What doesn't kill us makes us stronger

[Actingup]

From what I have read of this particular person's reviews, any useful criticism they have is buried under caustic diatribe and wildly reaching assumptions about the author in general. I do not begrudge writers who do not subject themselves to having to parse all that.

To use food analogies for feedback (not meant to be an exhaustive list of all instances of commentary but just ones pertinent to this discussion):

"Omg this story is awesome, five stars!" - Candy. Sure, there's some nutritional value there and it tastes/feels really good but doesn't offer much in the way of sustenance/improvement. Most authors will still take this over the alternatives and that is totally fine. Expecting this all the time is clearly not good either; balance is best.
"Your work is good, here's how it could be better." - A healthly, well-balanced meal. It might have some things like brussel sprouts or some other thing you find hard to swallow, but all around it provides positive reinforcement while also offering suggestions for improvement. The best outcome for feedback for any author, sadly not found all that often but is cherished when it is.
"This is 95% terrible, here's what little you got right but on the whole you are an awful writer and you should feel bad." - This is the equivalent of being served a pile of excrement with chunks of filet mignon distributed throughout. Any nutritional/substantive value is obviated by the fact the author has to dig through harsh put-downs and largely inaccurate suppositions about their character, so I cannot blame anyone who values their mental health to not want to sit through that.

I'm not saying everyone who has valid criticism of your work has to be your best friend or be completely saccharine and blow smoke up your ass. It costs nothing to be civil; being harsh and abusive is a choice and if an author decides not to engage with that, it's a perfectly reasonable response and they are under no obligation to try and pick out useful bits out of the morass of invective.

Spot on.

 

[Erozetta]

Sure but when we get a detailed review several hundred words from someone who clearly had a clue about the elements of prose and plot and such, do we dismiss the entire thing outright over that aspect?

With such little feedback around here and the vast majority of that is 'loved it, 5 stars!" Stacnash is easily in the top 1 or 2 percentiles of reviewers here. I'm not arguing that she's not rude or arrogant or snooty or even a nice person at all. I'm just saying that we do ourselves a disservice when we dismiss and cry 'not fair' to such a blunt scathing swaggering review. No review ever makes any story any worse or any better. No reader's opinion ever changes a comma in the original work. When we get upset over this, we just don't like a fly in our ointment, but the feedback is NOT our ointment, no matter how much our ego wants us to believe that it is.

In a 400 word review, if we read it objectively, it is impossible not to find multiple pieces of good info that can help us in some way moving forward. Do we want that or not?

As long as it sticks to reviewing the story, I literally don't care. But it's extremely disingenuous to review the author based on a single story. The problem is that she doesn't stick to the prose critiques of the story when she doesn't like a story, she attacks/insults the author. Stick to only the story being reviewed, or review multiple stories if you want to review an author's abilities.

And I agree that Stacnash is a superb reviewer when it comes to critiquing prose and technique regarding the story itself. When she makes needlessly vitriolic comments about the writer based on a single story is where I have an issue with her methods.

That's where we differ here. I would highly encourage her to continue reviewing stories and to stop reviewing authors outside of a simple "this story made me want to/not want to read more from this author." Which would be a perfectly fair assessment and is useful because many others probably feel the same way for the same reasons within the story. Critique the story, bash it all to hell with the mistakes, but don't be cruel to hobby authors who are at least *trying* to put their work out there.

There's no upside to telling someone they should never write again when you could simply point out the flaws and make suggestions on how to improve those flaws.

I stand by the idea that anyone can learn to write fiction. It's a skill that can be honed with practice and telling someone just starting to learn they should never practice because they weren't immediately good at it is, frankly, stupid.

I think the review she left on mine was well over 1100 words. I've said repeatedly that I agreed with her criticisms of my story, but didn't agree with her praise of it. This entire argument doesn't affect me in any way, I got put on her five star list.

