Once Upon A Time...
If you can't say anything nice...come sit over here by me by LJC
A great little essay (part of a series, Once Upon A Time, written by LJC) on giving and receiving critical feedback in fanfiction. Many writers these days get their knickers in a twist over the small piece of constructive criticism, and to them I quote from LJC's If you can't say anything nice...come sit over here by me:
"The cardinal rule of writing is that the quality of the work should come before the writer's ego. Always. Period. There are no exceptions."
In other words: It's nothing personal, I just don't like to like to see my characters butchered.
It seems more and more authors are writing for the reviews (only positive ones at that) and automatically tell a reviewer to "stop reading a fic if you don't like it" if they so much as say a word on something that's not working. LJC's written a great piece regarding why people need to suck it up if they get negative feedback. She also addresses the readers and how to write GOOD negative comments (ie. saying more than "this sucked"). If you're one of those writers who can't stand hearing something bad said about your fic, you really need to read this article. In fact, I think everyone should at least skim through it.
Normally, I keep my mouth shut if I don't like something (I'm really blunt with these things) because I really don't have the time nor the desire to deal with all the crap and drama that could arise. The reason I usually don't like something is not due to the content either (I'm willing to try almost anything), rather, related to things like characterization (the case 98% of the time). Also, no matter how good your writing is, if you're trying to "blackmail" your readers into leaving comments, or fishing for compliments for the sake of ego stroking (that royally pisses me off, and you know who you are), I definitely won't be reviewing your story. While the latter cannot be influenced by a reader (not that I've seen), the former definitely can.
So I'm rethinking my stance on the no constructive criticism thing. After all, if I prefer to have the weaker points of my story pointed out for future improvement, other authors must too, right? The problem is, it's hard to tell which ones will welcome it, and which ones would bite your head off.
Anyways, I definitely recommend all writers to go through this short piece; it's worth a read =)