persephone_kore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
persephone_kore) wrote2004-01-06 08:28 pm
persephone_kore) wrote2004-01-06 08:28 pm
I get it!
At least, I think I do. Better than before, anyway. I have had an epiphany, which fact I announced to a chatroom some time before remembering that today is January 6 and therefore IS Epiphany. But I digress. (I'm sure you're all used to that by now.)
(Comparatively) short version: People can write fanfic to tell stories, have a good time, and share the fun. They can write fanfic with an eye to improving their writing. The relative importance placed on these influences what they consider worthwhile or acceptable feedback. This may sound obvious, but when I was trying to articulate it earlier, it suddenly made sense to me how someone whose ideal state of fandom/fanfic is a kind of enormous informal writing workshop -- in other words, I should think, who sees self-improvement as by far the more important aspect -- could consider actually writing the stories to be a selfish activity and a relatively insignificant contribution, which had previously seemed an alien viewpoint to me.
I was reading a discussion elsewhere (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanficrants) and encountered, not for the first time, the sentiment that feedback really was best not bothered with if it didn't include specifics of what was liked, disliked, good, bad, and so on -- with the addition that in many communities authors just wanted "little 'it was good' reviews" and there was no incentive to write good ones.
Well. I think I was planning to discuss attitudes toward feedback/reviews extensively here at some point and never got around to it. Consider this to stand in, maybe? ;)
First of all, for clarification, if we call in the distinction between feedback for the author and reviews for the readers here, I'm talking feedback, and I'm including as public feedback both responses on a mailing list (though come to think of it, sometimes that's more likely to be a review by the official definitions, often being more along the lines of "This is great, go read it!" than "I enjoyed this, thanks!") and responses on "review boards" at assorted archives (which in my experience are almost always mainly for the author).
Now then. I have explained before that I am not among those who consider short, unelaborated feedback worthless, even though I'll admit to finding unelaborated negative feedback frustrating. I do tend to want to ask what was wrong, even if it's somewhat irrational given my motivation for sending feedback to expect people to put more than minimal effort into a story they didn't care for. (Then again, by that argument why mention the dislike at all? But sometimes someone wants to.) That isn't exactly my point, but it's related.
With an idea of explaining why some people might not consider short feedback worthless, even better left unread, I started to compose a response explaining two different attitudes toward fanfic and feedback that I had observed. The first is what I perceived when I first got into fandom, or early on at any rate. I confess, when I first started reading fanfic, I didn't really "get" the idea of feedback; I found the idea of emailing authors rather intimidating, in fact. Still, once I started talking to people (mostly X-Men-and-satellite-comics ficcers, the Subreality people for those to whom that means anything), what I got used to was the idea that you write fanfic because you have a story you want to tell (whether because you enjoy the source material or are frustrated with it, but either way it got your attention). Naturally, you want to do a good job and improve -- you want to do your ideas justice, and you want people to enjoy your story. Also, if you write really sloppily, you look like a moron, which is not something you want to do.
Equally naturally, you would like to know that people are enjoying your story and paying attention to it; therefore feedback is rejoiced over, and detailed feedback is greeted with extra glee. Negative reactions are harder to swallow but still useful; I recall that at least at one point a mailing list's rules included the stipulation that purely or mainly negative feedback should be sent privately ("If you can't say anything nice, there's no need to shout it to the world..."), and I think part of the argument for this was that public feedback was not the place for the type of comments most people wanted before posting, from a beta-reader. If you had one.
The sentiment that there wasn't any point sending feedback unless you said what was wrong existed, but at that time and "place," it seemed to be the minority and was, I think, viewed as a personal quirk.
Since drifting into HP fandom, I've become more and more aware of groups where the attitude is closer to the idea that the really important thing is improving your writing, and while it would probably be an exaggeration in most cases to suggest that the stories are almost regarded as a sort of side effect of practicing, it does seem as if having a good time might be more secondary.
It was when I started to insert "or at least, anybody else having a good time," on the theory that surely if the author weren't enjoying it at all she wouldn't be doing it, that I suddenly felt I understood how someone could claim that writing stories was intrinsically selfish and didn't really count as a contribution to the community, whereas feedback did. (This would, I suppose, be a direct reversal of the attitude I'm sure I saw a complaint about once where readers were undervalued compared to writers. Anyway.)
