Dealing with reviews

[nomesque]

I started to reply to a post in Jan's thread about Black Silk, then realised it was wayyyyy off-topic, so I thought I'd start a new one.

How do you deal with reviews? Do you find them at all useful?

Originally Posted by dadioflex

Naw. Nasty reviews are a waste of everyone's time. Negative, but fair, reviews can help, but even then you have to ask whether addressing the criticisms and changing how you write, or what you write about, is going to do more to alienate the people who like you, than it is to attract new readers.

I find that the negative reviews, even just-plain-nasty ones, can be handy for a few reasons -

- they point out flaws, from the reader's POV, in the story. These aren't always useful to me (what? my characters aren't completely fleshed out? It's a humour-driven short story, dude!), but they're sometimes useful in warning off people who'll hate it before they bother reading it and getting annoyed. People who only love lots of flowery, evocative prose should NOT read my work. Ever. Neither should anyone who's easily offended.

- they give me clues on marketing. If people are reading my blurbs, getting interested, then being thoroughly disappointed, my marketing methods need work.

That said, I take every review with a BIG grain of salt. Some feedback is completely correct. Most is a matter of personal taste, which I may or may not want to take on board. Some is just dross. I guess my point is - be humble, but don't be a doormat. I think even the nastiest review deserves some thought (even, 'what inspired THAT level of vitriol?'), but not necessarily more than that.

[ASparrow]

Every review that contains specifics is useful to me. The only ones that are completely useless are those that contain only vague and disparaging comments. Consider this excerpt:

"The story is not amazing, but it was not horrible either. There were no glaring problems that made it a suffer to read, nor was there anything in it to make it a page turner. It was a true example, for me, of a utility-neutral book: I gained nothing from it. Your mileage may vary, but I for one did not find much to keep me coming back to Xenolith, aside from the desire to be done with it and move on to more interesting books."


What can a writer possibly draw from this except to write something more 'amazing?'

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by nomesque

I started to reply to a post in Jan's thread about Black Silk, then realised it was wayyyyy off-topic, so I thought I'd start a new one.

How do you deal with reviews? Do you find them at all useful?



I find that the negative reviews, even just-plain-nasty ones, can be handy for a few reasons -

- they point out flaws, from the reader's POV, in the story. These aren't always useful to me (what? my characters aren't completely fleshed out? It's a humour-driven short story, dude!), but they're sometimes useful in warning off people who'll hate it before they bother reading it and getting annoyed. People who only love lots of flowery, evocative prose should NOT read my work. Ever. Neither should anyone who's easily offended.

- they give me clues on marketing. If people are reading my blurbs, getting interested, then being thoroughly disappointed, my marketing methods need work.

That said, I take every review with a BIG grain of salt. Some feedback is completely correct. Most is a matter of personal taste, which I may or may not want to take on board. Some is just dross. I guess my point is - be humble, but don't be a doormat. I think even the nastiest review deserves some thought (even, 'what inspired THAT level of vitriol?'), but not necessarily more than that.

There's an old saying:

If you try to please everyone you'll end up pleasing nobody.

Which I interpret as:

I don't give a feck if you liked it or not and I'm not changing a thing.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by ASparrow

Every review that contains specifics is useful to me. The only ones that are completely useless are those that contain only vague and disparaging comments. Consider this excerpt:

"The story is not amazing, but it was not horrible either. There were no glaring problems that made it a suffer to read, nor was there anything in it to make it a page turner. It was a true example, for me, of a utility-neutral book: I gained nothing from it. Your mileage may vary, but I for one did not find much to keep me coming back to Xenolith, aside from the desire to be done with it and move on to more interesting books."


What can a writer possibly draw from this except to write something more 'amazing?'

Include more hats. Hats are quite amazing. Especially purple ones with feathers stuck in the brim.

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by ASparrow

Every review that contains specifics is useful to me. The only ones that are completely useless are those that contain only vague and disparaging comments.

Yup, good point

Originally Posted by ASparrow

What can a writer possibly draw from this except to write something more 'amazing?'

Or to write something horrible

In my experience, adding lots of swearing seems to polarise people nicely.

[jaxx6166]

Originally Posted by nomesque

In my experience, adding lots of swearing seems to polarise people nicely.

Dirty words make everyone happy. Or no one. Either way it's fun!

Which is the point of writing all along, no?

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

There's an old saying:

If you try to please everyone you'll end up pleasing nobody.

Which I interpret as:

I don't give a feck if you liked it or not and I'm not changing a thing.

LOL

I don't try to please people, exactly, but I do try to take on board possible technical improvements. Like, several people have said that DEAD(ish)'s ending could've done with more work. They're absolutely right, it IS a bit chucked-together. The next story will get more attention in that area before I release it. Others have commented on the lack of in-depth character analysis, the overabundance of sweary-poos - and the next story will contain exactly the amount of each that _I_ consider necessary, neither more nor less, even if it loses me readers by the busload.

[jaxx6166]

I think workshops could be much more useful than a review.But reviews are customers..

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

Dirty words make everyone happy. Or no one. Either way it's fun!

Which is the point of writing all along, no?

I think I have more fun writing sex scenes than writing rude words

But yes, I'm a firm believer in the idea of the writer enjoying themselves, primarily, and letting that enjoyment come through in the reading experience.

