Last
week my sister wrote about the title of her current WIP.
Personally,
I think the title she has fits the story perfectly and her beta readers are
being too nit-picky. Sometimes you have to know when not to listen to critics.
And just because several people agree doesn’t mean they’re right. You also have
to remember not every critic knows what they are talking about.
I
left one crit group because one of them commented that I had a grammar error
and every single one of the other members agreed with the problem. So did I, in
fact. BUT each and every one of them completely agreed I had to end my
sentence, in fact my paragraph, with a COMMA.
See
the problem here.
They
also refused to listen to me when I explained the actual correct punctuation
for my sentence. I left the group. How can they help my writing if they don’t
know you can NEVER end a sentence with a comma?
Of
course that’s my experience with most of the crit groups I’ve tried. They
refused to do much beyond correcting grammar and they don’t even know all the
grammar rules to begin with. They most certainly can’t identify echo or redundancy,
and I have my doubts about them spotting any flow issues. They also don’t understand
info dumps or telling.
If
they are not going to recognize their own writing blunders they certainly aren’t
going to help me with mine.
So
choose your critiquers carefully then take what they say with a grain of salt. Just
because a beta reader says something is unclear, or has negative connotations, or
is worded in a confusing way, doesn’t mean it’s so.
True
if most of your critics say you have a problem there probably is one, and you
should certainly verify if any comments have merit but you don’t have to take
all comments as gospel.
I
had one guy after listening to a reading of part of my first chapter of my opus
make the comment that I should change some references to more “dog appropriate”
wording since ALL my characters seemed to be a “dog like” species.
In
all of my opuses over 1700 pages, I don’t have a single dog or even a “dog like”
species. I do have aliens (it’s sci-fi) but the ONE species, which IS based on
an animal, had CAT like features. The other alien came closer to fitting the description
of a TROLL than anything else. AND most of my characters are indeed very human.
ALL of my POV characters are.
I
can understand how he might not have picked up on the clues I gave that one
alien species had cat like rather than dog like features. I however don’t
understand how he missed that most of my characters are human. They have very
human names and the two supporting characters from an alien species clearly have
names I created.
I
got another comment from the same reading that I didn’t make it clear WHERE
they were and proceeded to give me ideas how to show they were on a military
base on some planet.
Sorry,
no cigar.
Yes,
it is a military base. Yeah, you caught that detail. Exactly where that base is
isn’t a detail I feel I need to expound on in the first chapter. I don’t want
info dumps giving such minute details of this world. Suffice it to say, I DO
give more details as the story unfolds.
My
point is sometimes comments from the critics are way off base. Either they
missed an important detail or they simply weren’t paying attention. Or maybe
they want unnecessary info dumps.
I
know one writer who insists you have to give minute detail on what they were
eating every single time they eat, even if it was just a brownie. I read her
work. She didn’t just say they had brownies, she described, in minute detail,
the flavors and how they were cooked!
Excuse
me, I know what a brownie is. I don’t need the detail to get the picture. And
she did this every time they ate. It was totally redundant and unneeded. Yes, sometimes you need that detail, but unless you’re writing a
cookbook, it’s over kill to do it every single time they eat! As
my sister would describe it, a wall banger.
Don’t
be the writer who changed how they were writing their story because of one
comment, only to have the next person make it clear they would prefer the story was written how they’d already had it.
Stay
happy. Write what pleases you and cherry pick what crits you listen to.
Remember they might not know wherewith they speak.
Smile.
Make the day a brighter day.
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