Don't Shoot the Messenger! (Adventures of a Critic)

Why Do People Lie?

I'm getting really sick of this. Why do people lie? I could go into a very deep discussion about why the science and whatnot behind lies people tell, but that's not my topic of today. We're in Critic Land, and right now, I'm wondering, WHY DO PEOPLE LIE?

Seriously, I was reading a story that I just stumbled upon (people I've critiqued, don't worry, it's not any of you) but I was immediately floored by the blurb. It was spectacular. So I clicked on it and read into the pages and I realized that the story was TERRIBLE. It was then that I saw in the author's note that the blurb was written by a friend of theirs, so not really them. 

That's not only misleading, but that's not helping you at all. You shouldn't have your friend write your blurb -- part of learning how to write is can you write a blurb that hooks in your readers? 

Anyways, to the original point: this story was terrible. The blurb was not at all what was written inside. The blurb talked about this great mystery and how these two people were going to find out something about this guy who committed suicide at their school and yet there was someone who looked just like him twenty years later. It seemed really interesting. When I opened it up, that was like what I call a "backburner plot". It's the plot that is probably meant to be the "main entree" but is actually forgotten because the dessert "which is usually the romance" was more fun to cook. It was a cliched topic of a girl falling in love with her guy best friend (why can it never be the other way around-at the LEAST?) It was downright AWFUL, the characters were fake and inconsistent, the plotline was thrown int he back, and the grammar was nasty. YET you see comments and critics who write things like this:

"I'm officially hooked."

"OMG I LOVE IT! TOTES READING ON!"

"This was a really interesting beginning and I found ____ to be really interesting. Your grammar isn't bad and your plotline is really original." 

Maybe the original plotline that I saw in the blurb was original, but what was written was not. WHY DO PEOPLE LIE? Some of the people who commented wrote like they were capable of telling what was good literature and what wasn't, so why are they telling this girl that her story is the "bee's knees"? It makes NO sense whatsoever. You aren't helping them, you're not helping yourself, and you're filling up their head with false hopes. Then people like me, who are genuine critics come along, and we tell the facts. This story isn't working. Your characters are two dimensional, your plotline is not prevalent enough. That is when we get into arguments like

"WHY IS NO ONE ELSE SAYING WHAT YOU'RE SAYING THEN!?"

Well, honey, I would LOVE to answer that question, but I honest to God don't know. Why aren't they saying what I'm saying? I know that some people see it? There are people who dance around what they want to say, sugar coating every other line they can so that the author doesn't go ballistic. Then you get the people like me, the realists, who say that this isn't working, and they are shunned to the bottom of the comments section or deleted permamently. 

I felt so bad for one guy who explained to this girl all the grammatical errors and everything. He was just getting hit after hit after hit once he posted what he saw in the story (what the story really was). Not only did the author just scream at him and give him incredibly stupid arguments, people who weren't originally part of the fight began giving their thoughts too. 

The dumbest one I saw was: "C'mon, it's her story not yours, if she wants it like this then you have no right to stop her." 

He wasn't TRYING to STOP her, he was TRYING to HELP her. No, he has no right to stop her, but that wasn't what he was trying to do. He was pointing out that if she wanted to get better then she HAS to change and learn because otherwise she will not get better. 

Eventually he left, "the arguments got too stupid for him" (which despite how dumb they were that isn't a way to convince people), and he up and left. Other than that comment, I probably would have done something very similar. 

Seriously people, why are you lying to these authors? You make them feel good now, but guess what, when we real critics (and yes, I consider people who are sincere the real ones) come along and tell these people what's actually on their page, we are DESTROYING them. That's right, we're destroying them. I don't LIKE destroying people, I hate destroying people, but if you build them up so high and you show them that the base was faulty in the first place, eventually it's going to go toppling down. Despite what you think sugar coating your thoughts is not good to the author. It may make the author feel good then, but later? It will only hurt them. You're stifling their ability to grow. Please, please, just stop doing this. Tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. I know it sucks, being the bearer of bad news. 

Why do you think I named this "Don't Shoot the Messenger!"? Here is the harsh truth -- we are the bringers of bad news a lot of the time. The authors want to take that fictional gun they wrote into their story and point it at us. This, right here, is a bad news. It's what we critics do. We aren't able to live in a world that is mamby-pamby happy land. We have to be sincere, and we should try to help them. 

Critiquing truly is tough love. You've got to give them the facts, no matter how much they won't like them, to get people to grow. Otherwise, these authors will keep making the same mistakes. It's like writing in the notes when a child learns how to play piano--they need to learn the notes correctly, otherwise the song will never be correct.