Feedback musings: Difference between revisions

{{Quotation2|[[roseveare, original poster]:

I think that often it's not so much that this sort of comment ticks an author off when applied to her own story, as it is she's seen it before applied to other people's stories and felt the burn from the other side. Say that I write Wes/Gunn. (I don't.) I see someone leave FB for someone else's Wes/Gunn story, raving about how they don't usually like slash/the pairing, but that the author really sold them on it. As a result, I'm left feeling like my own Wes/Gunn stuff is crap, substandard, out of character drivel, even though it's entirely possible that the feedbacker has never *any* other Wes/Gunn or my stories.  

Perhaps FB shouldn't be prefaced with "I think AU is crappy and most femslash is PWP, but your stuff is better than that." Whether or not you found it insulting, I'd like to fess up to being a thoughtless feedbacker. And I'd also like to qualify my remarks in that vein as is clear most of mine should be with . . . during my initial journey of anything fanfic at all some AU and femslash stories weren't that great and didn't appeal to me. At which point my prejudices and filters were firmly in place. YOU opened my eyes and I'm discovering a lot of stuff I missed previously. Thanks. LOL.

As to the point, before I hijacked it, I'm not sure. I haven't done much feedback (at all) and am a very cautious dialoguer, even in RL -- except when drunk. So I have been finding discussions re feedback interesting and informative. However, I know from experience that I'm super-sensitive to even implied criticism, and could certainly believe that, depending on the tone, public FB FB might have a chilling effect. Interesting question about observation affecting the phenomenon.

Discussions I have read recently though have really made me self-examine my attitude toward fem slash and het fic. I don't have any problem with the above in pure porn but tend to avoid them in fanfic. I think it may have something to do with over-identification and protectiveness toward female characters. Something I never considered before. So once again, glad those discussions were happening out in the public.

So. Yeah. I stopped sending out feedback altogether for slash-fiction after I recommended Anna S.'s "Sidelines" on BetterBuffyFics in a manner that basically amounted to "A massive amount of Spike/Xander fiction really, really sucks and makes me cringe, but this story really does not"--and then I was royally slammed on the LJ circuit for being a Poor Ignorant Homophobe who had read maybe 2 S/X stories and was making a smug stereotypical generalization based on them and that I should be sent back to Fandom Boot Camp and taught some manners.

I am not a slasher. Unconventional, uncanon pairings as a whole leave me unmoved. But I have seen and/or read enough Spike/Xander fiction (and other kinds of ship-fiction) to know that since A)when there are a lot of any kind of stories for a popular 'ship, a LOT of them will really, really suck, B)S/X is a popular slash-ship, C)there are a LOT of S/X stories, so A+B+C=D)a LOT of Spike/Xander stories really, really suck.

Someday I will preface a Spike/Buffy fic rec with "A massive amount of Spuffy fiction really, really sucks and makes me cringe", and I will be drawn and quartered, and as I die I will ''laugh and laugh and LAUGH''.

Before I began writing "Buffy" fiction, in another fandom I regularly wrote fiction focused on a character and romantic pairing that were EXTREMELY unpopular in the vocal majority of that fandom (which, funnily enough, was mostly slash-oriented). I've never received huge gobs of feedback for any of those stories, but on the occasions when I did get positive feedback, it would sometimes be from people in the mainstream fandom who didn't really like the character I was writing about, and it would often start "I don't really like (Character) very much, but your story..." What I learned from that was there will always be a lot of people who don't like the character and/or pairing that you love enough to write about. The very existence of this character/pairing squicks them. The existence of YOU as a squicky fan of the squick squicks them. Most of them will avoid you, and you them, and you will be happy on opposite sides of the fandom pond. But once in a while one of them will for some wild reason read one of your stories (maybe s/he is drunk, maybe s/he is on a dare, maybe s/he is a masochist). And for whatever reasons, s/he will LOVE it and be surprised by that.

Well, I think I'm a bad feedbacker, because, due to time constraints, I often only send one line feedbacks, reasoning that they'd rather hear from me in a short form than not at all. I mean, if I read twelve stories I enjoy, but only have a limited amount of time to write feedback, I can provide detailed emails on four of the stories or I can provide quickie emails on all of them. They tend to be longer only if I liked a story in general but had some problems with it, or if I really adored the story beyond measure and need to ramble on about it. Actually, I find that I'm less likely nowadays to bother writing feedback at all for stories which are good but have major problems, because it's hard to know who will get insulted by constructive criticism (and I've sent some incredibly tactful crit in the past, with twice as much praise as criticism, and still received snotty responses from the authors). Which makes me less likely to risk it, because who needs the aggro.

