Tips to Writing Productive Comments from Creative Writing 057

[Tunicate]

Some Tips to Writing Productive Comments

1. Support each of your claims about that person’s work by providing evidence or examples from the submission.

2. Refer to the technical aspects of the work whenever possible. For example, discuss "dialogue” instead of “the parts where people talk.”

3. Don’t feel obligated to correct every single instance of a particular error. If you notice a pattern of error, point out that error once, clarify the mistake, and let the person know that the same mistake is repeated throughout the manuscript.

4. If you are unsure of something, especially in technical craft matters, consult an instructor or double-check in a reference text. While bad advice is both bad and unproductive, not caring about offering bad advice is worse.

5. Don’t waste valuable page space with quotations. Unless a lengthy quotation is absolutely necessary, you are probably better off indicating where the passage in question begins and ends on the manuscript.

6. Generally what one gets out of a workshop is decided by what they contribute to the workshop. Write the sort of comments that you would want someone to be writing for you.

7. Always, always, always meet the minimum page length.



Some sample questions to ask yourself while reading your peer’s work:

1. Who is the protagonist?
2. Do you care about the protagonist?
3. What does the protagonist want?
4. What is standing in the way of them getting it?
5. What is at risk in the story? What are the stakes? Who or what is “bringing the heat?”/driving the plot?
6. Where is the story’s main conflict/crisis?
7. How are things resolved (or not resolved)?
8. What is the story about?
9. Can you see the setting?
10. Can you see the characters?
11. Who is the antagonist?
12. What does the antagonist want?
13. At what point does the story hook your attention?
14. At what point would you stop reading? Why?
15. What are the stories main themes?
16. What are the stories main motifs?
17. Does the dialogue work?
18. Is the story well paced? Does it drag in some places and feel rushed in others?
19. Is the tense consistent?
20. Does the POV slip or head hop? Does it seem like the right voice for the story?
21. What stays with you about the story once you finish reading it?
22. Are there clichés? (either on a sentence level, character level, action, or the greater story)
23. How are: sentence construction, grammar, syntax, and punctuation?
24. Are there pattern errors or tics that you notice and can point out to the author?
25. How would you characterize the story’s structure?
26. Is this structure working?
27. Are any of the characters overly passive?
28. Does the action read smoothly?
29. Does the story feel too much like a rip off of popular T.V. shows, films, or commercial fiction?
30. Is there gratuitous action, violence, drug use, swearing, or sex?
31. Is it melodramatic?
32. Are all of the scenes, soliloquies, conversations, and descriptions pertinent, relevant, and meaningful to the story?
33. Are you moved, affected, or disturbed by the story?
34. Does the title draw you into the story? Does it seem appropriate?


Bad Critiques
(Courtesy of Prof. Michael Jayme & Carly Kimmel)

Below are some bad and thoughtless excerpts from generally bad and thoughtless critics. Kindly review the samples below to get a sense of what to avoid in your responses for this class, both in discussion and in your responses.

The “I Can’t Relate to This” Critique:
“This story was boring. I had a hard time understanding it and that made it really hard to follow. It should be more interesting because most people don’t care about making tea for their grandmothers. Maybe you could have the grandmother be a younger woman or more like you.”

The “I Don’t Like This in Real Life, So I Can’t Like It in a Story Either” Critique:
“I used to work in the Brea mall, and I always found people like your character C really annoying. All they ever did was talk about how bad their retail jobs were. If they’re so bad they should just quit them. If I was C’s friend, F, I’d tell him to quit being such a whiner and move on with his life.”

The “I’m Going to Make You Cry” Critique:
“Does anyone care about this kind of stuff anymore? We’ve all read The House on Mango Street; we don’t need you rewriting it for us here.”

“I don’t think that this story is any good because it’s [sic] grammer [sic] is full of mistakes. Maybe you should learn to write better before taking another class like this.”

The “I Don’t Want to Offend You, So I Won’t Say Anything Critical” Critique:
“This story is so good. It has a lot of heart and it seems to be really honest. Your characters seem real, like people I’ve known all my life. The dialogue is pretty good too and I like the way M looks at the world. Maybe you might include some more description in the part where they’re at the mall buying lemonade. Great stuff!”

“Wow! This is a really interesting story! Your style is totally different than mine and I don’t usually read this kind of stuff so I’m not sure what to tell you. It’s really dreamlike and personal, especially the part where you talk about being on the beach and the ocean being pink. It seems like something you made a lot of this dream, really random and interesting.”

The “I’m Going to Fix What I Think Is Wrong with Your Story” Critique:
“Your language should be more powerful and your character would appeal to more readers if she was less jaded about the world around her. Doing this will make more readers appreciate her and her world view. Instead of going to a movie, they should go to a sports event—I was thinking a football game—because she’s so concerned with her body.”

The “I’m Going to Use Fancy-Sounding Terms to Confuse You and By Confusing You I’ll Sound Really Smart” Critique:
“This story should have more fictional aspects in it that create a true fictional environment.”

“If you concentrated more on his internalized dialogue you could create more emotionalized pathos in the foreshadowing vignettes.”

The “I Think I'm Saying Something But I'm Really Not” Comment
“That description on page two really says a lot about Li Jin’s character.”

“These gestures communicate so much about the characters in your story.”

“I found the way they talk to one another in the kitchen to be very interesting.”

The “I’ll Fill Up Page Space By Summarizing Your Story for You” Critique:
“An interesting piece about the way mothers treat their daughters. M’s daughter is seven years old, and they live in Savannah, Georgia in the 1970’s. They are growing tomatoes for the upcoming county fair and M is worried about the vines starting to dry up.”

The “Let Me Tell You What You Wrote” Comment
“This story is told in the third person and it presents the events of an afternoon when a mother and daughter are briefly reunited in a train station.”

The “I Know Everything” Critique:
“The soldier in your story seems really fake. My brother was in the army; actually he was in the first Desert Storm. He was really annoyed by the heat there, especially because he couldn’t get anything cold to drink. You character will only be believable you make him hate the heat.”

The “I Know Nothing Except (Bad) TV Shows and (Bad) Movies” Critique:
“This story is like an episode of that show CSI. I liked the parts where Detective V is solving the murder best. It reminded me of Hannibal when they are analyzing the letter to find out where Hannibal is hiding.”

The “I’m Assuming the Narrator/Character Is the Author” Critique:
“I thought that this character was funny in a lot ways. The way you talk about your dad made me crack up. The best part is when you are with him in the liquor store and he wants to buy you a beer. I thought that was really, really funny.”

The “Let Me Vent All My Problems” Critique:
“I’m sorry that I don’t have too much to say about your story. I’m moving out of my apartment this week and things have been pretty crazy. I can tell you that when I read your story it reminded me of my ex-boyfriend. He smoked a lot of pot too, so I could really relate to how frustrating it is to have someone like that in your life.”


I hope this helps, you guys. Sometimes, when no one else is around to give advice, this stuff can be just as beneficial when you read over it all on your own. Truthfully, the most you can get out of writing is by reading, producing, and letting other people read your work. Cheers.

[Tunicate]

just one bump so people will read it o.0

[Lanny]

Not bad, I'm not a big fan of copypasta but I can see how it could be useful.

[Tunicate]

It's actually meant to be for a University level creative writing class and is intellectual property of the professors. There is one downloadable file that I got through taking crwt 57 so I figured I'd share. I really shouldn't be posting things from that site, but I assure you, it's the original text. It doesn't change hands often, outside the parameters of my school.

[Zygo Orbitale]

I can't believe you broke the first two rules of writing club.