General Comments on stories

[elsol]

I always thought that if I were 'that good', someone would be paying me to do this, which on any level is better than giving it away. (In the very least, because getting paid to write means you have time to write.)

Being standoffish in ANY way about 'feedback' can put you in a situation that someone who really knows what they're doing and can help you, doesn't approach you.

All feedback is information and the more information you have the better off you are... I mean three 'unsolicited' emails about my writing advanced me leaps and bounds above any friend, volunteer editor, or any reading I did on my own.

I take someone taking the effort to try to help me 'perfect' the story as the compliment it is because

a) They read it (most likely all).
b) It was worth their time to put in the brain cells to put together a list of corrections and send it to me.

'Great story... you're a great writer'... is good but realistically it doesn't REALLY say much for all you know that person gives a five and sends that email to every story they get to the end off.

Someone that takes the time... those need to be cultivated.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[LadyCibelle]

I always thought that if I were 'that good', someone would be paying me to do this, which on any level is better than giving it away. (In the very least, because getting paid to write means you have time to write.)

Being standoffish in ANY way about 'feedback' can put you in a situation that someone who really knows what they're doing and can help you, doesn't approach you.

All feedback is information and the more information you have the better off you are... I mean three 'unsolicited' emails about my writing advanced me leaps and bounds above any friend, volunteer editor, or any reading I did on my own.

I take someone taking the effort to try to help me 'perfect' the story as the compliment it is because

a) They read it (most likely all).
b) It was worth their time to put in the brain cells to put together a list of corrections and send it to me.

'Great story... you're a great writer'... is good but realistically it doesn't REALLY say much for all you know that person gives a five and sends that email to every story they get to the end off.

Someone that takes the time... those need to be cultivated.

Sincerely,
ElSol

I totally agree with you and IMHO it should be a prerequisite for every person who wants to write that they learn to accept "unsolicited" feedback. I'm not talking about agreeing with everything that every single individual send you as comment but more to take the time and see where each and every one comment fits into your story.

Being told that you're good is nice but being told that you could be so much better if you did "this" or "that", and why they'd recommend the change is much more gratifying. A reader who takes the time to go through your story and lets you know in a 2 pages mail why he feels your story works and what doesn't work should be "worshipped" and thanked profusely.

 

[Weird Harold]

And yes when I receive your text files all the apostrophes and quotes have been taken out and replaced by some kind of a square Really weird but in a way easy for me as I see plainly where you had placed apostropes and quotes

That's caused by using "Smart Quotes" in MS Word and then converting to a text file. It's especially problematic if the conversion is done with C&P -- as in C&P to an e-mail or a submission form.

Soft hyphens, "em-dashes" and Ellipses can cause similar problems.

 

[brightlyiburn]

That's caused by using "Smart Quotes" in MS Word and then converting to a text file. It's especially problematic if the conversion is done with C&P -- as in C&P to an e-mail or a submission form.

Soft hyphens, "em-dashes" and Ellipses can cause similar problems.

Except that I don't use Microsoft Word.

 

[Weird Harold]

Except that I don't use Microsoft Word.

WordPerfect and MSWorks have similar problems with "smart quotes" as do several other word processing progrms I dont know by name.

If the quotation marks in whatever program you use look like sixes and nines, you need to figure out how to turn "Smart Quotes" off -- or whatever your word processer calls them.

 

[Weird Harold]

As a new reader - I must admit that I have enjoyed the stories but - and this is a big but - I notice all the typos, misspellings, and the occaisional use of the wrong word, i.e. taunt for taut (form of tight) etc. In spite of my fascination with the subject I am distracted.

I encounterd this in a story at mcstories and it ws like watching a train wreck -- I just had to C&P into MS Word to see just how bad it was.

The image is a screen capture of Word's readability stats for just one paragraph of five in the chapter I took it from.

The point is that Lit could be a lot worse than it is if we had to deal with this level of technical ability.

A secondary question is what do you say to someone who is this bad? Especially since the basic story buried in the mess of technical errors isnt all that bad, it's just VERY badly told.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I can't speak for everyone else, but I've learned that manyauthors don't want to hear anything but how great they are and respond, "it's just a fuckin porn story, fer crissakes. who cares bout spelling and grammar?" to any technical advice -- such as how to spell THEN and THAN and how to tell the difference.

My usual comment in unsolicited feedback is along the lines of, "a very interesting story, unfortunately my enjoyment of it was marred by technical and spelling errors."

As usual, I'm in agreement with Weird Harold. I've crtiqued and edited a lot of stories, both at Lit and in RL. What I never, ain't-no-way-it's-ever-gonna-happen-in-my-lifetime-under-any-circumstance do, is volunteer advice. To me, that would be like stopping a stranger and giving them suggestions on how to dress or telling someone how to raise their kids.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I have trouble with some author's inability to see how the technical quality of their work makes them appear to the reader -- spelling and grmmar erros suficient to send me into "translator mode" leave me with the impression that the author doesn't care if they appear to be semi-literate (at best.)

Personally, I have too much ego and pride in my language skills to want anything I post to present anything less than an image of extreme competence.

I think there's really something to that. Those of us who are into writing and reading are very sensitive to how words appear on a page, and so typos and mechanical errors really jump out of us and grab us by the throat. They're offensive, and can make a story unreadable for us.

But there are a lot of writers here who are not that into it, and those mistakes just don't bother them very much. They really can't understand what all the fuss is about, and they honestly feel that as long as you can understand what the author intended to say, then anything else is just being picky.

--Zoot

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

If the writer is too busy, lazy or indifferent to even run a spell checker, then I find myself too busy. lazy or indifferent to read the story. It's a simple, literary quid pro quo.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[spyro1123]

My suggestion on typos, grammar.

Send the writer feedback saying:

"Hello... I really enjoyed the story and here is why... reason 1 why I liked the story, reason 2 why I liked the story."

One of these should be about how the story turned you on.

Then at the end sneak in a little 'I noticed a couple of tiny grammatical problems and typos, would you like me to send them to you?'

From the reply, you'll know if you're wasting your time. But writers have egos, and they'll want to hear more from you so your efforst will more than likely not be wasted even if it enters the writer blackhole. They'll throw you the grammar bone to keep you reading their stuff.

When i was in art school we always were carefull when giving comments on peoples work to give at least one specific example of something we thought worked in someone's piece and to limit the negative comments to a few very clear things they could work on. Also hedging your comments with "I think" or "I feel" helps people to actually hear you.

"I think your message would be more clearly understood if you used commas here, and here." goes over a lot better than just saying "You need to use commas"

 

[snooper]

It would figure my computer would be just like me. It doesn't work well with others.

That's why I recommend using .rtf to send things to other people. The final version I always put into .txt as a file before posting on Lit.