bubosquared | Random Fandom Pet Peeve

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soapbox climbing

Random Fandom Pet Peeve

The whole argument/idea that unless someone is a writer themself, they're not allowed to have/express opinions on someone else's writing.

Look, I can't cook for shit, but if something has too much salt in it, or bread is stale, or whatever, and the cook asks for my opinion, I'm gonna be honest. Just because someone is not a writer does not mean their opinions should not have any worth!

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Oh, right on, honey! One of the best/favorite betas I've ever had is not a writer herself, but she has a great instinct for what works, what doesn't and how to fix it, and a lot of the technical (mostly punctuation) stuff that just slides right by me.

the question that always comes to my mind is- who are you writing for? If you're specifically writing for other writers, then I suppose you can argue that non-writer's perspective won't do you much good, but if you're writing for a general reading audience (as most slash is, really) then how can you possibly say readers aren't any value? You want them to read what you've written and enjoy it, but they're not allowed to have opinions? How's that work?

*puzzled*

Ah, but see, "let's see you do better, then" is an argument I've seen A LOT of times in discussions and critique. And I HATE it!

but. That's not what it's *about*. (I mean. I have said that. But only to people who'll take it the right way. Like Neph, who recognises it for the bitchwhine fest that it is, and ignores me until I'm actaully going to listen.)

Meh. I'm normally complaining that people don't pick apart my fic enough when they read it. I *want* to know about things that worked or didn't, be they writer or reader. (Most of my beta-pool at the moment is people who write, but not fiction and/or not slash. They're amazingly tolerant. :)

(watching kevin Fear factor. Seriously feeling the Kevin-love here, man.)

But see, you know that and I know that, but the McFandom doesn't know that.

There's a reason I've always deliberately kept myself out of the "inner circles" and the BNF-ness and the big socialising of fandom.

Right on, baby. The best beta I ever had wasn't a writer, and she picked stuff out of my work that nobody and I mean NOBODY had ever called me on before. I mean, really awful stuff. But anyway.

*pets you*

See, sometimes I think a non-writer beta is actually better, cause they don't kno what it feels like to have your story torn to shreds, and they'll be more likely to tell you what you need to know to improve.

Yeah. Because another writer will be more likely to be all, "Crap, I can't say that..." than someone who doesn't know that writing can be like doing open heart surgery on yourself without an anesthetic.

heh.

Yep, exactly. Sometimes you need someone to be cruel with you or you'll never get better.

I recall having this discussion on an ER message board I was on back in the day when I still wrote FPF. And the issue popped up because some guy appeared and denounced most of the authors on the list, and called them lazy and their work garbage. (In those words) And if that wasn't bad enough, he didn't offer anything to help lazy writers to not produce garbage. He wasn't a writer himself.

And while I don't mind C&C from a non-writer, I just think that if you don't have anything helpful to say then you should keep your mouth shut. With the cooking analogy, if you can say: hey, this is too salty then you've said something that's helpful. But just to say: God, your cooking sucks that's well, it's rude. I've found that non-writers are more likely to send out a flame (with the exception of on FF.N) and from the flames I've gotten they either know nothing about writitng, or nothing about my subject matter and want to argue with me about it.

But no, see, I agree that that guy was prolly a jerk, and wasn't contributing anything in the way of constructive criticism, but what does that have to do with the fact that he wasn't a writer? I've seen a LOT of writers do that exact same thing; I've seen readers give GREAT c&c, so why bring that factor into it at all?

Good point. I guess I skated over the issue there.

Exactly! I had an arguement with someone about this recently. Friend of a friend wanted me to read her work. Fair enough. Read it, good concept, but there weren't enough details, the dialouge was a bit stiff, and she had spelling problems. And, I told her this when she asked what I thought.

Her response: "Well, what would you know anyway? You're not even a writer."

I'm not going to go into details. But really, its like some people just can't understand logic. Blah.

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