Now, see, I've written that to authors before, and they've always taken it as a compliment (or if it did tick them off, they kept quiet about it). As a reader, I've always seen it as a compliment,t o be able to say "I don't believe in this pairing, but within the context of this story, I totally believed it and rooted for it" because it's a testament to the writer's skill.}}

 

On the other hand, I hesitate to say that authors, fans, people of any stripe, should stop talking about behaviour or words that offend them. Sometimes it goes round and round in circles (and if we never have another meta-discussion on BBF, I will be a happy little clam) but sometimes at least individual people get a sense of *why* a particular phrasing could hit someone's own insecurity buttons, and seem more hurtful than complimentary. There's a difference between a feedbacker having to learn how to best kiss writers' asses, (to paraphrase a comment above) and a writer talking about how some phrasings feel hurtful to them, and why.

I was involved, though, in that lj-discussion that octopedingenue references, that spread from the Sidelines recs on BBF. I still more or less maintain the position I had then -- it's one thing to say such things privately to the author -- but constant reiterations (not necessarily by the same person) that most or all of the writing in a particular subgenre sucks and this is the *only* one that one has ever found convincing, in a public place where other writers of that subgenre congregate? They're bound to make those writers do the "Do they mean me? Was that a veiled insult? Was that a direct insult?" dance. There's a huge difference between private feedback -- for the benefit of an author only -- and public recommendation that's shared with a wide audience. I don't think it's out of line to point out that "Author X's new story is the best [blank] story I have ever read" could feel less alienating to part of that wide audience than "I have read lots of [blank], almost all of it sucked, and Author X's is the only one that works for me." I'd rather have my own work directly compared and found wanting (as one recommender did, more or less, and I had no problem whatsoever wih that) than have to play the author-insecurity game of "Does she mean me? Even if she doesn't mean me, then she doesn't think I'm important enough to remember as one of the exceptions... Hmm..."}}

Yes, there is a tendency to sometimes get picky during the boom times. (I remember, in the aftermath of "Phoenix Burning," that I should really compile a list of the many ways people can spell "Phoenix.") And though I've gotten "I don't usually read X but I loved yours" comments that I found really winning and complimentary, there have been a handful that I didn't enjoy -- usually from people who felt the need to spend MORE time bashing the pairing/show/event/etc. than talking about the story in question. (As far as that goes, I think it's all a matter of tone and degree. The vast majority of people who say it mean well, and it shows. A few people use the FB as a chance to flame the element they usually avoid, and I think that's extremely uncool.)  

I give feedback as often as I can. I want it for my writing and as I get so little of it, I appreciate the time and efforet that goes into each piece. I don't cry if I don't get any, and negative feedback makes me look at what I've done more critically for improvement but I don't need it to continue writing. But just because I don't need it, doesn't mean I don't want, like and appreciate it.

As a "on the fringes of fandom" pretty unknown fic writer, I very rarely get feedback, unless I write genre-specific fic. That means, writing a popular 'ship will often get you much more feedback if you know where to post it (my earlier works were clearly written for the b/a audience). If I post a "happy" (I can hear several of my lj friends laughing hysterically at that) fic to a list like BA Fluff, I'm pretty much guaranteed some feedback which is nice and I've adored every bit of feedback I've ever recieved.

I've been tempted to write "I don't usually read X type of story, but I loved this one..." because early in my fic reading years, I rarely ventured outside of B/A. Now, I'm all "slash! where's my slash at?" and hunting down Wesley-centric stories, Wesley/Lilah, Wesley/Faith, Wesley/Anyone because that boy is fabulous.  

I've seen reccs that go "I usually don't read Buffy/Angel fics, but this story..." which could be insulting, but I don't see it that way, because we all have our preferences. I myself will not seek out Angel/Cordelia fic, yet I've read some stories that are marvelous, beautiful characterizations and stunning pieces of fiction.  

When I receive feedback, I do a happy dance. It can be one word, it can be "kewl :-)" (although purposely writing badly annoys me, especially when chatting), I'm a total whore for it. Anything, anything, I will love it. Is long though-out feedback amazing to recieve? Why yes it is, but anything is wonderful, that's my thoughts on it.

{{Quotation2|[[snacky]:

Send some to me, babe. I'll write you back - even if you start off with "I don't usually read non-MSR...". *g*

All this Feedback Decline talk is really interesting, but I'm beginning to wonder: maybe writers are getting less feedback because we're all too busy reading and commenting in each other's LJs?