February 3, 2012

Someone doesn’t like your story.

By Reesa
This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2012 at 01:01 and posted in Reesa, Reesa Rambles About Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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4 Responses to “Someone doesn’t like your story.”

  • Patrick Scaffido
    February 3rd, 2012 at 15:48

    Seconded. One wonders if the sheer fact of someone disliking something about a novel indicates a flavor in the novel that comes through strongly, something some will react negatively to and some will react strongly to.

    I’m not saying it excuses lack of improvement, but if someone doesn’t like your novel because it is too grim, there is probably someone who likes it for the grimness. So play to the strengths instead of focusing on the flaws? Maybe flaws and strengths are ultimately the same thing from different perspectives in a work of fiction?

  • Reesa
    February 3rd, 2012 at 19:06

    I hadn’t really thought of it that way, Patrick, but I think you’re onto something there. “Everyone” likes chocolate, but I can think of at least three people I know who don’t. There is no universal flavour that guarantees everyone will like something, so I suppose (just to stretch this metaphor as far as we can), a good cook would simply emphasize the flavours they want to highlight, that work best with the dish, and make it something really special for the people who do like them.

    I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that flaws and strengths are the same thing, but I do think that with anything you’re putting out for hundreds of other eyes, you’re going to get those people who see something from their own experience, and react in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine. Of course, if you can’t construct a sentence, and someone calls you on it, that’s probably as close to a universal flaw as you’re going to get.

  • Patrick Scaffido
    February 6th, 2012 at 17:40

    Hmm Good point. Maybe it’s he idea of dividing flaws from interpreting taste as flaws in a work. That accounts for the sentence issue (an actual flaw) versus someone who refuses to use punctuation for artistic reasons (not an inherent flaw but might turn off a number of readers).

    It seems like most of the one star reviews of works I’ve read have been more for the second than the first: disliking that a character uses drugs instead of it being portrayed in a unskilled way for example. This one comes to mind from some edgy werewolf romance story I was reading about the other day. The reviewer was saying “werewolves + drugs + portrayal of relationships = bads” when it was more a matter of the reviewer clearly not being intere33sted in reading about those things.

    Does that make sense? Though then you have the fun job of figuring out what the line between experimental and just plain bad is.

  • Because I’m Super-Avoider, Author Who Won’t Write! today… | Awydd
    February 29th, 2012 at 22:52

    […] I read the latest post over at Michelle and Reesa’s blog, then re-read Reesa’s post about the people out there who don’t like your (whoever you may be) story. […]