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Troy Kirby

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Criticism and how to improve your writing based on it

I've received an e-mail or two from readers regarding my use of a character's inner voice. They suggest that while they enjoy the format, the use of italics can be a little distracting. But I'm not going to change that. I simply consider it my style, adopted from about a million other "styles" from other influences.

You can't be afraid of writing. Or how you put things down on paper (or word processor). The fear that others feel is what stops them from doing things. It also affects how they write.

This brings up the topic of criticism.

Notice what criticism really is; a breakdown of how someone likes or dislikes a creation of another. A critic cannot recreate the form of art themselves, if they did, they would be "creating" rather than "deconstructing." That isn't a knock on criticism, except that blind criticism for the sake of criticizing something is rather weak, in my opinion.

If a critic has a specific task of deconstructing the failings of a project, I can understand that. It stems from the belief that the artist did not convey to the critic what was expected or what was received. However, criticism has been altered into a broad form over the last few decades. Now, it is expected that a critic "rip" something because it wasn't received the way that the critic would have enjoyed it. Rather than respecting the rule of art, the critic seeks to change the art to suit how the critic would have liked to receive it.

This also affects how a writer places anything down from the initial puke draft to the final product. Instead of just letting the art fly and choosing after the fact to see what the critics react to, I feel as if writers are starting to write to what the critics might enjoy. By doing this, they are compromising themselves. The critic is not the audience. It is a form of belief which communicates an opinion to the audience and in many ways is a sideshow to what the audience can expect from a piece of art.

That's my opinion, needing to be said, as I just criticized the critics. See, I'm no better than they are.

Before you suggest that I rambled on; that was my attempt. Because I want critics. They tell you what someone who has separated themselves from emotion thinks of your work. And by seeing what the critics think, a long as you take it with a grain of salt, it improves your writing.

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