OC's SRWQ #5: Objectivising oneself

[Op_Cit]

Besides putting a story on the shelf for a while, do you have a trick/technique you use to step back and look at your writing objectively?

I recently got detailed solicited feedback on a story in the form of it being rewritten without being marked. This put me in an immediately critical frame of mind and when I brought up the original, I saw dozens of issues I'd never seen (and some not identified by the feedbacker--don't you like to invent words?).

Anyway, I hit myself in the head, and wondered "how can I get myself to this critical, objective perspective on my own and more quickly?"

 

[Sherry Hawk]

I think that you've already found the best way - have another set of eyes look at it.

It's very, very tough to see the things that others see instantly in our work. Something may be missing that we never catch because our minds supply it without realizing it, etc.

Nothing beats another's input, in my opinon.

 

[TheEarl]

The best way I've found is to leave it alone for 3-6 months. Then you get to step back from it and see it from a new perspective.

If you can't be arsed to wait 3 months, then try completely changing the font and size of the text. It tricks your brain into actually reading it, rather than reading what you think should be there.

Another favourite method of mine is to read it aloud. You have no idea just how many things will hit the tongue wrong until you speak them out loud. And if they hit the tongue wrong, then they'll hit the brain wrong.

Hope that helps.

The Earl

 

[Op_Cit]

Damn, hoping for some tricks.

Has anyone tried putting down the story and picking up an author/book they hate and reading for a while, then going back?

Or reading an author/work you love and then going back and looking at your own?

I haven't, and I'm considering this. But I'm grasping at straws: I'm impatient and I want to be able to look more critically at my work sooner.

 

[yui]

Damn, hoping for some tricks.

Has anyone tried putting down the story and picking up an author/book they hate and reading for a while, then going back?

Or reading an author/work you love and then going back and looking at your own?

I haven't, and I'm considering this. But I'm grasping at straws: I'm impatient and I want to be able to look more critically at my work sooner.

I do like The Earl says, I put something up for a couple of days, weeks, months, and then I read it aloud. I can usually find continuity issues and I can tell if the piece "flows" or not.

I don't typically read authors I hate for any reason. I do read authors I like and sometimes I compare my stuff to it, but it's usually just depressing because I don't write like they do.

Luck,

Yui

 

[Guest]

Damn, hoping for some tricks.

Has anyone tried putting down the story and picking up an author/book they hate and reading for a while, then going back?

Or reading an author/work you love and then going back and looking at your own?

I haven't, and I'm considering this. But I'm grasping at straws: I'm impatient and I want to be able to look more critically at my work sooner.

I usually put it to one side for a while (the time depends upon the length of the piece), then go on to write something quite different.

Once I've written that, I go back to the other piece, usually with fresh, more objective, critical eyes.

Great threads, btw, Op Cit! I'll have more time to look at them all more closely in the morning.

Lou

 

[nushu2]

Just an idea, not sure if it works. Try imagining the story through a secondary character's perspective.

 

[Liar]

Damn, hoping for some tricks.

Try to occupy your mind completely with something entirely different for a few hours. Go see a movie. Climb a wall. Play chess. Play Xbox. Have mindblowing sex. Howl at the moon. Smoke pot.

Then go back to read your story.

Usually works well for me.

#L

 

[TheEarl]

Go see a movie. Climb a wall. Play chess. Play Xbox. Have mindblowing sex. Howl at the moon. Smoke pot.

He does all of this in just a few hours. There's either some impressive multi-tasking going on, or he's just very very speedy.

The Earl

 

[Liar]

He does all of this in just a few hours. There's either some impressive multi-tasking going on, or he's just very very speedy.

The Earl

I climb a wall to get to the cinema. I play chess on the Xbox. The last three are pure multitasking.

 

[oggbashan]

I print a draft off as a hard copy. I leave it for a few days.

Then I take the printout away from the computer and often away from the house.

I read it with a pencil in my hand and mark errors and passages that could be better.

Repeat as necessary.

Og

PS. It still turns out to be crap.

 

[gauchecritic]

Fly editing.

I simply can't look at my own work objectively. I can leave a story for months but when I come back it is usually tripe.

When I look at my posted work on Lit. I can marvel at a smart turn of phrase, I can see everywhere I changed tense, I can be drawn in by characterisation and I can see that that particular word shouldn't be there. But I can't change any of it. It was finished when I posted it. It was written in exactly the way that I just read it. If I change anything I have to change everything.

Being 'in the groove', for me, is everything. Starting a story means that I have to finish the story otherwise it's not me that's writing it. It's several me's, which makes it a collaboration.

All in all, I have no advice.

 

[brightlyiburn]

Or reading an author/work you love and then going back and looking at your own?

I strongly recommend not doing this. There's nothing that will make you feel so inadequete as that.

An excercise I did a few months ago made me realize something. When it comes to writing, what holds me back the most is fear. Fear that my work won't be well recieved, that I won't match up to other writers.
I've been working to find that child-like fearlessness I used to have, because I know if I can find it again, my writing will be much better than it is now.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

If I can find one, I try and have someone else look over the story without giving them any hints as to what I'm having problems with to see if they see the same thing. I also have sometimes just deleted large selections of a work and started writing again from scratch. If some of the stuff reappears in the next draft, then so be it. If not, then I might have been trying to take the story somewhere it wasn't meant to go, and have managed to circumvent the block.