You can always tell when I'm unemployed
Sep. 12th, 2012 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI make multiple long-ass posts a day.
So the whole Moffat thing has been making me think - it goes without saying that while I think the stuff aimed at Moffat was bad, the abuse-slinging at Amanda Abbington and Caitlin Blackwood makes everything about 500x worse - about the entire nature of writer-contact on the internet. I guess I just don't understand the entire point of directly telling a writer what you don't like about their work? For one thing, it's not the sort of thing that I generally think of people saying in person if they met at a con, which is the equivalent as I see it. For another, am I the only one who assumes that a given writer probably tends to lump the whole spectrum of unasked-for non-industry/family/friend criticism into one pile and ignore it, because they didn't ask and they have no idea what your background and biases are. Is it because people find it acceptable to tell ficwriters what's wrong with their work along the lines of "I didn't like the pairing, next time write X/Y" and "I hate that setting" and other personal issues? So it bleeds over that anything goes? IDK, it just seems rude/weird to me to address criticism to a writer so they have to see it (as on Twitter) and then expect them to answer thoughtfully/gratefully and not get annoyed, and not lump the people swearing or insulting them in with the regular criticism. It especially seems weird to me that people thought there was anything strange or wanky about Moffat asking if he could block particular users on Twitter.
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I've decided I actually need to get rid of most of the hero's friends in my novel. (I say hero, he's got more of a presence than "love interest" would indicate but he's not as important as the heroine, it's a tricky situation.) Which is sad, because I came up with characterizations for them, but ... they're only just important enough to the plot to provide reasons for things but not enough that I have much time to give them actual scenes of their own or much dialogue, so they're really resistant to fleshing out. But then, the basic premise of the story is that they were a Band of Plucky Companions who took down an Evil Wizard-King after having a Quest, Now Here's What Comes After, and that's kind of tricky enough on its own (since the point of my story is "let's add politics and like real world stuff") - "why do people let him be king?" is a pretty important question, and "they're scared of his wizard friend who's taking care of the evil stuff" is a decent answer where "because prophecy" doesn't really work in this universe and "because narrative convention" doesn't either. So I think I will delete everyone except Naudin. (It doesn't help that fantasy hasn't really been my thing for a while, and I keep wanting to pull it into pseudo-history, but the central premise kind of requires magic, so yeah.)
All of this requires extensive rewriting of what I have so far, so I'm probably going to stop trying to do actual writing and put more thought into the outlining and such and save it for NaNo, to restart it.
So the whole Moffat thing has been making me think - it goes without saying that while I think the stuff aimed at Moffat was bad, the abuse-slinging at Amanda Abbington and Caitlin Blackwood makes everything about 500x worse - about the entire nature of writer-contact on the internet. I guess I just don't understand the entire point of directly telling a writer what you don't like about their work? For one thing, it's not the sort of thing that I generally think of people saying in person if they met at a con, which is the equivalent as I see it. For another, am I the only one who assumes that a given writer probably tends to lump the whole spectrum of unasked-for non-industry/family/friend criticism into one pile and ignore it, because they didn't ask and they have no idea what your background and biases are. Is it because people find it acceptable to tell ficwriters what's wrong with their work along the lines of "I didn't like the pairing, next time write X/Y" and "I hate that setting" and other personal issues? So it bleeds over that anything goes? IDK, it just seems rude/weird to me to address criticism to a writer so they have to see it (as on Twitter) and then expect them to answer thoughtfully/gratefully and not get annoyed, and not lump the people swearing or insulting them in with the regular criticism. It especially seems weird to me that people thought there was anything strange or wanky about Moffat asking if he could block particular users on Twitter.
---
I've decided I actually need to get rid of most of the hero's friends in my novel. (I say hero, he's got more of a presence than "love interest" would indicate but he's not as important as the heroine, it's a tricky situation.) Which is sad, because I came up with characterizations for them, but ... they're only just important enough to the plot to provide reasons for things but not enough that I have much time to give them actual scenes of their own or much dialogue, so they're really resistant to fleshing out. But then, the basic premise of the story is that they were a Band of Plucky Companions who took down an Evil Wizard-King after having a Quest, Now Here's What Comes After, and that's kind of tricky enough on its own (since the point of my story is "let's add politics and like real world stuff") - "why do people let him be king?" is a pretty important question, and "they're scared of his wizard friend who's taking care of the evil stuff" is a decent answer where "because prophecy" doesn't really work in this universe and "because narrative convention" doesn't either. So I think I will delete everyone except Naudin. (It doesn't help that fantasy hasn't really been my thing for a while, and I keep wanting to pull it into pseudo-history, but the central premise kind of requires magic, so yeah.)
All of this requires extensive rewriting of what I have so far, so I'm probably going to stop trying to do actual writing and put more thought into the outlining and such and save it for NaNo, to restart it.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-13 05:47 pm (UTC)People who think professional writers they do not know will be open to direct criticism from strangers usually don't have good criticism to give, either. I've seen way too many people who either did not read or watch or play what they're criticizing on the internet, are lying about it, or are completely confused about even the basic facts in it, to bother with random strangers on the internet criticism any more, even as another random stranger on the internet.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-14 01:44 am (UTC)On the one hand, I worry that it's putting writers on a pedestal to say they should never get any criticism online, but on the other - there are a lot of people out there who cross the line (or are unaware of the line) between criticism and hate mail, basically, and I'd rather writers have to go looking for fans giving criticism than that they get hate mail, really.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-14 05:08 pm (UTC)Don't worry about writing like Meyer. You couldn't if you tried. You have to be a certain kind of person to write garbage like that, and you're definitely not that kind of person. You'd have to think that only very few people matter in the real world, for instance.
Yeah, there's a lot of hate mail. And there's a lot of criticism that is flatly wrong, so I can see getting to the point where you can't tell legitimate criticism from ridiculous other-dimension criticism and just shutting down.