I had, I confess, found this attitude bewildering before. I still don't really agree, mostly because I read fanfic for the enjoyment I get out of the stories and therefore consider the stories to be a contribution and feedback (when I get around to it) to be a way to encourage people who write stories I like, so I DO consider the stories to be a contribution. Coming at it with the idea that the whole point of writing and posting is to get commentary, preferably extensive commentary, that can help you improve, I can see viewing this as selfish a bit more easily. To whatever extent the importance of self-improvement outweighs that of sharing the fun, it makes sense to consider concrit more of a contribution than fic.
Now, I can see where it might legitimately be called arrogant to assume that other people will enjoy your story, but not selfish. You can probably call desiring comments at all selfish, but it's not as much so if you're also assuming that people will comment because they got something out of it at least as much as because they want you to get something out of their comments. Putting effort into giving detailed feedback, possibly including concrit, might be considered unselfish; on the other hand, as mentioned above, I confess that when I give feedback it's partly for selfish reasons. If somebody wrote a story I like, not only might I want to talk about it, I probably want to encourage them in hopes that they will continue writing stuff I like!
I do not think that considering stories a contribution to fandom necessarily means expecting other people to fall at your feet, either, although that seems to be what it brings to mind for some people. I do admit that on reflection, it sounds remarkably silly, especially if you're talking about your own story instead of the general theory.
It also occurs to me that it would be very possible for adherents of the second attitude I described to lump the first mistakenly together with the notion that writing well or coherently or even intelligibly doesn't matter at all and/or is unreasonably restrictive, probably on the grounds of the protesting cry, "But this is supposed to be for FUN!"
This is understandable, I think, but the whole thing probably leads to a fair amount of mutual resentment. The writing-over-story people would, I imagine, feel that the writing-serves-story people don't care about things being good and probably that they don't contribute enough in the way of constructive critique and encourage other people to give lousy feedback. The writing-serves-story people might feel maligned and resent the idea that they're intellectually deficient if they don't find and mention something wrong with every story, as well as suspect that people are being intimidated by the writing-over-story people and discouraged from sending feedback at all in case it isn't up to scratch.
I am undeniably biased about the whole thing, but I am trying to look at this fairly. I acknowledge that there's a full continuum of views on it -- after all, no matter how much importance you place on improving your own writing, the point has to be to be writing better stories, and presumably these are for other people to read. I do hope I am not misrepresenting too badly the views of people whose priority is improving their writing, or at any rate who make that a higher priority relative to other aspects than I do. The whole inspiration for this post was, after all, that one attitude associated with a portion of "the other side" suddenly made a great deal more sense to me.
(Comparatively) short version: People can write fanfic to tell stories, have a good time, and share the fun. They can write fanfic with an eye to improving their writing. The relative importance placed on these influences what they consider worthwhile or acceptable feedback. This may sound obvious, but when I was trying to articulate it earlier, it suddenly made sense to me how someone whose ideal state of fandom/fanfic is a kind of enormous informal writing workshop -- in other words, I should think, who sees self-improvement as by far the more important aspect -- could consider actually writing the stories to be a selfish activity and a relatively insignificant contribution, which had previously seemed an alien viewpoint to me.
I was reading a discussion elsewhere (
fanficrants) and encountered, not for the first time, the sentiment that feedback really was best not bothered with if it didn't include specifics of what was liked, disliked, good, bad, and so on -- with the addition that in many communities authors just wanted "little 'it was good' reviews" and there was no incentive to write good ones. Well. I think I was planning to discuss attitudes toward feedback/reviews extensively here at some point and never got around to it. Consider this to stand in, maybe? ;)
First of all, for clarification, if we call in the distinction between feedback for the author and reviews for the readers here, I'm talking feedback, and I'm including as public feedback both responses on a mailing list (though come to think of it, sometimes that's more likely to be a review by the official definitions, often being more along the lines of "This is great, go read it!" than "I enjoyed this, thanks!") and responses on "review boards" at assorted archives (which in my experience are almost always mainly for the author).
Now then. I have explained before that I am not among those who consider short, unelaborated feedback worthless, even though I'll admit to finding unelaborated negative feedback frustrating. I do tend to want to ask what was wrong, even if it's somewhat irrational given my motivation for sending feedback to expect people to put more than minimal effort into a story they didn't care for. (Then again, by that argument why mention the dislike at all? But sometimes someone wants to.) That isn't exactly my point, but it's related.
