WIP Challenge Checkin, Day 28, Thursday

[jagnikjen]

Come one, come all and tell us how your writing is going today.

~ Lots of words.
~ A few words.
~ It's like pulling teeth.
~ Editing/revising today!
~ Refreshing the muse.
~ Beta reading/critiquing
~ Other fannish pursuits
~ Research
~ Real life :(

Discussion question: Let's talk about feedback...I think we've previously discussed whether or not we leave it.

Today let's talk about the most WTF! or hurtful (if you're over it) feedback you've gotten.

Once you got over it, was there any truth to it? (Let's face it, people can be tactless even though they speak the truth.)

Did you reply to the person leaving the review/feedback?

Comments

[jagnikjen]

I have peace and quiet to write, so I am. Mostly I'm writing through stuff I don't think is going to stay in the story--I'm not sure what's next, so I'm just writing through until I figure out what I want to do.

And I do have feedback horror stories. Three of them, actually. The most recent one is the most WTF! This person apparently had absolutely no idea what a drabble was and proceeded to roast me for it.

One of things she noted was the fact that I was assuming my readers would have sufficient knowledge of the fandom to "get" everything I didn't include in the drabble like descriptions. Well, yeah--I mean how many people who have no idea what fan fiction is or who don't have at least a passing familiarity with the fandom go looking for it???

On top of that, she thought she needed to give me a few pointers about writing. I was completely flabbergasted. Just because I don't advertise my writing experience, doesn't mean I don't have any. And while I probably shouldn't have, I rebutted every point she made. >:(

[xpaperplanex]

Yay for peace and quiet!

Oh man, when reviewers have no clue what they're talking about when they're complaining at you is so frustrating. I wrote a series of ten 10-word stories once and had someone complain about how short they were. What do you even say to that? Yes, I did what I had intended? Go me? It said right at the top that they were ten words long.

The temptation to reply is always so strong, and I know I really shouldn't, but...

[lexicalcrow]

I wrote ... quite a lot today. But most of it wasn't for my WIPs. Oh well. XD But I've now done all my musing_way posts for the month, so that's good. Happy now.

I think the review that stands out as the weirdest that I've got was on my apocabigbang fic. (My fic was a Brum/RPS crossover. With zombies. And dragons.) It was basically, 'You're awesome for writing Brum fic, but I don't read RPF'. My initial reaction was pretty much, 'so why did you comment then...?' But I did reply in the most polite and courteous way I could, but I still found it a weird comment. I don't know, there's no pleasing some people. :P

[jagnikjen]

Congrats on completely your "musing way" posts.

My initial reaction was pretty much, 'so why did you comment then...?'

I had a similar situation where a person read several chapters into a fic and finally commented and said they didn't like the pairing and they weren't going to read any more. I had warnings and labels up front about everything, and my question was a) why did you start reading in the first place? and b) couldn't you have just stopped reading and left it at that?? When I asked, she said I needed a thicker skin if I was going to write and post fic. HUH??

[lexicalcrow]

Thanks. I have four muses over there. Some are wordier than others. XD

Yeah, I ... don't understand that particular branch of logic. o.O

[dbskyler]

Often what a comment like that really means is, "I love your writing, but you're not writing the pairing I want to read. If you want me to keep reading, change your story to please me."

Either that, or they *really* dislike the pairing and wanted to make a point about it. But if that were the case, they would likely have commented in chapter one, not several chapters in.

[littlebutfierce]

More edits today. ZOMG it feels so good to be back in the land of I LOVE MY STORY. (Even though that eventually leads to the land of WTF AM I GOING TO NAME THIS THING.)

I may be fortunate in never having gotten really wtf/hurtful feedback -- I think that's not b/c I am some amazing writer, but b/c I write in small fandoms, which... I think can make people kinder? Just in that they are often happy to see any new fic at all (& doubly so if you're writing a rare pairing, etc.). So I wonder if they're then less likely to leave negative feedback.

The oddest feedback I got was for a end-of-year fic exchange. During the whole week or so where gifts were revealed but authors were anonymous, I got no comment from my recipient. I was on tenterhooks worrying that they hated it; I even went through & tried to figure out if they'd defaulted (it was a small exchange) & maybe weren't commenting out of guilt at getting a story anyway. Once authors were revealed, the recipient commented, saying she'd really liked the story, but wanted to wait until author reveals to say so. Which... kind of made me wonder. If I'd turned out to be a BNF, would she have liked the story better???

[jagnikjen]

I love LOVE MY STORY land. I hope you get to stay there a while and maybe the other part will work itself out. :)

[rebecca2525]

Yeah, I'm mostly in small fandoms, too, and I think people are more greatful there. And less wanky.

