Le Sigh

[kriadydragon]

Why is it I always get reviewers who want me to rush through my stories? Seriously, besides the usual "this is how you know the difference between your and you're", I always get people telling me to move the story along. And this time it was for a one-shot!

I'm not saying they didn't have a point. They might have, I don't know. I do know that, except for the escaped spelling errors here and there, every time I look the story over, I'm still happy with it. It just bugs me because I really can't say if they have a point, or if they were just being impatient. I've gotten impatient with stories, wanting them to hurry up to the whump or to get back to what's happening to this or that character. However, it's an attitude I don't listen to as I know that for the story to hurry along to the good stuff would make it cheap and flat. Some stories need time to build to make the climax more poignant. And the last time I got a review like that - being told to move things along - it was right before the chapter where I have things move along. Had they been patient, they wouldn't have had to make that comment.

Have any of you gotten reviews like that? Either ones that did have a point or ones that left you wondering if the reader was just being impatient,  wasn't paying attention, or something else? Or was just plain unhelpful?

That's the problem with critique in fanfic. You love the praise, but would also like help in knowing how to make the story better. However, it's kind of hard to say if the "helpful" critique you got involves an actual flaw or is just that one person's opinion. We all vary, not just in our genre likes, but also in what we like in a writing style. I like a lot of details, some people like stories that get the point across in few words. Some like quiet stories that build slowly, others like stuff that's fast-paced.

I also, personally, think it rude that the only reason that someone leaves a comment is to point out what was wrong (we may have all been guilty of that at one point, though.) The best kind of critique is one that points out the strength and weaknesses, while also offering up - if possible - ideas of how to fix those weaknesses. That's what critiquing is all about - helping the author better themselves. When you leave a review that's nothing more than telling the author what's wrong without including what's right, it discourages. There's original stories that I've scrapped because everyone kept telling me what was wrong without helping me figure out how to fix it.

Okay, mild rant over.

Comments

[alipeeps.livejournal.com]

What really gets to me, though, is that you'll have great and well-written stories that will get nit-picky reviews (I'm not talking about my stories. I've seen this a lot with other people's stories), and stories that could use a lot of fine tuning or are complete crud that, maybe they don't get a ton of reviews, but the reviews they do get are all praises. So why isn't anyone nit-picking them?

Because a lot of people review on content, not execution. I.e. if they like Sheppard/Weir, they'll post a "OMG! That was so gr8t! They're so cute together, you must write more!" review for a badly written, OOC monstrosity that because it's Shep/Weir, regardless of the quality of the actual writing.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[sholio]

Well, and I think that thoughtful, intelligent people with good critical-thinking skills don't bother with lousy stories. I know that I'll just ignore the bad stories -- they're not fixable. It's the almost good stories that make me want to give a critique, the stories that could become good if they just had a few things fixed. Or the really good stories that just have one little factual error or something like that. I wouldn't bother pointing out a geographical error in a story that's abysmal otherwise, but if it's an otherwise good story that misrepresents the location of the Stargate within Atlantis, I might point that out.

[alipeeps.livejournal.com]

True. I used to try and review every fic I read but I'm afraid these days if they're that bad then I just won't say anything. I've also learnt that most writers whose work is that bad (in terms of just not taking the effort to even try and get grammar, spelling, characterisation etc right) have no interest in concrit and only want "Yor so gr8t" reviews so best not to bother anyway.