavorable reviews with your own experience. You may find yourself wondering if those reviewers are even talking about the same book.
If you're having a real problem dealing with criticism, you may find this report from NPR on how a man overcame his fears by deliberately seeking out rejection to be a revelation.
"Just get out there and get rejected, and sometimes it's going to get dirty. But that's OK, 'cause you're going to feel great after, you're going to feel like, 'Wow. I disobeyed fear.' "
- Jason Comely
The bottom line is that applying critical thinking to your work is a skill like any other. It has to be developed with practice, and you have to learn how to use it to best advantage to judge the quality of your writing, both that which you do on your own, and the critiques you draw upon from others. For more on this, see
SensibleShoes discussing it
here and
here.
And Now For Something Completely Different...
I was inspired to consider the topic of critical thinking after reading a piece by Charles P. Pierce evaluating a recent political analysis Pierce found totally at odds with reality. That led Pierce to link to a masterful parody of the art of playwriting, and criticism of the same. Here's the relevant video: the initial couple of seconds are blacked out but then the lights come up. Watch the play, see a brief look at the author at work, and then a critical review of the work.
http://youtu.be/...
FWIW, here's the transcription of the review via Pierce:
"Some people have made the mistake of seeing Shunt's work as a load of rubbish about railway timetables, but clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants, see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanized world. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine's elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our esophagus, the guard's van our left lung, the cattle truck our shins, the first-class compartment the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the level crossing an electric elk called Simon. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? It's over there in a box. The train is the same only the time is altered. Ecce homo, ergo elk. La Fontaine knew his sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted."
Tonight's Challenge: How do you deal with criticism? Who do you go to, to get an opinion on your work or ask for advice? What's the best/worst criticism you've ever received/given? For extra credit, see how many writing clichés you can find in Neville Shunte's play above, or write your own review.
I'll be back in another month with another take on critical thinking. It's not just for writers - characters can employ it too.