Why did “be critical of your media” turn into “find all its flaws and hate it” why did people become allergic to FUN
Because people confuse “critical as in critical thinking” with “critical as in criticizing something,” so they think that “look for something bad, no matter how far-fetched” is what “being critical” means.
They also don’t realize that “literary criticism” means…
Okay. What literary criticism IS, is like taking a mechanical clock apart to see all the gears and learn how it fits together and approach your next clock with more knowledge of what makes it tick.
What they THINK literary criticism means is, you take the clock apart and beat all the pieces with a hammer, then scream at it because it doesn’t tick for you the way it used to.
OMG SOMEBODY PUT IT IN WORDS
Yep, there it is: the scourge of workshopping all over the place. :/
Will never forget the first writers’ workshop I attended where a story was being “round-robined” (i.e., passed around a circle for critique) and the first person picked up the typed sheaf of paper and said, “Well, this was shit,” and just passed it on to the next person.
Speaking of shit, I kinda lost mine. “Excuse me, what?” I said. “You don’t get to do that!”
The person was astounded, as if I’d somehow just disallowed the law of gravity. “What?” they said, incredulous. And then, “Why not?”
“Because this is critique, not abuse.” (The person in question was fortunately familiar with the Monty Python skit in which this theme comes up. See below.) “You have to say why you think it was shit—meaning, why and how it didn’t work for you. And then you have to say how you would fix that.”
The person’s mouth was literally hanging open at the very idea. It had honestly never occurred to them that a workshop wasn’t just someplace to vent about their own preferences. They started to try to argue with me, and I just took the manuscript away from them and began a critique the way we do it in workshops I’m running. (The simplest form of this is the famous feedback sandwich, though there are many other potential ways to go.)
No work gets out of responsible workshopping/critiquing without having the hood carefully opened to see why the “engine”’s making whatever weird noises it’s making, having them and the machinery examined and diagnosed, and then politely closed up again. For irresponsible criticism—which we refer to around here as the “Rite of Spring” approach, in which abuse is somehow felt to make the writer or the work stronger—I have no damn time at all. Seriously, who made that shit up? Except somebody who doesn’t really care about either the writer or the work, and enjoys others’ suffering.
(mutter) (sigh) …Anyway, check this out. The abuse happens at 0:43. :)
