writing meme

[kindkit]

I am, believe it or not, trying to be Cheerful and Positive, fannishly and in other aspects of life. *laughs* Yeah, not one of my natural talents, but it's worth a try occasionally. So, in the spirit of cheerful positivity, a meme.

Ask me any of these questions:

1. Of the fic you’ve written, of which are you most proud?
2. Favorite tense
3. Favorite POV
4. What are some themes you love writing about?
5. What inspires you to write?
6. Thoughts on critique
7. Create a character on the spot... NOW!
8. Is there a character you love writing for the most? The least? Why?
9. A passage from a WIP
10. What are your strengths in writing?
11. What are your weaknesses in writing?
12. Anything else that you want to know... (otherwise known as Fill in the Blank)


ETA: Because this is crossposted, some of my responses are on DW and some are on LJ.

Comments

[kindkit]

Critique is . . . important? And scary?

Only once, in almost eleven years of writing fanfic, have I had a beta reader give me no useful advice at all. Of course I don't always follow all of a beta reader's advice, but getting another perspective, a reader's perspective, is always good. But it's hard for me to hand my story to someone else so that they can look for the flaws and then tell me about them! I never do it without feeling nervous and defensive, even with betas who are my friends and whose judgment I absolutely trust.

What I would like, if I ever dared to ask for it, would be for someone to tell me globally how my writing could be better. My own writing has largely plateau-ed, I think, and I could benefit from something that's not just critique of a particular story, but a general "here are the weaknesses, here are the things you're scared of writing and avoid, here are the ideas and tropes and expressions you overuse, here are challenges you could set yourself to do better." (N.B. I'm not asking for such a critique now, from anyone. I need to be ready to handle it.)

Moving along to another possible sense of "critique," I'm of two minds about concrit on posted stories. I used to be very much in the "concrit is always good and no one should object to it!" camp, but I've come to accept and understand the fannish conventional that unsolicited concrit is a no-no. For one thing, posted stories are finished and almost no one is going to go back and revise on the basis of concrit, unless it's fixing a typo or something. For another, unsolicited public criticism quite understandably gets people's backs up. And for a third, I know that the way I feel when I get unsolicited concrit definitely does not meet the standard of "you should be grateful for it!" that I used to espouse. On the other hand, I have sometimes desperately wanted to say, "this is great but needs a Brit-pick" or "I really loved this right up until X, which changed the mood completely" etc. Because these authors' betas probably didn't say that to them but should have. I can backbutton out of a terrible story, but what makes my brain explode are the stories that are almost good.

[lilliburlero]

Thanks for this!

I'm not nearly so experienced in fic-writing, but I do sometimes feel the need for the same sort of general critique. I think I know how it would go in my case, though: stop writing in that precious self-stroking manner and pay some attention to how people actually talk! (So I'm not sure quite why I don't listen to me, except that I'm too busy stroking myself.)

I was reading a discussion today which touched occasionally on matters of unsolicited concrit, and while I think myself open to it, the example that one commenter gave of a crit they'd offered that they thought was quite reasonable but had got them into a bit of bother made me blanch and reach for the sal volatile.

I noticed your review of Death by Silver btw: I recently read and enjoyed it but thought it insufficiently Britpicked; quite minor matters but enough to grate.

[kindkit]

Well, writing "how people actually talk" is a convention, isn't it, not a commandment handed down from the muses? And I think it's specifically a convention of realistic novels. I don't think anyone really does it anyway, because in dialogue we usually eliminate the wandering and digressions and all the ums. It's a useful criticism, I think, if someone's dialogue is stilted. But if it's the kind of fiction that allows for a bit of manner, and if the characters talk better than people actually talk rather than worse, I don't see the problem.

thought it insufficiently Britpicked

Yes. I meant to mention that in my review but then I forgot. I actually wonder, because from what I know of one of the authors she's not the sort to let things like that slide, if they were editorially discouraged from correct British usage. The book is published in the US only, so far as I know, and for example to a US-ian who doesn't know better, the British "got" in place of US "gotten" sounds ungrammatical. It would be a shame if the publisher thought US readers were too ignorant to understand usage differences, but it wouldn't surprise me. Or if the publishers/editors themselves were too ignorant.

[lilliburlero]

I've always tried to write better, wittier, smoother than I talk, anyway! (Not hard, as the Irish saga tales say.) But maybe my prose style is a bit in love with its own syntax: I think it comes from having a poetry background.

I think it went a bit beyond the occasional 'gotten' and 'sidewalk', though--to me some of the school flashbacks rang wrong; I'd have to go back to the book in detail to say exactly why, so it clearly wasn't egregious--it was just that those were the bits of the book that really interested me (the mystery not so much). I remember on a couple of occasions having that compensatory Well, it's an AU, maybe everything works a bit differently here reflex that lets you keep on enjoying something that's just made what you truly know to be a misstep.

[kindkit]

Well, I like your prose, in part because it doesn't read just like everyone else's. Fandom, on the whole, is devoted to spare, simple, "transparent" prose, and while that's often appropriate and can be done very well, it sometimes feels like that's the only style allowed. And I don't like that.

I had some moments of unease with the school story too. Like you, I find it more compelling than the mystery, but sometimes something felt a bit off. The "senior man/new man" terminology didn't seem quite right, and class strangely didn't seem to be an issue at all. But everything I know about British public schools comes from The Charioteer, Another Country, and Hugh Walpole's Jeremy at Crale, so I'm hardly an expert!

In my experience, those details of experience are much harder for an American to get right than the language. All the more reason for a Britpick, but pro writers never seem to bother.

[lilliburlero]

Thank you: I often fear seeking beta help because I think it'll try to steer me in the direction of transparency, and while I admire people who can write plainly and compellingly, I am actually interested in making the prose something in itself. But also it probably comes off as needlessly elaborate.

It does vary from school to school, too; I think 'new man' might be a term used at some public schools, but 'senior man' rang wrong, I agree. Though why it should, in an AU with magic, I'm not quite sure! I've read quite a bit of public school memoir (Orwell, C.S. Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Auden) and fiction, but I'd be incredibly hesitant writing in a public school setting simply because there are so many shibboleths and the great variance of them. You've just reminded me that I want to re-read The Senior Commoner: do you know it? I think you might enjoy it.