More simply put: she praised someone who can see bullshit for what it is and now, from my viewpoint, all of her critiques and praise come with an asterisk next to them because I now question her integrity as a reviewer for liking any part of my writing in the story she chose to read. (Outside of her Elite list, which I still agree those authors deserve to be there.)

Although, being fair to her, I am good at showing character emotions in subtle ways, just not in that story. Which makes me think there's a possibility she's read more than one of my stories, which would change my opinion on her review methods. But she framed the praise as only being pertinent to this particular story, and I don't think that praise is fitting for this particular story. If she were basing her author assessment off of multiple stories, I'd have no issue with anything she's done. If she were only critiquing the story exactly as she has, but left the author judgments out of it, I wouldn't have an issue with her reviews. It's the combination of "single story author judgments disguised as reviews" that I take issue with.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The point of my filet mignon metaphor is that any useful advice that is offered in such a situation is tainted by the insults around it. Just because it might be useful/valid is still not a good enough reason to have sit through paragraphs and paragraphs of character assassination.

If it's bullshit, it won't hurt you. It only hurts you if you believe that it might somehow be true.

We feel bad when something within us isn't true, when something within us doesn't align. We are all divine. When we believe that we are not, that untruth creates a dissonance, often not very perceptible, but when we believe very strongly, then that untruth starts to hurt, and THAT is what you are feeling if you are butthurt by an insult. I can go on to how this relates to low self-esteem and depression but I'd rather not derail things.

PSG is a stupid selfish bitch. At my core, that statement is not true. I may have human moments (as anyone might) where that has been temporarily true, absolutely and I can accept that, let it go and stop being a stupid selfish bitch. However, the rest of the time, it is simply not true. So if someone says that to me and I feel bad, it is my soul telling me that I am believing the lie that I am a stupid selfish bitch. this is an opportunity to let go of a belief that does not serve you or your happiness/well being. If I know that I am not a stupid selfish bitch, I cannot possibly feel bad about it, because I'm not believing the lie.

I admit that you may have to read that a few times to sort that out, but it is 100% true, and this is the kind of stuff that quantum physics will eventually prove however many decades from now.

I value my mental health and worth as a person enough not to have to consume hateful garbage just to get at the few scraps of actual critique.

Hateful garbage does not bother me because it's just garbage. Our mental health is unassailable if we are in control of our self-esteem. Easier said than done. We're all human and this life does not come with a manual, but rest assured, that all you need to do to take control of your self-esteem is to realize that you are the only one who can affect it. If someone else 'drags us down' it is only because we let them by falling for their lie. ; )

We are all equal and all equally essential in the universe and in the eyes of creation. If you believe that you are greater or more important than anyone else, you lie to yourself, but also just as much if you believe that you are lesser than anyone or less important somehow, you lie to yourself. ; )

So if you get a spiteful hate-spew review. Don't take it personal. Just sift through and pick up anything that you find useful. You will be surprised what you find, and the more that you try this, the easier and easier it gets until you really don't care about the hate-shit at all. It doesn't bother you at all.

So, when someone reviews you and says you're a sick asshole with no skill and you feel bad, that is your soul telling you that actually think that you are (or might be) either a sick asshole or have poor writing skill and that it's not true. So if we let that go, we will probably realize that we do have some skill but we can always improve, so we read on and find that our dialogue is awkward and cold, maybe not a ton but a bit, and going forward we can try to be more natural with our dialogue, and that our pacing is slow, so maybe we can cut back on some our indulgent descriptions and replace it with some effective exposition. And so forth ... And we get better, helped by a spiteful bile spew review. And who is the winner here? Bully tried to shame us and make us quit but instead we came back stronger.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

There's no upside to telling someone they should never write again when you could simply point out the flaws and make suggestions on how to improve those flaws.

There is no upside for the hater. But for the writer it's neutral - or at least as neutral as the writer wants it to be. We don't WANT to be spat it, do we? Then stop choosing to be spat at.

However, there is no upside for the writer to dismiss valuable criticism just because it's framed in shit.