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by jaxx6166

I think workshops could be much more useful than a review.But reviews are customers..

I haven't ever done a workshop or critique group, but to be honest, I tend to avoid them like the plague. I don't find the comments of other writers useful until they're seasoned enough to have gotten over the 'must follow the rules' thing, and the writers' jargon. <--- I know that sounds really snotty, I'm not implying I'm a seasoned writer by any means - but I get irritated by stock-standard 'you put in an adverb!' and 'you've mixed up your tropes!' type comments, because I do tend to break a lot of the rules, deliberately and (sometimes) carefully. I can generally pick the reviews written by newer writers who've read all the books

[Kemp]

I think I agree; taking criticism from other writers is difficult to contemplate.

On one hand, you have the benefit of experience as well as the simple advantage of having another pair of eyes looking at your work. On the other hand, writers are eternally going to consider their own creations at least palatable. Either that, or they consider themselves artistic geniuses.

Those people can be hard to take criticism from. Also, since the creative arts are entirely subjective, the thriller writer may not have much to say about the high fantasy offering. Critiquing the writing style? Well, that can be pretty damn objective too.

Your own writing, for example, nomesque. Though it shames me to say, I haven't finished Dead(ish), but what I can say what I did read was that it was stylistically different than things I've read?

Is this bad? Hell no. Will it scare some people, even perhaps moving them to lash out in a nastier fashion? Yeah, sadly. It's the internet; people like to spew their emotional extremes.

Of course, don't take my word for it, I only have a few reviews so far, and nothing has been particularly scathing, so I don't have much advice to provide.

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Kemp

I think I agree; taking criticism from other writers is difficult to contemplate.

On one hand, you have the benefit of experience as well as the simple advantage of having another pair of eyes looking at your work. On the other hand, writers are eternally going to consider their own creations at least palatable. Either that, or they consider themselves artistic geniuses.

Those people can be hard to take criticism from. Also, since the creative arts are entirely subjective, the thriller writer may not have much to say about the high fantasy offering. Critiquing the writing style? Well, that can be pretty damn objective too.

Mmmm... it's not so much writers in general, as ones that aren't experienced enough to overlook the stylistic rule-breakings and pick up the just-plain-broken rules. Make sense?

Originally Posted by Kemp

Your own writing, for example, nomesque. Though it shames me to say, I haven't finished Dead(ish), but what I can say what I did read was that it was stylistically different than things I've read?

I don't think you should be ashamed to say that Especially if it wasn't your cup of tea, and/or you didn't like the writing. I guess what I was trying to say is that I like critiques on things that don't work within the given stylistic choices, and the storyline in general. Like, "what on earth made Mike kill Linda? I don't get it!" would be completely legit in my eyes. For that matter, I have no issues with a review saying, "I hated the style of writing, it's confusing".

Erm, I get the impression I'm rambling a lot. Sorry, folks. Blame the lack of coffee

Originally Posted by Kemp

Is this bad? Hell no. Will it scare some people, even perhaps moving them to lash out in a nastier fashion? Yeah, sadly. It's the internet; people like to spew their emotional extremes.

Yup. Although I haven't had much if any vitriol aimed at me - mostly just 'oh this is terrible, too much swearing' type reviews on B&N, probably because B&N has no age-appropriate or sex-swearing-violence ratings available.

[ficbot]

I don't necessarily recommend workshops. I took one once with a moderately well-known writer who is married to a big literary mucky-muck, and it was a disaster. She had very form ideas on how one must right and believed that literary fiction was the One True Way. So, for example, a guy in the class wrote a gangster story for one of the assignments, and rather than working with him on making it a very good gangster story, she criticized it for not being literary fiction. She found me far too genre for her liking, but did come to develop a grudging respect for the way I stuck to my guns with her A workshop for a writer who is more my speed might be a far different animal.

Fwiw Nomesque, I too read your book and if I had picked it up in a store, I would not have bought it. I do think that it was a little rushed-feeling and might have benefited from being longer and having some time and space to really develop things. I'm not sure I would read another book by you, but I think that's more of a 'not my thing' kind of issue than anything about you as a writer and nothing to take personally :-)

[alvico]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I don't necessarily recommend workshops. I took one once with a moderately well-known writer who is married to a big literary mucky-muck, and it was a disaster. She had very form ideas on how one must right and believed that literary fiction was the One True Way. So, for example, a guy in the class wrote a gangster story for one of the assignments, and rather than working with him on making it a very good gangster story, she criticized it for not being literary fiction. She found me far too genre for her liking, but did come to develop a grudging respect for the way I stuck to my guns with her A workshop for a writer who is more my speed might be a far different animal.

Fwiw Nomesque, I too read your book and if I had picked it up in a store, I would not have bought it. I do think that it was a little rushed-feeling and might have benefited from being longer and having some time and space to really develop things. I'm not sure I would read another book by you, but I think that's more of a 'not my thing' kind of issue than anything about you as a writer and nothing to take personally :-)

No wonder it was a disaster. Literary fiction is such a different animal to genre fiction, it would be like a dentist instructing a doctor. Okay, not good analogy, but you know what I mean.

[khalleron]

Sounds like this writing class I took once where the teacher insisted everything should be Southern Gothic.

Yeek. I've read Flannery O'Connor, thank you, but I don't want to be her.