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| You read a sub-par fic and believe in the Innate Goodness of Reviews, do you.... |
| Leave a simple "good job. enjoyed" review |
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6% |
[ 3 ] |
| Leave no review ("if I can't say something nice, better say nothing at all") |
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14% |
[ 7 ] |
| Leave an honest review, constructive crit included |
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31% |
[ 15 ] |
| Contact author privately with constructive crit |
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8% |
[ 4 ] |
| Rate the story one or two stars and move on (OSA rating system only) |
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6% |
[ 3 ] |
| "I never finish reading sub-par fics" |
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33% |
[ 16 ] |
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| Total Votes : 48 |
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sindohte
Joined: 13 May 2003
Posts: 1621
Location: Rubbing up against an Elf
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 Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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| SilverMoonLady wrote: | But let me ask you: how many people in your physical community enjoy LOTR as much as you? How many of them read fanfic? How many of them *write* fanfic? How many of them have used the time, imagination and love to create these other images and events and internal lives for characters sometimes brushed with only the quickest stripe of color? Who do you talk to about fanfic, your own creations, without them getting that strange look? Why do you come *here*?
This is a community where there are others who enjoy and understand what we do. And what, praytell, is wrong with giving encouragement? |
I can only think of one other person in real life who loves LOTR as much as me and she was the one who told me about OSA. As for the rest of the people in RL, they think that my collection of LOTR figures on my desk at work is a mite bit crazy. And if they knew how many LOTR related books I had, they would cart me away to the nearest psych ward. So it is nice to be a part of community where people understand my obsession and actually encourage me to write about it 
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abandon thought, and let the dream descend... |
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SilverMoonLady
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 1201
Location: Breaking in a Brandybuck... *wicked grin*
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| Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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Better watch out, I might feel better about myself and not need those silly reviews anymore  
The evil sarcasm was edited out ten minutes after my original posting... I'm just too damn *nice* and worried it'll be misinterpreted to leave it in. 
_________________
Suffering an again off again connection with life...
The joy of motherhood: what a woman experiences when all the kids are in bed.
*local PHF union rep* *tart of the week*
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BittenBuggy
Joined: 27 Dec 2003
Posts: 2108
Location: Busy Being the Queen Of Everything.. And Trying to Catch the Yoda-Copter
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| Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Andreth wrote: | Don't read them BB, dear. Especially not in your delicate condition. Just look away. Look....here's the bunny again.  See? He's waving at you...'hi BB' The bunny is your friend.
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*Clings to the bunny* Hi bunny! Nice bunny...
_________________
-The Queen of Everything - so dubed by Aerin
-"My ultimate fantasy is to entice a man to my bedroom, put a gun to his head and say, 'Make babies or die'."
-"The Pope! how many divisions has he got?" - Stalin |
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PSandusky
Joined: 15 May 2004
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 2:56 am Post subject: |
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| sindohte wrote: | | While in the great scheme of life it may not matter if you write reviews for stories or not, I think that is why there is an unequal distribution between the number of stories posted on a site such as OSA and the number of people who write reviews on a regular basis. And while a good story may get the recognition it deserves, it might take a while to be discovered, which is the purpose of Scribe's Spotlight section on the front page. It is all too easy for a well written story to get lost in the shuffle, esp. if we are to follow your theory that only 10% of stories meet the criteria of what is truly the experience of reading. Since I don't have 8 hours each day to devote to wading through fanfiction, to a certain extent finding a good story is more of a hit or miss proposition. |
No. Not my theory. Sturgeon's Law, after Ted Sturgeon: 90% of everything is crap. There isn't an asterisk on that to exclude fanfiction of any sort, and I won't write one. After snooping around ff.net for a few nights over the holidays in search of good fic and landing more than a few that made me wonder about why I'd bothered booting the page, I'm pretty sure that not even LOTR fanfiction is exempt from the conclusion. You are certainly free to disagree, but I'm just saying how it's been looking from where I'm reading. (Feel free to take up sarcasm at your leisure.)
