TSS - Critics Are Your Friends

Critics are your Friends

A Miscellaneous Article by Hugh Rodger

So you’ve just written your first piece of writing. You read through it seventy thousand times or whatever the amount and you love it. You think it will be the top of the literary world. Authors like J.K Rowling and Stephen King will bow at your feet, and fans will tingle with excitement at the sound of your name. Everyone WILL love your story, and you will make millions from your masterpiece.

BUT – A tall, tidily-dressed man wearing great big spectacles with neat-cut hair comes along, reads the first page of your book and throws it down in disgust.

“What on earth is this rubbish?” he remarks. “I’ve seen better writing from a five year primary school student! The plot is cliché! The characters are lifeless, and the prose is poor.” He promptly hands it back to you, and instructs you to go back and rethink your entire story. It cannot be! Your dreams of fame and fortune are crushed, because one man was just too critical of your wondrous craft! This man has insulted you. You must hunt him down like a dog and slaughter him for daring to put down your masterpiece.

Okay, let’s stop there. This might be what you feel when someone criticises your work. Let’s be honest here – if they really are a critic, chances are they’re right. Maybe your work just wasn’t up to their standard. The fact remains, these people know the tricks of the trade. They were taught how to be a critic by analysing texts and deconstructing them sentence by sentence. They know the difference between good prose and bad prose, because they’ve deconstructed examples from both – and have analysed all the aspects of each. You may argue that your description of a certain character or setting is good, but you may not have analysed examples of a good description. They certainly have. So the first rule is to NEVER try and prove a critic wrong. They are always going to beat you – every single time.

When a person looks at your writing and says something the lines of “OMG THIS IS RUBBISH U SUCK LOLOLOL”, then they are insulting you, and that is not acceptable. Simply ignore them, because they are only trying to put you down, and attempting to talk back to them is a waste of time. Act maturely when dealing with them. However, when a critic reads your text, they may discuss the literary flaws of your work. For example, they might say: “I think character X seems slightly dull throughout the story. He doesn’t have the substance to be a living, breathing character to me”. This is a legitimate criticism, and it is your job to look back, analyse said character and think about what you could do to improve their characterisation.

A critic’s job is to look through your work and criticise, not bow down and heap endless praise upon you (unless your work really is that good, and if it’s your first piece of work, I doubt it is). Don’t get angry and stomp your feet because someone didn’t think your work was a masterpiece. The feeling is hard to swallow, but if you ever want to be a professional writer, you will have to live with it. J.K Rowling has her fair share of critics, and saying that “she’s still mega successful” is far from the point –it simply means that she isn’t the greatest writer on Earth.

Often I see amateur writers taking criticisms as personal attacks, and then responding to them impolitely. Critics don’t find flaws in your work out of spite – they do it to help you. They want you to improve your writing, and you have to listen to them. I do know of one author (whose name I won’t mention right now) who still writes books, yet he apparently doesn’t listen to critics. I think that this is why his books are just so awful. Being arrogant and pompous about how great you think you are will only lead to people disrespecting you – and you certainly don’t want that as a writer.

So to summarise – critics are your friends, not your enemies. Never hand your work to a critic and expect them to hand it back to you on a silver platter with it covered in gold stars. They are going to be very picky, and you have to accept each and every criticism. Once they are finished, thank them for even spending the time to analyse your work, go back, think about the points they made, and go back to see how you can improve your work. These are the steps you need to take to become a great and respectful writer. No I am not a professional writer, and I hate to sound condescending when I refer to readers of this article as “amateur writers”, because I am one too – just like you. I am still well into the learning process of becoming a writer, and I just want to offer my advice to you.

Thank you very much for taking your time into reading this article. If there is anything you disagree with, please say so in a polite and mature manner. I will be happy to discuss any thoughts you might have. :)

Next article coming soon!

Hugh Rodger