First, unsolicited critiques carry zero value and significant rudeness if they're not welcome. Talk about a way to shatter the inclusive mood for absolutely zero value added.
i do believe you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone on here that disagrees with this sentiment. i'm sure almost all of us would ask first -- either for a crit, or to offer a crit.
for example, i would love your opinion on my potion story.
I don't think any of us are qualified to be dolling out unsolicited, overall assessments of people. I question even our specific assessments, much of the time, including my own. Focusing on this sentence, that absent quality, etc., is risky and technically challenging enough for many of us, and speaking frankly not all of us even manage that very well.
We are not instructors or teachers - we do not (always) do a good enough job of sterilizing our feedback from our tastes and preferences and opinions, myself included. We're amateurish - regardless of how well read we are. And again, many of us give our opinions and tastes the weight of law, myself included.
indeed. most of us are not instructors or teachers.
but, we do have published authors, editors, and reviewers among our crowd. and we have a lot of people who read, understand, and deconstruct genre fiction because they want to be writers.
"I ran your material through my amazing opinion generator and I found it to be 89% passive voice resistant aluminum, which as you know is non-magnetic. So I assessed its grammatical weight coefficient to be .4, which, uh, carry the one, divide by the most common pronoun - gives you a six out of INFINITE POSSIBILITIES."
love this. love, love, love. if there was a literary criticism version of the onion, this would be published on it.
I don't know why, but analyzing stories and writing and delivering opinions takes up much, much more of our collective discussions and attention than studies of the actual craft and honing of technical skills - meaning this is a collective of wanna be critics, which is fine. But as a wannabe writer, I can tell you, that's not attractive.
i feel like i've missed something. like, part of a conversation somewhere. i keep reading this bit and can't really parse it.
i don't understand the difference between "analyzing stories and writing and delivering opinions" and "studies of the actual craft". literary criticism has long been the best way to learn how to write. to deconstruct and analyze the hows and whys of successful writing.
speaking from personal experience, over the last year or so, working through my own stories, getting criticism from others, and studying how others look at my work, and how to push the right buttons for reader enjoyment -- it's been incredible.
i thought my own writing was "amazing". you can see a sample of it here:
http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/(jun-2015)-multiple-povs/(jun-2015)-multiple-povs-submission-thread/msg104959/#msg104959that's my very first submission.
i read it now, and want to dig out my eyeballs. with a SPOON.
the entire reason i came to these forums was to start working on my craft. thoughts, criticism, and advice from the people here has largely contributed to the ABSOLUTE GULF in quality from that story, to this past month's pirates story:
http://fantasy-faction.com/forum/(sep-2016)-pirates!/(sep-2016)-pirates!-submission-thread/msg152579/#msg152579i don't think i would have made that much progress in a year muddling along on my own, working at my craft in solitude. the people here have helped me tremendously so far and i will NEVER forget that.
not even when i'm one of those rich and famous authors living in a giant castle.