And it is hit-or-miss, all right -- oh, search strategies based on things like character or time period help, but then you're just culling a smaller subsample to which that skewed bell curve applies.
| sindohte wrote: | | I don't see why the comparison is invalid. Certainly there is a time lag in the immediacy of feedback provided by a live audience vs. a story posted online. Yet what would you consider to be a fair amount of time to pass before an online story should receive fanfic? Certainly expecting feedback within 24 hours or even a week might be asking a bit much, esp. for an unknown or new author on a site such as OSA. But what would you say is a fair amount of time that might reasonably pass before someone provides an author with a review? Two to three months? Perhaps longer depending on whether the subject of the story is about a more obscure area of the Tolkien literature? |
I don't see it as valid primarily because of the time difference. Time doesn't mean the same thing at all between the two cases. For the poetry reading, everyone listening and the person reading are involved in the experience at the same time, and the response the audience gives occupies roughly the same time frame. The reader, as goes with having a live audience, already understands that the audience will respond shortly after he or she finishes and also has some understanding of the role of time in deciphering the response -- as in the case of a long pause, then one person beginning slow applause, followed by the rest of the audience in high volume. Everyone's there at the same time, so whatever the response is, there aren't a whole lot of variables influencing the overall reaction from the audience.
Fanfiction has a whole lot more variables. People read in bits and snatches at intervals a few weeks apart, something comes up that they don't finish reading or post a review, the site goes down, the link's no longer fresh on the front page with the other new updates, whatever. Ultimately, there isn't an understood timeframe when all are attentive that provides a possibility of a concerted response to a piece, because very few people are in concert about how and when they will read fanfiction. Everyone's situation is different. For the poetry reading, no matter which cogs are turning in audience members' heads, they're basically in the same situation -- they're all sitting at the reading to listen. That is why I don't see the comparison as valid -- the two don't function the same way at all. While they're both literary demonstrations, they don't involve their audiences the same way.
That said, I don't know that there should be a unilateral, one-size-fits-all-archives-or-subgenres timeframe in which an author should expect a certain response to his or her piece. The medium's persnickety enough that using time as a pass/fail criterion might not be one of the best out there. Ultimately, as I'm sitting here thinking about it, it's up to the individual author how they choose to match the calendar to the review tally, but since that itself would be inherently variable, and the readers'/reviewers' responses would be inherently variable, what construction put there to link the two would do the job appropriately?
| Andreth wrote: | | Don't be silly, SilverMoon Lady, you do an excellent job of expressing yourself - and in most cases the simplest phrasing is the best. Mark Twain proved that. Occam has a nice, sharp razor that works very well at whittling away the fat and can be very useful at times. Then people are more prone to actually listen to what you say as opposed to glossing over half of the message because it's just a good deal of rambling seemingly aimed at nothing more than trying to prove how intelligent you are to a group of people whom you might do well to get to know a little better before you begin insulting them. |
Uh, uh-huh. Be careful with that razor. Band-aids are in the second drawer to the left.
| SilverMoonLady wrote: | | First off, I must apologize for sounding like a bit of a nit there, I just get a little twitchy when I think I've been summarily dismissed. I get *very* sarcastic. My unedited post was not the most... politic reply I've ever written. Thank you Andreth for the supportive sentiment, glad to know someone else has been there (which I'd thought more had) That having been said... |
"Summarily dismissed?" Really? Wouldn't you know, that's exactly how that either/or "you don't like it or you don't care" bit read to me. Huh. Fancy that.
| SilverMoonLady wrote: | | Motivation absolutely comes from the inside! We *could not* write if we were not inspired and jazzed about the stories in our heads, and from the point of view of one whose muse had fled in the face of RL for far too long, it is as important as faith and pleasure in keeping someone with that creative outlet happy. But let me ask you: how many people in your physical community enjoy LOTR as much as you? How many of them read fanfic? How many of them *write* fanfic? How many of them have used the time, imagination and love to create these other images and events and internal lives for characters sometimes brushed with only the quickest stripe of color? Who do you talk to about fanfic, your own creations, without them getting that strange look? |
I completely understand your point about getting involved in something like a fanfiction forum to sustain "that creative outlet." Bear in mind, though, that not everyone is going to approach fanfiction in general or LOTR fanfiction the same way you do -- nor should they. I don't take fanfiction nearly as seriously as others do. I shouldn't have to change my outlook on it just because someone else doesn't like it, or because my view doesn't fit in someone else's framework in a way they like. That's why Heinz makes 57 varieties -- just because I'm posting from one that isn't in tandem with yours doesn't make mine any less valid, whether or not you want it to be.
As for who I talk to about fanfic, I don't. I don't carry fanfiction out into my daily life. Oh, if I see something that reads completely out in left field, I'll mention it to a friend at work, and he generally understands, because I speak of it in a general sense. Very little of it is in reference to the wonder of Tolkien's characters or the phrasing the author used. I'm just not that deeply immured in fanfiction. So sue me.
Most of my friends have their own pursuits to follow. One writes and DM's D&D campaigns. Another writes historical papers. Another talks about religion and daily life. Yet another writes music. We each have our interests, and each expresses enough response to the others to show that we respect what's been done or made, but at no point does anyone demand that response. No one makes an appeal for these essays of "time, imagination, and love," because we don't feel the need. We each recognize what the others are interested in, and we go our own ways.
