What went wrong? Feedback request

Re: Rutger5

Feedback can be critical and constructive without being mean-spirited. Writing is an art form, and any creative endeavor requires the creator to make themselves vulnerable. It can be demoralizing as a creator to get bad feedback, which is to say feedback that is negative without being constructive.

Bad feedback usually takes two forms. 1) it attacks the creator. 2) it attacks the work. 1 is always bad, but it can be difficult to distinguish 2 from critical feedback that is constructive. The difference is usually found in the (a) wording and the (b) level of specificity.

Of those, the level of specificity is the easier to spot. "It was bad. I didn't like it. The dialog was trash." This is too vague to be helpful, and the creator can draw no useful conclusions from this. Another writer can say basically the same thing, but with examples, and that completely changed the tone of the feedback.

Discerning bad wording is the really tough one.

"The dialog was simplistic and indelicate. Adults don't talk like this."

vs

"It looks like a third grader wrote your dialog."

These two examples say largely the same thing. Most people can look at these two and recognize that one is being mean where the other is constructively critical, but to a vulnerable creator that just hurts.

Beerlovr has accused me of hypocrisy in another thread for this. He and I had much the same criticisms of a story, but we worded them differently. Wording matters.

The reason I point this out is because this is what bullying looks like. The "I'm just being honest" bully. Bullies prey on vulnerability for a variety of reasons and, to circle back around and make my point, every writer who asks for feedback is vulnerable.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm here on this forum to help new writers, and I have a lot of respect for anyone that's here for the right reasons.

P.S. 'good feedback' that is vague and unhelpful (i loved it! It was great!) is equally useless except as an ego fluff, but I would be hard pressed to find a creator who has a problem with, or doesn't deserve, a little ego fluffing.

I read Beerlovr88's comments and then re-read the first few paragraphs, and I'm not sure what grammatical errors Beerlovr is referring to. "He didn't minded" appears to be an editing goof, and I agree it's distracting. But the issues with the rest of the first two paragraphs are mostly matters of style and not grammar. The sentences tend to be somewhat long, and one could insert commas here and there to break up clauses. But that's not a fundamental matter of grammar.

I think it's difficult and often dubious to try to re-write an author's sentences, because the result usually is to convey something different from what the author wanted to convey.

AwkwardMD said:

to a vulnerable creator that just hurts.

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Ah. Perhaps this mentality of yours would help explain our polarized approaches when supplying feedback to others. Because I for one have yet to encounter a single author here who openly self-identifies as 'vulnerable,' and yet you still mention this term as if you want to arbitrarily apply it to all the authors here and as a result, we should all be sugar-coating our views so that people's safe spaces can be protected, and by extension, anyone who doesn't subscribe to your imagined belief that authors are super vulnerable would be a 'mean-spirited bully.'

Sorry, but no. Authors here are often openly soliciting for any feedback, and if they're as vulnerable as you claim then they shouldn't literally be asking for any feedback that isn't 'this story sucks.' While you yourself may take issue with my approach (which, I don't ever remember asking you), the fact still remains that the authors themselves have repeatedly offered me their thanks, which now includes the author in this thread as well.

AwkwardMD said:

Beerlovr has accused me of hypocrisy in another thread for this.

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And you have accused my posts of being nothing less than mean spirited. And yet... the fact remains that much of my commentary has been very positive and even well received by many of the authors.

beerlovr88 said:

props on the originality.

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beerlovr88 said:

Orlene's character was interesting though. Mature, sexually aggressive, confident, heartbroken... I really admired her.

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beerlovr88 said:

from a technical perspective, I will say that I thought your initial description of the city was solid.

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electricblue66 said:

Don't worry about this story. Take on board the commentary and focus on the next one, and the one after that. That way you get half a dozen stories and start developing your own style, rather than one story twice. You learn the ropes faster that way.

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You're probably right and maybe when I get around to wanting to do more writing I won't want to do this one again, but I get the feeling that it is pretty much inevitable that I will. I enjoyed it too much to have this end up on the trash heap. Plus this story was all about redemption and getting a second chance so it'd kind of be hypocritical not to give it another shot

beerlovr88 said:

And you have accused my posts of being nothing less than mean spirited. And yet... the fact remains that much of my commentary has been very positive and even well received by many of the authors.

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I said as much to your feedback of my own story. That doesn't mean there isn't room to be more supportive.

Writing is one of those things that I wish I could encourage everyone in the world to do more of. We would all be better off if we had an outlet this good. I treat that as sacred, like a little bonsai tree in everyone that comes along. Some need a little more pruning than others, but I think it's worth the time.

I know that this thread has already gone on as long as needed to get the feedback I wanted, but several have mentioned that it might not be worth salvaging this story and just moving on. I'm not asking that anyone try and read chapter 5 but if anyone wants to I'd be interested to see what their opinion is of it. Chapter 5 is the story to me so even if chapters 1 thru 4 are garbage and aren't worth saving I think that the last chapter makes it worthwhile to do so. I think my plan is going to be to cut down those chapters by about 30% and leave the last chapter intact and see if I can just speed up the progression towards that chapter.

lol, anyways, thanks again to everyone who has commented here.

I didn't read 1-4, so I can tell you that chapter 5 almost stands on it's own. The events of the first four chapters are implied clearly enough to make sense without beating us over the head.

On the one hand, you have done a really masterful job of creating compelling characters that talk and act in lockstep with the motivations they have, and that is no small feat. These are deep characters with complex layers. Clearly, character building is an area of strength for you with Dialogue right there too. Sheila's monologue about the car wreck was really well done. Cheers.

On the other hand, your tendency to write in third person omniscient with frequent head hops removes a lot of the carefully crafted tension from the scenes.

Sheila sees something in Jennifer's eyes. Could it be hope? Is the pause in her speech because she's actually considering what Sheila said? Then we head hop and yes, it is exactly those things.

Moments like these, where characters are making decisions in their heads, are ripe fruit for dramatic tension. Let that scene unfold while staying with a single character's perspective, and let their actions and words speak for themselves.

I think a lot of authors get this idea in their head that if all of their characters are having interesting thoughts then they need to show those happening or else the reader will never know how clever you are. Right now, you are resolving tension by telling us there has been resolution. As you improve, you will settle into showing us resolution, and that is stronger.

Trust the reader. Trust them to make connections when you imply them.

I'm so glad that you liked chapter 5 even without reading the rest of the story! The fact that you picked out the car wreck scene as well is awesome because it is by far my favorite part of the chapter. It gives such a beautiful insight into Sheila.

Thanks for the compliment about character building and dialogue. I really enjoy my characters so I'm glad that it comes through like that. I also value having my characters follow their own motivations over getting them to do something necessary to carry the story forward. Like if I thought Jennifer absolutely would never forgive Sheila then I wouldn't have had her do it and would have needed to find a new direction to take the story.

I'll see what I can do about not spelling out every little thing and giving the reader some more credit. hehe, I probably do have a tough time not giving all those insights because I want the reader to know everything going on in their minds but I can see your point about letting the reader come to that conclusion themselves.

Thanks again for taking the time to read through that!