Most Common Writing Errors (ONGOING)

How To Criticize A Story + How To Take Criticism

⚠️ Long chapter ⚠️

This chapter covers how to give critiques to a story + how to take criticism.

There is some profanity in this chapter.

Read the disclaimer if you haven't already, it applies especially for this chapter.

This is probably gonna be a chapter not many will like. So, please read this part before you read the rest of the chapter:

My opinion is mine. Please do not use my opinion as a vessel for yours, or disagree to the point where you dislike me. We all have opinions, and my take on criticism does not make me morally good or bad. 

Many may be upset with how I talk about harsh feedback or how I think authors should take criticism. This book is meant to help writers. My goal isn't to argue with you, so if you disagree, that's fine, but I'm just one person. There's no need to start an argument over something as silly as this.

This entire book is based on my experience. You are going to have different experiences than me, but that doesn't make my opinion wrong. That doesn't make your opinion wrong either. So I'd appreciate it if you keep that in mind while reading.

I hope that makes sense. Enjoy the chapter.

How To Criticize A Story

1) Be Specific

Imagine you're talking to an artist. This artist does paintings of whatever the client wants. You go up to the artist and ask them to draw your lips in extreme detail. Except, when the artist goes to paint, you grab duct tape and put it over your lips so the artist can't see.

How are they going to paint your lips if they can't see them?

How can writers correct their mistakes if you aren't specific?

Everyone who has experience with the art world knows that, when requesting a piece of art, you need to give as much detail as possible, otherwise you can't be mad when the artist gives you something not even close to your vision.

Writers cannot read your mind. If you simply say "This character wasn't good," that doesn't tell the author anything. Vague feedback is beyond terrible. I'd honestly rather get harsh feedback than vague feedback, and you'll see in the next section how useless I think harsh feedback is.

Don't say "the pacing was slow," say "the pacing was slow in chapter(s) *insert chapter(s) here* because of exposition dumping. There were too many walls of text that could have been shown instead of told."

Do you see how much more helpful that is? Now the author knows exactly what chapters you're thinking of (if it's the whole book, you can say that too but provide examples of a chapter or two where it's more noticeable).

It's the same with grammar. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen a judge put 9/10 in the grammar section for a contest. Their explanation is something like this: "The grammar was nice but there were some errors."

Gee, thanks, so helpful.

Give examples of the grammar errors. Even if you don't type out a specific time in the text where there's a grammar error, at least say what the grammar error is so the author can research it.

For example, if the author does dialogue tags wrong, tell them the dialogue tags are incorrect because *insert why here*. You don't need an example (although I would recommend it), just be a bit more specific.

2) Harsh Feedback Is Lazy And Unhelpful