While I was in school, I managed a small lab of marine aquaria in the Science Hall's basement. The Marine Lab was something of a secret on campus, in the sense that most students, except for those who would be in that area between classes, didn't give two hoots and a holler about what was in those few rooms next to the lecture hall. The attention would go to the athletes, the departments with all the money, and so on down the line. Still, I'd go in almost every day to take care of all the critters, and fairly often I'd get a visit from the custodian passing through or from a student who just happened to be curious. I'd get more than my share of odd looks from other people -- especially when the topic of feeding squid to some of the larger fish came up -- but I learned to enjoy the odd looks, particularly when the person flashing the look followed that visage with a bit of admiration that, yes, I really could feed that moray eel with my bare hands. The absence of people in the lab didn't bother me a whole lot, save when the absences included the professor in charge of the lab. I was usually just happy to watch the eel do her loop-the-loops and to hold my hand in a tank for the cleaner shrimp clamber all over it.
No, SilverMoonLady, I don't approach fanfiction, or those things in which I invest my energies, the same way you do. And there is no reason I should have to do so.
| SilverMoonLady wrote: | | Why do you come *here*? |
Lately, I've been wondering. Things like that oh-so-lovely bit of cathartic sarcasm sans perspective earlier in the thread for something so simple as a message board post make me wonder. A lot. Why am I here now, anyway?
| SilverMoonLady wrote: | | This is a community where there are others who enjoy and understand what we do. And what, praytell, is wrong with giving encouragement? |
Nothing at all is wrong with giving encouragement. Nothing.
Plenty is wrong with expecting people to view encouragement the same way you do. I don't look at it the same way you do, and I really shouldn't have to do so, most certainly not on a message board. There's no point in having it if the unspoken purpose is to get across to someone who posts what you don't necessarily expect or like to view things your way.
Now, as for community... It seems from this thread that a lot of people have taken my remarks and returned them with their outlook on the reviewing process, if in no other fashion than to demonstrate to me why I should post reviews. Some of them I quite easily understand and accept, which is probably the point of discussing all of this on a board, after all.
On the other hand, there are some here who, as members of this "community," have taken what I've written entirely too personally. As I've said, I don't take fanfiction in general all that seriously, so I don't generally make my comments about fanfiction with a personal direction, but to those who take fanfiction quite personally, whatever I've said must be therefore taken as such. Whatever. Put it through whatever lens you like, but please be careful to distinguish what comes through the lens from what went into it.
That said, after all of these considerations to suggest posting reviews in this community, I happen upon something like this, posted in response to something rather piddling in the span of things that happen on this planet. This landed in response to a message board post, of all things:
"Well, at the risk, nay, utter certainty of oversimplifying (please forgive me, rotten tomatoes to the right and apple cores to the left), we need to just stop whining and being insecure, enjoy what little response we might get and get on with it, is that right? Hmmm.... Wow, I'd never thought of that!
I'll just go find myself a nice therapist and solve my self-esteem issues...
I'll stop muddying the waters now, more intelligent and well-spoken folks are doing a very good job debating this."
Mm-hmm.
Now, what I want to know is this. Given that this community takes fanfiction so personally, and that this community also takes discussions about the details of fanfiction so personally (just try convincing me otherwise after the course of this thread), just how would the community or a subsection thereof respond to a review of something as vital as a fanfiction piece itself that doesn't say what one thinks it should? Heaven forbid I write an honest review that sends someone to "a nice therapist."
Now, granted, the community at large didn't post that little bit of diatribe. No, but that one person, in such elegant prose, showed me exactly why I didn't want to bother with reviewing fanfiction in the first place. Ah, yes. Square one. I'm beginning to like it here -- it's awfully cozy. Certainly I know why I'm here.
So why bother? Why should it be worth it to go out on a limb to put up with discussion like that, no matter how rare it may be?
It still happened. Why should reviewing be worthwhile when the responses in this "community" may well end up like that? |
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sindohte
Joined: 13 May 2003
Posts: 1621
Location: Rubbing up against an Elf
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 5:57 am Post subject: |
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Writing reviews for stories here is only one activity that the individuals who are part of the OSA community engage in. If you are looking for ways to test your Tolkien knowledge, the Quizzes section is ideal. If the Silmarillion is an area that interests you, then go over to the Books section and join in. If you have a story idea that would like to drop off and share with the world, then head on over to the Bunny Nursery. Or if none of those options strike your fancy, feel free to start a discussion thread on a topic that is of interest to you.