That's really weird with the gift exchange. o.O

[rebecca2525]

The scene I should have worked on today involves a character plotting his scheme. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure about the details yet. I know how the whole thing should work out and how it affects everyone, but so far I'm lacking the technical details. I did some research, but so far The Solution hasn't presented itself. I need more time to think. The weekend I'll have someone to talk to, which hopefully helps.

But, since that scene isn't connected to the previous and next scene, I did something I normally avoid: Skipped it for the time being and continued with the next one. That got me 740 words! \o/

I got a very rude comment once which was all the more frustrating as it was the first comment I got on that fic. They did have a point, but given that it was just a light-hearted 400 word ficlet where the summary made it quite clear where it would be going, the tone was a bit over the top. Took me half a day to come up with a sensible reply.

(A year later, another commenter decided to bite back and a teeny-tiny mini wank ensued in the comments to my fic for a tiny fandom. Somehow, that amuses me to no end.)

[jagnikjen]

I write scenes out of order as well. Sometimes, one scene is just clamoring to be written and rather than forget it, I go ahead and write it. And YAY for 740 new words.

A year later, another commenter decided to bite back and a teeny-tiny mini wank ensued in the comments to my fic for a tiny fandom. Somehow, that amuses me to no end.

That is pretty funny. :)

[pkc_creative]

It's all real life at the moment for me. Still sorting out stuff for uni and in the middle of next week I'm off down to England for a few days for family things. So I've had no writing time at all. Makes me sad :(

Most of my fandoms are quite small these days so the feedback is usually positive but when I was a big fandom a few years ago I had a WTF comment and the commenter said I like the fic but you're the same everyone else in this fandom and I hate the pairing.
I didn't reply to that particular comment because the commenter was rude to lots of other people and at the time I had no idea what to say to it. A lot of people did reply to the commenter and from that I made some really good online friends, some I'm still friends with now :)

[jagnikjen]

It's nice when others rally around. I've had that happen too. And cool that you're now friends with some of them. :)

[linaewen]

Lots of words -- 750 so far, with more in the offing as soon as I get home from a meeting. Editing and revising also took place, so the 3/4 of the Big Bang thingy is ready to post. Still feeling desperate about whether I'll finish on time, but I think I will! ;-) Sure am glad I'm mostly on vacation this week!

When I first started posting fic, I had a reviewer who really didn't agree with how I was interpreting certain characters. We used to go at it hammer and tongs sometimes, both of us willing to defend our interpretations to the death (so to speak). But after awhile of that, we found we had become friends, and our input on each others fics actually was useful and beneficial.

[linaewen]

Just remembered another situation where some person set up an account at the forum where I was posting just to tell everyone that I was plagiarizing canon with my fic. Everyone else on the forum proceeded to lambast the person in my defense and sent them packing, so I didn't have to reply. The mod for that forum dealt with it for me, and that was very comforting. :-)

[jagnikjen]

Wow, that's awful, though. I'm glad you had someone to stand up for you.

[bay_alexison]

So far today I betaed someone's fic and I enjoyed the story very much, haha. I then was able to suddenly thought of some ideas for my WIP and the upcoming pornbattle while driving back home from work. Tonight will be spend critiquing a fic since a friend of mine wants me to look at the next chapter and I kept delaying it, oi. D:

Hm, the most hurtful/WTF reply I had back in February. I posted a story where I write in the POV of a blind person and someone replied to it. She said she was impressed how ambitious I was with the story, only to then say many wrong things about it. There are some things I agree with her like the way the romance between the blind person and another character developed (romance is something I'm still trying to get used to ^^; ) and how I portrayed the main character's blindness (I mentioned before how I wished I did some research on blindness, haha). However, what got to me is the one comment where she said I was discriminating a (fictional) racial group. I asked her what she meant by that, but she still insisted I was being inconsiderate. @_@

[xpaperplanex]

I had tons of RL stuff to do today, but I posted that one-shot yesterday and have been getting lots of lovely replies :D

The weirdest reviews I've gotten were a series of anonymous reviews on FFN from the same person. They didn't comment on the story, most of the time, but rather the author's notes where I had written random things I had been thinking while writing the chapters. I got an in-depth explanation of how games work and that players have to be able to find secret doors in games otherwise they wouldn't play them, but if it were real, secret doors would be hard to find, a lecture on horse-riding terminology (despite the fact that the characters were riding chocobos, not horses and I therefore don't need to use proper horse terms if I don't want to) and how to ride them and an invitation to join a discussion group to learn more about horses, and a bunch of other complete WTFness.

I find a lot of reviewers suffer from what I call "I Know A Thing" syndrome, wherein they've learned something and assume that nobody else knows this awesome thing that they know and it's their duty to educate everyone. In the most condescending manner possible. And they like to do it anonymously, much to the annoyance of everyone who wants to go "No shit, Sherlock!"