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[earlgreytea68]

rereader and an anon also asked: 6. Thoughts on critique

Here's the thing about critique. God, I hope this doesn't make me sound like a terrible person. I welcome it, always. But I also reserve the right to respectfully disagree with your critique. Not because I don't think I can get better--I *do* and I actually do listen a lot, not just to outright critique but also to where comments reveal that I haven't gotten my point across, or I haven't done a good job making a character's motivations clear, or my plot is falling apart, or I'm taking too long, or whatever--but because I think there can be genuine disagreement over what a fic should be doing, and that doesn't necessarily mean you are right and I am wrong or you are wrong and I am right, it means we're just talking about two different fics. Does that make sense?

You can't please everybody all of the time, and I've been doing the fanfic thing long enough to realize this. So I try to be really honest in my self-assessment of my work, and then I hope that you guys like it. And then, if you don't, I listen and try to decide whether I agree with you. ;-)

Comments

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

I think I get this - it's your story you're trying to tell, and while you're happy for technical corrections or plot holes or whatever, you still want to tell the story you want to tell. And that's the way it should be. No-one should be criticising you for telling a different story to the one they want to read. (That's the generic "you", btw :-) ).
And yeah, Moffat. *sigh*. I might not like the last story he told me, but I respect the hell out of his right to tell the story that he wanted to tell. I'll just go sit in a corner, rocking, hugging fanfic to my chest to make it all better.

[rereader.livejournal.com]

This is so smart! Because it does have to be yours, what you want it to be, so it makes sense to listen to whether you got that across well. If the reader wanted a different fic (*looks sternly at self*), well, that's on them.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I love solid critique, even when it makes me cry and have to 'kill my darlings.' Call me out on hackneyed phrases, poor characterization, or huge plot holes, please.

What I don't like is when someone tells me that I should have focused on something they wanted to see more of when that wasn't the story I was trying to tell.

[rifleman-s.livejournal.com]

"You can't please everybody all of the time, and I've been doing the fanfic thing long enough to realize this. So I try to be really honest in my self-assessment of my work, and then I hope that you guys like it. And then, if you don't, I listen and try to decide whether I agree with you. ;-)"

That's eminently sensible. After all they are your characters and it's your writing and your imagination - but it's wonderful when an author does listen to the readers from time to time, so it's a bit of a two-way-street. You have the balance just right, I'd say.

[earlgreytea68.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I try!