I certainly hope to see your presence in other areas of OSA besides this single thread about review writing.
_________________
abandon thought, and let the dream descend... |
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SilverMoonLady
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 1201
Location: Breaking in a Brandybuck... *wicked grin*
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 8:36 am Post subject: |
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You know what, last reply to this thread.
1.What I meant by the 'who do you talk to' passage is that none of us have a connection in RL with others with this interest, and that is why we gather *here*.
2.I was not the one to make this personal. Or at least I certainly didn't intentionally do so.
3.I have a healthy dose of sarcasm, triggered by the pompous and the intellectually priggish, and for that I make *polite* apology.
I had not yet made personal attack on you, and have in fact tried to let you off the hook you seem to have gotten stuck on. Forgive me for mistaking you for someone who needed any kind of encouragement or aid.
You could not have found a more staunch supporter of the right to hold one's opinion, no matter how controversial, so you can get off that horse right now.
Did I try to show that reviews make a difference to many authors? Yes. Did I make some effort to convince you that you, one individual among a multitude, have a voice, which can affect another by your words or silences? Yes. Did I imply you needed to 'examine' your own self-esteem, your motivations, rather than 'inflict' them on poor undeserving souls around you? No. I did not.
I will not deny that there are some authors out there who are so very fragile and sensitive that they would indeed be hurt by an overly specific and critical review, maybe even a mildly worded suggestion that a beta might be a good acquisition. But you are right that I disagree with you, and am gravely disappointed, that this possibility should be taken as a sign that any reviewer should shudder and quake at the possibility their words will be ill-taken.
| Quote: | | "Summarily dismissed?" Really? Wouldn't you know, that's exactly how that either/or "you don't like it or you don't care" bit read to me. Huh. Fancy that. |
You're very good at taking things out of context.
| Quote: | | No one is necessarily asking you or anyone for a ten page thesis on how well the story "works", but you'd better bet that your opinion matters! When you read and set off the bean counter, and then don't leave a review, the message that the author gets is that this reader either clicked on the title and didn't finish because they didn't like it etc, or they read it, finished it and it wasn't worth the time/bother to leave a note. So you either don't like it or don't care. Multiply that by 10, 20, 100... you get the picture. |
Read it again. This is what it feels like, as an author, looking up to see that there are many many hits and no reviews. It doesn't feel good. It feels like people can't be bothered to respond.
Was that clear enough? Read it again.
You dismiss yourself and your voice when you say one more review would not matter. *I* never said that.
As to the rest, this time it is I who cannot be bothered to reply, as sharp tongues do little more than inflame rather than clarify.
Woe is she who wanders into a host of friendly strangers and pisses in the milk pot.
_________________
Suffering an again off again connection with life...
The joy of motherhood: what a woman experiences when all the kids are in bed.
*local PHF union rep* *tart of the week*
Shelob the Cookie Baker |
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BittenBuggy
Joined: 27 Dec 2003
Posts: 2108
Location: Busy Being the Queen Of Everything.. And Trying to Catch the Yoda-Copter
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 9:22 am Post subject: |
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Can't we all just get along? 
Sorry... couldn't resist...
_________________
-The Queen of Everything - so dubed by Aerin
-"My ultimate fantasy is to entice a man to my bedroom, put a gun to his head and say, 'Make babies or die'."
-"The Pope! how many divisions has he got?" - Stalin |
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Viv
Challenge Admin
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Posts: 71
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:00 am Post subject: |
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| PSandusky wrote: | | After snooping around ff.net for a few nights over the holidays in search of good fic and landing more than a few that made me wonder about why I'd bothered booting the page |
If you're looking for good fic, ff.net may not be the best place to go. Open Scrolls and some other sites (HASA, Stories of Arda, etc) have at least minimal requirements for submission. Also, Open Scrolls has those lovely Most Recommended and Highest Rated pages. I've found a lot of gems there. Most of what I read nowadays comes from friend recommendations, and I rarely delve into the muck that is ff.net.
One more sort of general note: the original topic of this thread posed a question with the implicit understanding that folks who replied believed in the innate worth of reviews. My question here was how to write a good review, not whether we ought to write one at all.
Perhaps a discussion of "to review or not to review" should be moved to another thread. |
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Viv
Challenge Admin
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Posts: 71
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:02 am Post subject: |
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| PSandusky wrote: | | After snooping around ff.net for a few nights over the holidays in search of good fic and landing more than a few that made me wonder about why I'd bothered booting the page |
If you're looking for good fic, ff.net may not be the best place to go. Open Scrolls and some other sites (HASA, Stories of Arda, etc) have at least minimal requirements for submission. Also, Open Scrolls has those lovely Most Recommended and Highest Rated pages. I've found a lot of gems there. Most of what I read nowadays comes from friend recommendations, and I rarely delve into the muck that is ff.net.
