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.
no subject
I enjoy seeing general "I loved this" type feedback, because "Yay, someone read my story!" But the feedback also frustrates me no end, especially for the longer pieces. For drabbles, I can see why the feedback might be somewhat limited, but for a 1000-3000 word piece to get only "Gee, that's great!" is a little disheartening for the effort I put in. Maybe that's where my selfishness might play in. I took all this time and effort to write and rewrite a story. It takes a lot less time to toss off a comment.
I don't get the whole obligation or contribution to fandom thing. Maybe I feel too much of a disconnect to the larger fandom as a whole to understand it all.
no subject
I tend to resist the idea of being obligated to a hobby, honestly. And I think I view "contributing" as "helping other people have fun with it," primarily.
I enjoy seeing general "I loved this" type feedback, because "Yay, someone read my story!" But the feedback also frustrates me no end, especially for the longer pieces. For drabbles, I can see why the feedback might be somewhat limited, but for a 1000-3000 word piece to get only "Gee, that's great!" is a little disheartening for the effort I put in.
I think nearly everybody prefers longer comments. And I do make an effort to say something of substance, at least most of the time -- but that's when I review at all, and sometimes it occurs to me that I'd rather have a quick comment than nothing at all, and perhaps I'm depriving people by procrastinating doing a more extensive one when I could at least toss off a note. (It isn't as if I couldn't go back, either, at least on FA. Ff.net's another story.) Alternatively, I suspect what I do write will be considered inadequate if I happen to have stumbled across somebody who doesn't think it counts if it's not extensive enough or is all positive or something. I'm very silly sometimes. More often lazy, I'm afraid.
no subject
As to people leaving one-liner reviews, I don't object to it, exactly, but of course it's not as great. Still, on sites that don't let an author keep a hit count on her stories (fewer and fewer seem to be doing this), it's a way to see how many people are reading.
I don't, however, think that a comment board is a place for beta-ing a story. A beta is a more private process, where the authors worst gaffes should be fixed before the story is exposed to the public. A gentle, "Did you notice that..." is one thing, but going line by line and making corrections is a bit much to actually attach to a story in its finished and public form.
no subject
I think everybody prefers extensive comments to one-liners, too, unless the extensive comments are cruel, off the point, or something like that. Still, it bothers me when people take the one-liners as insults. I like them better than silence. (Not that I'm great about leaving them.)
I don't, however, think that a comment board is a place for beta-ing a story. A beta is a more private process, where the authors worst gaffes should be fixed before the story is exposed to the public. A gentle, "Did you notice that..." is one thing, but going line by line and making corrections is a bit much to actually attach to a story in its finished and public form.
A comment board (or perhaps even a mailing list where the story is supposed to be in final form) would be a really lousy place to try to put in line-by-line corrections. I think the restriction on the mailing list was also -- maybe more -- aimed at structural-beta issues such as telling someone their entire story concept didn't work or should have been done differently. (This seems more acceptable on an archive's review boards. I don't know why, though. Perhaps I'm desensitized, perhaps it's because they're a bit set off... You know, I suspect it makes no sense, actually.) Pointing out a spelling error would at least make it likely to be fixed before archival; it was a bit less likely someone would restructure something they meant to be finished. (At least unless they decided for themselves it needed the changes.)
no subject
Personally, I really want to learn to write better, but I mainly write for the enjoyment of myself/the community, in order to get an idea out of my head, sometimes to show a character/his actions from a new point of view - and, I admit it, for positive feedback.
Now, in defense of myself I must say that I've been suffering from severe bouts of depression for the past two or three years now and that when you're thinking that you're utterly useless and the world would be better off if you'd never been born, a review along the lines of "This is great! I really liked it! Write more please!" does wonders. Although a more detailed comment is always more pleasant, even an "OMG this is cool!!11" will give me a boost - and I imagine I'm not the only one.
I'm not so enamored by negative feedback/major con-crit mostly because it has exactly the opposite effect on me as positive feedback. I also have a far too thin skin and tend to react badly to negative feedback, although I really try not to. Also, my writing has improved by leaps and bounds since I started writing fanfiction, and I've barely had any constructive crit worthy of the name (apart from the occasion "I think you meant 'marble' when you said 'marmor'" *g*). So I don't see con-crit as essential to improving ones writing. However, I guess I'm very much in the minority here!
no subject
I don't know if you're actually in the minority; concrit has gotten a lot of press lately, so to speak, and it is useful to be told what does and doesn't work, but practice and experience are great in themselves -- and all the concrit in the world won't improve your writing if you don't proceed to, you know, write more. *g*
I write because I enjoy it and post because I want other people to (and hope they'll say so, yes) -- but I admit that part of why I enjoy cowriting is the immediate response and the knowledge that at least one other person is also engaged by the story!
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a positive response, even though the way it gets discussed in some areas it would be possible to get that feeling. I don't think it even means the whole process is completely selfish; of course it is to some degree, since participating in a hobby you don't ever enjoy seems kind of silly, but if you're hoping for a positive response then you ARE also hoping that other people are enjoying it too. ;)
I do subscribe to the idea of writing stuff you want to read. That way you're guaranteed that somebody enjoys it, and it still seems more worthwhile even if nobody else comments. (People are, after all, lazy.)
So...
But that's a neat essay: it's got a good balance and I think you did a great job of representing both sides of the issue while also taking a stance and forming a clear opinion.. :) I agree: any feedback is nice and encouraging, and the stuff that is detailed is the best- but seriously, any is a rush. ;)
On a related note, having to do with concrit, I also have to make a mutterance. I _did_, at one point, definitely have your e-mail address. But recently I knew I was going to be doing a HUGE clearout, and so went through and deleted all of my non-essential e-mails. >.< Your addy was lost in the process, unfortunately. If you could e-mail me at tuibirdNOSPAM@wotmania.com (only you take out the NOSPAM bit. ;)).... t'would be great.
*apologises for the inconvenience*
Re: So...
Right, will email you. No problem; I've lost addresses that way (or similarly) myself.