#a big ass response from the general public after you've improved your writing enough to impress the masses

[echodrops]

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of posts going around about how you should never leave criticism on someone’s fanfic unless they directly ask for it, and while I agree there’s a definite line between constructive criticism and cutting someone down just to cut them down, I’m struggling to grasp the fact that there are people who post their works out on the internet in front of the public and don’t, in any way, shape, or form, want their works to be open to criticism. Something something Roland Barthes is rolling over in his grave something something.

I started writing fanfiction a staggeringly long time ago, and when I started, my writing was really, really bad. Like, truly embarrassing. I cringe just thinking about it. And actually, I received many positive comments, even on those original cringe-worthy pieces! (Not that my fics currently aren’t cringe-worthy...) But none of those positive comments changed my writing. The only comments that ever helped me grow were the negative ones.

Sometimes (oftentimes) negative remarks pissed me off. Sometimes (oftentimes) I insisted until I was blue in the face that the person who commented negatively was wrong. If I had had the power to reject those criticisms--or to stop those readers before they could give me their criticisms and tell them I didn’t want them, I definitely would have. As a young writer, I had a very hard time admitting that my work wasn’t at the level I thought it was (I was even more full of myself back then, you know). Who are they to talk?! I thought.

But at the end of the day, the negative comments were almost always right, even if they weren’t kindly worded, and the things they were pointing out in my writing really could be improved a lot. When, after huffing and puffing and feeling bad for myself a bit, I finally got over each criticism and actually thought about their comments, my writing always improved.

I have received thousands of positive comments. I have seen hundreds of variants on “My favorite part was this; you did this part so well!” People have changed careers because of stuff that I wrote, they liked it that much. But you know what sticks with me most, even more than that? One time someone told me my pacing sucked. One time someone told me my dialogue felt robotic. One time sometime told me my writing was about as subtle as being hit with a bag of bricks. I literally remember, almost word-for-word, every critical comment my fics have ever gotten.

I never explicitly asked for those criticisms. And I certainly didn’t think I needed them at the time. If someone had said first “Do you want concrit?” I would have flat out told them no. I wouldn’t have even known to ask for criticisms in those areas if I had wanted them because I didn’t even know those areas existed. But some people took the initiative to tell me what I was doing “wrong” or what I could “fix,” and first I got mad but then... I got better.

A bit of a jump here, but this situation brings to mind two moments where I made very different decisions as a reader. Once, maybe 10-ish years ago (Jesus Christ), in the height of the Durarara’s fandom’s peak, I read a fic whose plot and characterization I found very well done, but which, about half way through, picked up a bad habit of truly excessive use of repetition. I’m talking the same line being repeated 14 or 15 times in a single chapter. Once this had dragged on (and worsened) for five or six chapters, I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and I--politely, thank you--explained in the comments that while I appreciated some repetition, it was getting hard to enjoy the story because the repetition was losing its impact from being overused.

The author didn’t ask for that criticism. That was actually the first time I’d ever even commented on their work at all. They didn’t know me from George at the corner store. But I felt compelled to say something because I loved their fic’s idea and I knew it could be fantastic if the author just addressed that one thing. I genuinely cared for that fic and wanted to see it, and its author, grow. And you know what? The author listened. The repetition dwindled to an effective level and the fic was infinitely better for it; she received a greater number of positive comments, and now, my hope is that person is somewhere else, in some other fandom, still writing away--with effective repetition this time.

Contrast that with a fic I read much more recently, just last year. Originally the writing style started out straightforward and easy to follow and I quite liked the premise, so I followed it for a long time. But over time, the writing grew into... just a deluge of metaphors and similes. We’re talking a metaphor or a simile on virtually every line, often with minimal connection between them, so that the images changed so rapidly it felt like the actual characters and plot were being completely lost underneath the churning sea of literary devices (see what I did there?). I was at a crossroads. I could comment on the fic and tell the author that I really wanted to keep enjoying it but was finding it hard to follow with the new writing style. Or I could just stop reading.

In the end, I dropped the fic, and I guess I’ll never know how it finished. I didn’t give the author my criticism, not because I thought they’d take it badly... But because I just didn’t care enough about their story. I wasn’t emotionally invested enough to try to help it become clearer. I didn’t feel passionately about wanting to see it improve.

As a writer, excited keyboard smash from happy fans certainly doesn’t displease me... But it doesn’t make think deeply about myself, my achievements, or who am I as an artist. It’s moments like the ones above, when the question of criticism arises, that truly leave me thinking... How many people have silently engaged with my work, wanted to see something about it improve, and instead... just gave up on me, stopped being my readers at all?

To me, that’s so, so, so much worse than the occasionally rudely-worded critical comment, because, hey, those people still took the time to tell me what they thought was bad. They felt enough about my story that they thought it was worth commenting to try to effect change. Whether they did it politely or not, they did care.

But somewhere out there, there are thousands of people who just didn’t care enough to feel compelled to comment before quitting my stories. What were their thoughts? What weaknesses did they see in my writing?

If every one of them had commented to suggest improvements, I can’t help but wonder, how much better could I be?