With an idea of explaining why some people might not consider short feedback worthless, even better left unread, I started to compose a response explaining two different attitudes toward fanfic and feedback that I had observed. The first is what I perceived when I first got into fandom, or early on at any rate. I confess, when I first started reading fanfic, I didn't really "get" the idea of feedback; I found the idea of emailing authors rather intimidating, in fact. Still, once I started talking to people (mostly X-Men-and-satellite-comics ficcers, the Subreality people for those to whom that means anything), what I got used to was the idea that you write fanfic because you have a story you want to tell (whether because you enjoy the source material or are frustrated with it, but either way it got your attention). Naturally, you want to do a good job and improve -- you want to do your ideas justice, and you want people to enjoy your story. Also, if you write really sloppily, you look like a moron, which is not something you want to do.
Equally naturally, you would like to know that people are enjoying your story and paying attention to it; therefore feedback is rejoiced over, and detailed feedback is greeted with extra glee. Negative reactions are harder to swallow but still useful; I recall that at least at one point a mailing list's rules included the stipulation that purely or mainly negative feedback should be sent privately ("If you can't say anything nice, there's no need to shout it to the world..."), and I think part of the argument for this was that public feedback was not the place for the type of comments most people wanted before posting, from a beta-reader. If you had one.
The sentiment that there wasn't any point sending feedback unless you said what was wrong existed, but at that time and "place," it seemed to be the minority and was, I think, viewed as a personal quirk.
Since drifting into HP fandom, I've become more and more aware of groups where the attitude is closer to the idea that the really important thing is improving your writing, and while it would probably be an exaggeration in most cases to suggest that the stories are almost regarded as a sort of side effect of practicing, it does seem as if having a good time might be more secondary.
It was when I started to insert "or at least, anybody else having a good time," on the theory that surely if the author weren't enjoying it at all she wouldn't be doing it, that I suddenly felt I understood how someone could claim that writing stories was intrinsically selfish and didn't really count as a contribution to the community, whereas feedback did. (This would, I suppose, be a direct reversal of the attitude I'm sure I saw a complaint about once where readers were undervalued compared to writers. Anyway.)
I had, I confess, found this attitude bewildering before. I still don't really agree, mostly because I read fanfic for the enjoyment I get out of the stories and therefore consider the stories to be a contribution and feedback (when I get around to it) to be a way to encourage people who write stories I like, so I DO consider the stories to be a contribution. Coming at it with the idea that the whole point of writing and posting is to get commentary, preferably extensive commentary, that can help you improve, I can see viewing this as selfish a bit more easily. To whatever extent the importance of self-improvement outweighs that of sharing the fun, it makes sense to consider concrit more of a contribution than fic.
Now, I can see where it might legitimately be called arrogant to assume that other people will enjoy your story, but not selfish. You can probably call desiring comments at all selfish, but it's not as much so if you're also assuming that people will comment because they got something out of it at least as much as because they want you to get something out of their comments. Putting effort into giving detailed feedback, possibly including concrit, might be considered unselfish; on the other hand, as mentioned above, I confess that when I give feedback it's partly for selfish reasons. If somebody wrote a story I like, not only might I want to talk about it, I probably want to encourage them in hopes that they will continue writing stuff I like!
I do not think that considering stories a contribution to fandom necessarily means expecting other people to fall at your feet, either, although that seems to be what it brings to mind for some people. I do admit that on reflection, it sounds remarkably silly, especially if you're talking about your own story instead of the general theory.
It also occurs to me that it would be very possible for adherents of the second attitude I described to lump the first mistakenly together with the notion that writing well or coherently or even intelligibly doesn't matter at all and/or is unreasonably restrictive, probably on the grounds of the protesting cry, "But this is supposed to be for FUN!"
This is understandable, I think, but the whole thing probably leads to a fair amount of mutual resentment. The writing-over-story people would, I imagine, feel that the writing-serves-story people don't care about things being good and probably that they don't contribute enough in the way of constructive critique and encourage other people to give lousy feedback. The writing-serves-story people might feel maligned and resent the idea that they're intellectually deficient if they don't find and mention something wrong with every story, as well as suspect that people are being intimidated by the writing-over-story people and discouraged from sending feedback at all in case it isn't up to scratch.
I am undeniably biased about the whole thing, but I am trying to look at this fairly. I acknowledge that there's a full continuum of views on it -- after all, no matter how much importance you place on improving your own writing, the point has to be to be writing better stories, and presumably these are for other people to read. I do hope I am not misrepresenting too badly the views of people whose priority is improving their writing, or at any rate who make that a higher priority relative to other aspects than I do. The whole inspiration for this post was, after all, that one attitude associated with a portion of "the other side" suddenly made a great deal more sense to me.