One more sort of general note: the original topic of this thread posed a question with the implicit understanding that folks who replied believed in the innate worth of reviews. My question here was how to write a good review, not whether we ought to write one at all.
Should a discussion of "to review or not to review" be moved to another thread? |
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miriel361
Joined: 10 Jun 2003
Posts: 417
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:07 am Post subject: |
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Forums are here to post our opinions and thoughts.
We may not necessarily agree with another person's point of view. We may violently disagree. We may agree with reservations. We may request more information to find out why someone has reached this conclusion.
We can agree to differ.
In every case, we should respect the other person's opinion.
I for one, will leave this thread now. |
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Robbie
Site Admin
Joined: 22 Jun 2003
Posts: 1100
Location: Sydney, Australia.
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:34 am Post subject: |
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Ladies,
Robbie's watching.
No violent disagreeing. Discussion OK.
Thanks
_________________
Rob
www.crackingegg.com |
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BittenBuggy
Joined: 27 Dec 2003
Posts: 2108
Location: Busy Being the Queen Of Everything.. And Trying to Catch the Yoda-Copter
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:48 am Post subject: |
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| Robbie wrote: | Ladies,
Robbie's watching.
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That is amazingly frightening  Go Robbie! He-who-can-instill-fear!
_________________
-The Queen of Everything - so dubed by Aerin
-"My ultimate fantasy is to entice a man to my bedroom, put a gun to his head and say, 'Make babies or die'."
-"The Pope! how many divisions has he got?" - Stalin |
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SilverMoonLady
Joined: 14 Jul 2003
Posts: 1201
Location: Breaking in a Brandybuck... *wicked grin*
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 11:27 am Post subject: |
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Call me cowed and satisfied 
Sorry for letting excess emotivity color our debate. A peaceful pause might indeed be wise.
Truce? 
_________________
Suffering an again off again connection with life...
The joy of motherhood: what a woman experiences when all the kids are in bed.
*local PHF union rep* *tart of the week*
Shelob the Cookie Baker |
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Viv
Challenge Admin
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Posts: 71
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 11:35 am Post subject: |
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| PSandusky wrote: | | Now, just to give voice to the pessimist in me, as far as the writer seeking out these ghosts of errors... I would hope that as writers continue, they get some evolving sense of what they're writing and how, mechanically, what they want to write should be devised, if not from responses to their work, then from reading others' fics (and considering their own reviews for those works). That should be happening no matter what the arena is. The writer should be experiencing some advancement in their writing or their method through all of this. If not, what's the point? |
I meant to chime in on this a while back, because I think it's a view that a lot of people have. I've heard this argument given, for instance, as a reason why beta-readers aren't all that necessary.
Perhaps some writers come to recognize their own errors and improve all by themselves. But those writers are extremely rare. Most need editors, peer reviewers, and so on to point out the rough spots. Otherwise they'll just keep writing the same old bad stuff over and over. And I'm not just talking about fic writers. I am a professional editor, and I've worked with dozens of authors who just didn't realize that they were lapsing into passive voice or making awkward word choices, or falling into organizational and pacing pits. Most times, they didn't even recognize the pits. They needed an editor to point these things out, and their work became much smoother as a result.
It's too much to expect a writer to naturally evolve with little or no external input. That doesn't happen very often in the real world. |
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Andreth
Joined: 24 Oct 2003
Posts: 1211
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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It's very comforting to know that Big Brother Robbie is watching over us in his own Orwellian fashion.  He also put up some new emoticons.   Now we have our doctor-recommended vegetable servings and our posts will be regular and not suffer from constipation or colon cancer. See? He's looking out for us on many, many levels.
But you are completely right, Viv dear. This is serving no purpose other than unpleasant ones and we should get back to the topic at hand.
Which brings to mind a question I had for those of you with more review-writing experience than me, but had forgotten to ask previously - I rarely leave public reviews that mention the need for corrections and what have you. Those I prefer to contact the author privately about. But when I do, I always make certain to mention first the things I enjoyed about the story before offering the criticism aspect. Not any false praise or flattery, mind you, just to buffer the criticism by introducing the positive first. But what do you say when there's not a lot of positive to be found?
Say you have an author who clearly wants to know why their story isn't working or what's wrong with their writing but there's not a lot of positive to buffer the negative with? I'm very curious to see how other people approach that kind of situation because it's one that I'm not sure I always handle correctly.
Anna |
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