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Is it just me, or do people not saying why they didn't like something of yours more irritating than a simple bad review?

Yes, it is. I'd rather hear why they thought it sucked rather than just "It sucks, fix it.".

Very much so. In fact, I PREFER someone to tell me what to fix over someone telling me that it's so great. Furthermore, I would like to know WHY it is so good instead of just, "Good job, ver!"

verilon wrote:Very much so. In fact, I PREFER someone to tell me what to fix over someone telling me that it's so great. Furthermore, I would like to know WHY it is so good instead of just, "Good job, ver!"

I especially hate it when I post something, and it gets no response.

Oh yeah... I LOVE creative criticism. Let me know what's wrong.

I agree wholeheartedly. If there's something wrong with what I've written, I want to know what it is. I might stumble across it and fix it myself, but then what was the point of posting it for review?

Conversely, I also like to know what people liked about my work -- not for ego-strokage, but so that I know where my strengths are as opposed to my weaknesses. This tells me what to work harder on.

Now, some of my weaknesses that I know of:

Run-on sentences -- I'm shitty with these things. That was one of the nice things about having a full-time editor. Now I have to watch for these myself.

Ambiguous subject/object: Example, "Most people have a fear of heights. I love them." I love what? Heights, or people who are afraid of heights? To be fair, most people get my meaning. Unfortunately, some people do not, and I need to learn to clarify.

Visuals: I am not primarily a visually-oriented person, and I sometimes skimp on visual description.

Some of my strengths (IMHO):

Dialogue: I have an ear for analyzing various speech patterns, and I think I do a fairly good job of transcribing those speech patterns to text.

Visuals: Whereas I tend to be stingy with them, I always do my best to make visuals vivid. More importantly, I put them to work as more than just mental eye-candy; mood-enhancement, time-elapse indicators, and plot motivation are all functions of visual description.

Knowing the tools you bring to the job of writing is crucial, and sometimes we writers may not know which tools need sharpening. A good critic can help you develop your toolbox, and that's incredibly important.

One last thing. Don't be fooled, kids -- not everyone who has an bad opinion of your work is a critic.

I agree as well. If a reader finds something wrong with my writing, even a little thing, I really want to know exactly what it is. I'm still quite new at the public fiction deal, so I want any tips and pointers I can get on making my writing better.

Bug-Eyed Earl wrote:Is it just me, or do people not saying why they didn't like something of yours more irritating than a simple bad review?

It'd not just you.

I think one of the problems is that sometimes people are afraid to say why they didn't like something, they think the author will bite their head off.

It really annoys me when someone looks at something I have written, flips through it(obviously didn't actually read it), and then say "I liked it" or "it's good", ect. The thing about it that bugs me about that is I get the impression from such people that they care less about what I gave them to read or think my writing is not worth their time!

Raoul, with ambiguities, I think what's most annoying is when you want to mean the less likely possiblity, but nobody realizes that because they assume, "Oh, it's an accidental ambiguity, and my brain has just processed that to mean the more common and likely possibility without me even realizing it; in fact, all this has gone through my sub-concious in as instantaneous as the human brain gets."

For instance, with your example of "Most people have a fear of heights. I love them", everybody assumes you mean the heights, so you can get away without specifying - if you mean heights. What I hate is that I always end up meaning the people, but not specifying, because I'm too laz