Allyn Yonge <ayonge@yahoo.com> wrote:

There are, to my mind, three(3) different kinds of C&C:
1)SELF: what do _you_ think of the story?  The first and
most important critic lives inside your head. If you
enjoyed writing, if you're enthusiastic about what you're
doing, then nothing else matters. UNLESS you want it to.

To some extent that's true, yeah, but other people do have one advantage
in this regard: they judge your story based on the words you actually
wrote, not the ideas that were in your head when you were writing. Are
your readers react differently to your story than you'd intended them
to? It might just be that they can't relate to its events in the way
that you can, in which case you'd be perfectly justified in hanging on
to your artistic vision and leaving your story as is. But on the other
hand, it might be that the story you wrote wasn't quite the story you
*thought* you wrote.

2)PEER: What do other writers think of the story? If
Krista Perry or Joseph Palmer (for example) write and
tell you how much they enjoyed your story . . .you know
you've done something right. Because they are people who
have "been there, done that" and they are speaking from
experience.

Well, maybe. But experienced fanfic writers have biases, like everyone
else. IMO, who likes or dislikes a fic is not nearly important as *why*
he or she likes or dislikes it.

1)I never C&C a story I don't like. IMO it's prejudicial to an
impartial review.

IMO, that depends on *why* the critic dislikes the fic. For example, I
have a fairly strong dislike for all things Sailor Moon. If someone
writes a fic with Sailor Moon in it, I probably won't read it. This, of
course, is just me, and anyone else's mileage is going to vary. Hearing
"I didn't like your fic because it has Sailor Moon in it" is not going
to be useful feedback to an author unless he's specifically set out to
write a fic that Gary Kleppe would appreciate, and I'm not quite
conceited enough to think that anyone out there does this. :) OTOH,
there are a lot of reasons one might dislike a fic that are legitimate
and useful feedback.

2)I never C&C unless I can say something positive about a
story. Otherwise, it's just author bashing and not at all
constructive.

*shrug* Sometimes there isn't anything positive to say. The idea the
story uses may be one that's already universally despised (e.g., "My
gaijin martial artist character goes to Nerima and impresses everyone,
and Nabiki falls madly in love with him") or the writing might be so bad
that no one can even tell what the fic's supposed to be about. In these
kinds of cases, I think the only way to be helpful is to be honest about
it. It's not pleasant, but isn't it better than letting the person
continue to spend his time churning out stuff under the mistaken
assumption that it's good?

3)I don't do grammar/punctuation.  For one thing, I _can't_
do it. For another, I'm more interested in characterization,
plotting and dramatic tension.

Grammar and spelling problems are what I notice in a story that has a
lot of them, so they're what I comment on in such cases.

I'll stop here rather than comment on the more specific issues that
follow in your essay, as I don't want this to balloon into a big spam
thread, and these issues are probably better discussed in the context of
individual fanfics.

See you at AFest this weekend! (That's to Allyn, and anyone else from
the list who's going.)


Gary
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