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

[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!"