Posted this to my LJ the other day, thought it might go well here
I hate, hate, hate-hate HATE! review whoring. I have stopped reading stories based on petulant comments by the author that went along the lines of "Review or I'll stop writing" (and sometimes in so many words
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Yes, "reviews" that say "good" or "update!" (my favourite is when you've marked the story as completed and you keep getting those *bangs head on wall*) are annoying. I ignore them completely.
And surely you understand the difference between "I love reviews!" or "reviews feed the muse!" (or even "fanfic writers only get paid in reviews" or whatever.) and a 2000 word chapter that is followed by 500 words worth of "OMG can you believe $character said '$whatever'?! And what did you think about $other_character's outfit? Wasn't that trashy?!?!?! And wasn't it cool when $random_character showed up out of nowhere for no good reason?! I can tell you *that's* going to come into play later! And don't forget $plot_twist from $chapter#, that still hasn't been addressed, how do you think that's going to pan out?? And who do you think will fill $position now that $character_I_offed has been rendered useless?"
E-v-e-r-y. S-i-n-g-l-e. C-h-a-p-t-e-r.
THAT is not "being addicted to writing". That is being addicted to being told you're the coolest, most clever person that ever existed in all the universe.
You know, I read a story one time that was kind of fluffy and quite frankly, rather pointless. The plot wasn't all that developed, the characters were kind of bland, there was no angst and there weren't cliffhangers every fifteen feet. But it managed to hold my interest.
And I left a comment along the lines of "thank you for that calm, stress-free read". Because I'd had quite enough of chaos in my own life, thank you very much, and to be able to just read without having to half leap out of my skin at every turn was relaxing and very pleasant. And I enjoyed the story on those merits, but I didn't give an in-depth analysis of every freaking word in every freaking chapter, which is what these people *I* am talking about are veritably *demanding*.
There are something like eighteen gabillion HP fanfic writers. A lot of stories have elements similar to other stories. Even a new writer who's never even SEEN fanfic before is (perhaps even MORE!) likely to have an alarming number of elements that other stories have had. There's really only so many times and so many ways you can say "I really loved how Hermione fell in love with Crabbe" or whatever.
I do try to leave a comment to every story I read if I can think of something worth saying; I don't do it for every chapter. I don't expect my readers to do it for every chapter.
But I don't want to be hustled, either.
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I don't even know who you are. If you're writing on an archive I don't even know if I've read anything of yours. I am not in the least bit sure how you got that this entire thing was directed at you. You are not the only person, even in this thread, who said that the writers have every right to behave in a way I find reprehensible.
I did not make any "unqualified statements". We aren't allowed to point to exact examples or quote people, so I had to paraphrase. I said I hate review *WHORING*. I don't hate when people *ask* for reviews or express appreciation at getting them. There's a difference. Honestly, if you haven't seen the difference, you haven't seen the whoring I've seen, which is probably to your benefit. But really, if you'd just read what I wrote, and not decide you know I mean something different than what I stated explicitly, you'd have a better understanding.
My point in using your "addicted to writing" quote was that you seemed to be sticking up for the people who are demanding/soliciting/whoring for reviews/refusing to write if they don't get them/refusing to write if they don't get ones to tell them what they want to hear, on the basis that *they* are "addicted to writing". If they were addicted to writing, they'd write, not beg, plead, grovel, solicit and quite frankly act like prostitutes for reviews. "I'll write the next chapter if you tell me how awesome I am".
In the review I posted to the fluffy story, it never occurred to me that the author just wanted some calm writing, but it's entirely possible. And I don't think "Thank you for a nice, relaxing and enjoyable bit of reading" is "critical", which is about what I said.
You know, I wrote a smut story for an exchange once and it was well received and I'm very grateful. But I would've been just as happy with "z0mg the WINE!" in a comment as the concrit reviews I got (because the wine thing was fairly subtle, but I loved it.)
But I posted the story, and in my author's notes I thanked my beta team and the people I bounced ideas off of.
What I didn't do was say "So, what do you think about Snape staring at Narcissa's arse? How about Narcissa's outfit? Didn't you think the party was so brilliant? How about those Murex dyed curtains; wasn't that cool? Murex is supposed to be so dark purple it's almost black and I thought that was a perfect fit for the Black-Malfoy family dynamic. Isn't it great that they were fucking so hard they destroyed the floor?! And what about that portrait, isn't that gross? And wasn't the wine a fantastic touch? I'm really proud of myself for that! Isn't Legilimency sex z0mg teh hawt??? And BELLATRIX!!! Wasn't she divinely evil and crazy and pissed off? And hnmmm, if you review me enough, I'll post the subsequent interlude between the three of them! Review!!!" (Now granted, I haven't read this story (of my own) in a while, so I'm sure if I had just read it or just written it I could come up with another thousand words of this dreck. Hopefully you get the idea.)
Do you truly not see the difference between that and "Thank you to all my reviewers who have provided me with feedback and helped me to improve my writing. I try to respond to every one!"
Because if you don't see that one is blatantly obnoxious and offensive, and the other graceful and humble, there's really not a lot of middle ground here.
*I* am talking about the former. *YOU* are talking about the latter. They are not the same thing. At all.
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