Is it wrong that your mother, ol' gramps, and your friends should love your bad book?

[Dr. Drib]

So you've written your heart out (it's on a plate next to last night's TV-Dinner), and you still think your bad book is really good?

But the truth is, it stinks like the fish you had two nights ago (on another unemptied plate next to the ashtray full of cigarette butts and the dirty underwear standing up in a corner).

Should someone tell you that your book has a stench like stinky feet?

Should someone tell you a chimpanzee has better control over syntax and simile than you do? Not to mention alliteration?

Should someone really try to help you?

Or will you still put your bad book on Amazon?

[saoir]

But the truth is

According to .... ?

.

[ATDrake]

Someone should intervene, but for the sake of continued familial/friendship harmony, probably no one to whom the prospective author should ever miss speaking to again.

I also link you to SMBC's handy guide on "How to Communicate with Writers", as well as "Bad Review Bingo", for those of you brave* enough to try and tackle† the task.

* Or you could take the easy way out and passive-aggressively leave copies of this handy Dilbert comic strip around, as many times as seem to be necessary to get the point across, if it ever does.

† Morituri Consilium daturi te salutant, and all that.

[arjaybe]

If you sincerely want to be a good writer, and they want to help you get there, then they should point out your failings.

If they're just happy that you have something that keeps you out of their hair, then they definitely should not.

[cromag]

Jeez, Dr. Drib! My Mom just tagged me as one of her favorite authors on Smashwords! You could have let me enjoy it for a little while!

[gmw]

It is a given that some people will claim that any given book is "bad" or "stinky" (assuming you can get them to read it, which turns out to be the hard part of this process). Before you publish you need to do everything you practically can to remove the technical reasons for such criticism. Beyond that you need to discover if you story works as intended, and that takes some effort.


If you intend to publish, you must be prepared for criticism. Better to take a deep breath ask for it from people you know, people you can talk to, people whose perspective and preferences you understand, so you can put the criticism into some meaningful context. And better these people should give you this criticism while you still have a chance to do something about it, than to humour you into thinking you've got it right already.

But be careful what criticism you look for from what people. Many of your readers will have less (or no more) knowledge of the technicalities (spelling, grammar and story construction) than you do. And don't expect that lovers of horror will be thrilled with your romance, or vice versa. It might happen, but it's not a good bet.

Beyond the technicalities, you need to learn to read criticism for what it actually means. These words from Neil Gaiman: "Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong." (Copied from this link, which isn't where I first read it, but can't find that now.)

To me, those words reflect the fact that it is your story and your responsibility to tell it in a way that comes across to your reader. If the reader isn't "getting it", it is not the reader's fault.

Also, when you ask for criticism from other writers (in particular) you might get what that writer thinks should be done, but it's not their story. You may need to reinterpret the criticism into "it's not working" and take it from there.

For example: One "professional" assessor told me to abandon the project after reading an early manuscript for my first book (knowing I had more books planned in the series). After some initial anger and depression, I re-read the review and discovered a few things. First, there were a few useful bits in there, mostly stuff I needed to cut (which Stephen King puts succinctly as "second draft = first draft - 10%"). Second, it became clear that the reviewer was trying to impose their own ideas over what the story was about, and because the manuscript wasn't telling the story they thought it should, it obviously wasn't working and should be abandoned. What I finally took from that was: my story wasn't coming across clearly enough. The cutting back helped a lot, and few more subtle/directed edits helped clarify it further.


And then there is the conflicting advice that: not everyone will like any given story, BUT your story is only working if (at least) some do! You have to make the call on how to weigh the responses.

Ultimately, only you, the writer, can make the decision. You do need help, every writer does, so get it, but the final call remains your own. You need to have read widely enough, and been paying attention while you did, that you can have some confidence in your own assessment of what works and what doesn't.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by cromag

Jeez, Dr. Drib! My Mom just tagged me as one of her favorite authors on Smashwords! You could have let me enjoy it for a little while!

I have it on good authority from your mom that your work is NOT bad!

[saoir]

When I was a third way through my recently self published first book, I approached two friends to read it. I chose them as people who were not afraid to give an honest view, who were intelligent and thoughtful in how they assessed things.
I said a few things to them, and I quote below what I wrote. They seem a bit funny to me now ... but essentially I will ask the same when I am writing the next one.

Your task is this:

• Please try to read as a stranger ( I know that that is the hardest thing!)
• It's probably NOT your genre.
• My main aim is approach it from the bottom up ... as it were, as in just how bad is it ?
• Is it like, all over the place, flawed, weird, superficial, really hard to read, rambling, too much.
• You DON'T need to like it. In fact I'd rather you don't even think about liking it or not liking it. That is too subjective. In fact if you liked it I would find it weird, considering your normal tastes.
• Basically I am asking for the impossible ... of course I know that ! But what the hell ...
• I am NOT depending on your view ! So don't feel ANY pressure.
• "Meh" would be a perfectly acceptable conclusion

• My over riding question is this: “If you picked it up while looking for something entertaining to read on a flight or journey or something .. After you read it would you look back on it as an acceptable professionally written book ? Even if you didn’t enjoy it 100%?know.