Have you ever been tempted...?

[carsonshepherd]

Wouldn't that be turning an art into a science? You might say, for example, that the best stories are the most descriptive ones. How do you measure a story's descriptiveness without descending into mathematical or scientific formula? Is it a case of counting up the adjectives and the adverbs? Different things work for different people.

Let's imagine you have a painting by Van Gogh and a painting by Rembrandt - how do you decide which is the 'best'? The one that's the most lifelike? The one that uses the nicest colours? The one that's the most pioneering in its technique? And then that leads us on to the next problem - how do we define and measure all these things? If someone were to ask you which was the better composer out of Beethoven and Mozart, how would you answer? I'll hedge by bets that you'd just choose the one that you personally liked the most. So we're back to subjectivity.

Obviously there are some circumstances when it becomes easy - like when you come across a story that is riddled with spelling mistakes and has an extremely lame and unbelievable plot. But if you have two stories that are similar in the quality of their craftsmanship, how do you place one above the other?

Incidentally, there are plenty of people out there who loath Mozart, Beethoven, Van Gogh and Rembrandt - does this condemn them to the category of substandard artists and composers, or is it just the result of subjectivity?

This might be a scary thought, but like it or not we do live in a chaotic world where absolutely anything could happen. Writing, along with our perception of it is a reflection of that.

Totally sensible. I like you.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

If I don't think it's worth at least a four I probably won't even finish reading it. If I don't finish it I don't feel that I should vote on it at all. I'm not giving fours to stories that deserve less, I'm just not casting a vote in that case.

Yes, of course. I was merely asking if you also gave 4s, or only voted in stories you think deserve 5s.

The reason for me to ask this, is:

If you decide to read a story, you go to the top-lists, and a story catches your eye, a story with a 4.50 rating with 20 votes. You start reading it, but it's so bad that you can't make yourself finish the story. So, you DON'T vote, backclick, and choose another story, one that also has a 4.50 rating, also with 20 votes. You like it, and give it a 4.

The next time you return to that top list, the first story will be there, with 4.50 from 20 votes, and the better story, the one you liked, will have dropped off the list. Because you liked it.

Don't you think that if a story doesn't grab, if you can't even bring yourself to finish reading it, that story should be worth a 3 - which means AVERAGE - or worse?

If you're going to vote only on stories you like, be fair. Vote only in stories deserving 5s.

 

[cantdog]

I think it very odd to remove votes. It only sets up the spite-vote dynamic, and justifies people voting each other fives for loyalty.

I detest Dickens. Others give him encomiums. I suppose both are legitimate.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Hence the entire school of aesthetic theory. Some of it makes fascinating reading. Put someone like Ruskin (very mathematical/rational) and Pater (highly emotive/reactive) in a room, and you're likely to generate a matter/anti-matter explosion on the topic of what beauty is. I don't think disagreement about what is beautiful is a sign that someone must be wrong; I think it's a sign that the apprehension of beauty is, at heart, a not entirely rational characteristic that you clever little apes have managed to evolve, and that its quirkiness is inherent.

(We equines, of course, are eminently sensible and should be differed to in all such matter.)

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Some people's esthetics are themselves ugly. Like Kant's.

The Good, the True, the Beautiful. Big bad Socrates said "you know what these are." But his pupils seemed to feel there was one answer, and that it could be derived from first principles.

Screw that. For me, I go by analogy with the humble and yet subtle world of the sense of smell.

It took me better than ten years to develop a palate, the ability to really discern what was being done in a dish to produce its effect. Knowing shallot from scallion is difficult in a cooked dish, but it still desn't mean you can tell which is superior in the context, not in any absolute sense.

I always have an opinion on the shallot/scallion question, in any given place. And I can argue for it. But in the end a different sensibility will come to a different conclusion.

So, I believe, with all esthetics.

Most especially with regard to the first bit: take ten or twelve years, look at sculpture. Talk to people with a "palate" for it, learn about balance, masses, action implied. Take ten or twelve years, listen to orchestral works. Choices of instrument, placement of emphasis, changes in tempo, permutations of themes. Read good critics, listen to the knowledgeable. Go rabbit hunting with an oboeist or something.

Put in the time, learn what's at stake in the art you wish to know. Inform your opinion, widen your experience, develop a sensibility to the subtleties of the craft.

cantdog

 

[BlackShanglan]

Excellent summation of the root of the matter.

Read much Pater?

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Don't even know the name. You're reading me, off the cuff, I'm afraid. No authority, no guarantees. But thanks for the vote of confidence, o horse.

 

[BlackShanglan]

*smile* I would not dream of asking you to cite an authority. You're far too cogent and interesting on your own. I mention him only because I think you might find him interesting. His comments on the need to study, disengage, and analyze the active principle that makes a work beautiful sounds akin to your analogy. He says, essentially, that what comes to us as beautiful is a matter of reaction and potentially quite personal, but that with that goes a need to carefully examine why it strikes us as beautiful - what the elements of its composition are, where the work is more or less perfect, how it achieves its own special and particular beauty. I.e. - whether the shallots or the scallions are the master stroke.

Shanglan

 

[carsonshepherd]

a need to carefully examine why it strikes us as beautiful - what the elements of its composition are, where the work is more or less perfect, how it achieves its own special and particular beauty. I.e. - whether the shallots or the scallions are the master stroke.

Shanglan

Being uneducated as I am, I think the knowledge of these things come to us partly as instinct. And the need to express and perfect them is why we become writers, no?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Being uneducated as I am, I think the knowledge of these things come to us partly as instinct. And the need to express and perfect them is why we become writers, no?

Yes. Most excellent doggy.

 

[The_Darkness]

I love it when things become all ethical and stuff.

Carson's words are ringing the most true, and there isn't one set of things that is always innately wrong. Morality can (but usually won't) depend on cirumstance. Sometimes, you have to follow Bentham's examples of "Lifeboat Ethics" and keep on keepin' on, making sure that your own boat won't sink by trying to help others. At the same time, we have multitudes of thinkers that say that's absolutely deplorable and that we should help all in need, even at the cost of self.

That being said, does it really matter if votes are striken? I would think not, and as a matter of fact in the spirit of fairness, I think that it would be better to take out the bad votes....if a story recieves 4's and 5's and some prick comes along (to many stories, presumably) and just gives blanket 1's...then by all means take them out. That person is using the value of the vote system to use it as a personal platform to be an asshole, whether they had cause or not.

Then again, with beauty being in the eye of the beholder (the eye being subjective, not the beauty of the observed) who can say? I think that Piccaso's art work is crap, as with most cubist work. "Modern" art...a slap-dash of color and formless expression, while primal, is garbage....to my eye. There are others who appreciate it.

That's why the vote system is there. Personally, that's why I like the ability to leave comments. I tell the truth and people see that when they read mine. Some people are bastards and write "Badly edited, shitty characters, killed the mood." to even the highest rated stories.

In this case, all is relative against the subjective views of character development, consideration, and writing skills on the backdrop of objective rules of editing, flow, and expression.