one very popular fics that I had invested a lot of interest and enthusiasm in turned out a chapter that to me nearly ruined the entire fic. It was off in characterisation for several important OCs and in important parts of the plot taking a turn for the realm of unrealistic disbelief, damaging the entire fic and the main characters in the process IMO. I refrained from commenting at all on that chapter and several of the subsequent ones. I'm still wondering whether I should have commented, explained why it was off to me and how it IMO impacted the fic - perhaps the author would have wanted that and would have seen it as constructive criticism. Perhaps she could have made sense of some of her choices that I still think were completely detrimental to the realism of the fic. But you never know, and so I kept silent.
Hi Mikaela - I can only speak for myself but if you were reading something I had written and that happened then I would want to know. Most definitely. I am too emmeshed in what I am writing to be able to step back and look at everything the way a first time reader can; this is exacerbated by the fact that I post chapters a short time after writing them, so don't have the distance that a couple of week break gives you to look over it with a clearer mind. In one of my fics that I recently reread there was something that happened that just came from nowhere, and had absolutely no reference point and I just hid my head under the bedcovers in shame thinking about it.
However, that does not apply to other authors, even if they do say all feedback welcome. My preference is to both give and receive constructive criticism, and when I am giving it I usually mention something minor that I had a problem with in order to gauge the writer's reaction. Or I look at other comments to see if anyone else has brought something up previously. If they are not keen on the less positive, or seem overly defensive, then I just shut up - it's their fic after all. And to be honest there has only been one author who has been happy to listen to what I have to say, who has responded in a pleasant way and who has disagreed with what I've said without getting pedantic about it.
There is also the problem that if you do criticise the author is fine with it, but one gets a whole string of comments following yours defending the author, mostly having "Well
I thought it was amazing/wonderful/perfect/whatever" in the post somewhere. That would piss me off in a major way because I
want feedback of all kinds and don't want anyone to be put off giving it because of the reactions of others to that feedback. Luckily that's never happened
What has happened, though, is people prefacing their criticism with a mass of apology, as if I'm going to be mortally offended that someone had the audacity to even think I would be responsive to criticism. And I find that sad. As long as people are polite and respectful, combine the good with the not so good, then I am extremely grateful that they felt I was the kind of author to whom they felt the could mention all aspects of writing. And I love to get into a discussion too.
Also, and this may sound quite odd, I would really like it if someone who disliked something I'd written took the time to write a critique of why they weren't interested in it; whether it be writing style, characterisation, use of grammar/spelling, sentence structure, subject matter. etc etc. I feel I could really learn from something like that. Obviously if all they felt inclined to say was "this is shite, I hated it" I would totally discount it as the worthless remark it is.
For me, all writing is about learning and improving and there's no way I can do that if no one tells me where they think I'm going wrong.
