GUEST: Robert Bevan

Guest Poster: Robert Bevan

On: Writing What You Want To Read,Self-Confidence, and 

Taking Criticism.

Warning: Guest poster cussage. 

So I was telling my good friend, beta partner, and author of the comic fantasy Critical Failures, Robert Bevan, that he should write a guest post for my writery blog. Now, let me infodump a mo here. Bobby and I have been friends for... a year now? Seems like more than a year. A few days ago, I was remembering how we first met and realized that beginning had a valuable message. So I said to Bobby, "Bobby, how did it feel when you first had the idea for CF?" 

Robert Bevan:

I first had the idea for Critical Failures while I was getting toward the end of an entirely unrelated novel that wasn't really falling into place like I thought it would. 

The climactic scene I was writing involved my characters being forced to act stupid in order for my own clever ideas to be implemented (hint: don't do that). And then I had a bunch of boring backstory I still had to dump on the reader in a Scooby-Doo-esque explanatory ending in order for a lot of things in the book to make sense in retrospect (hint: don't do that).


But I'd gotten that far, and I'd be damned if I was going to just abandon it unfinished to start up something new. If I let myself get away with that, I might never finish anything. So I rushed through a shitty ending and then abandoned it so I could start on the then yet-to-be-titled Critical Failures.

The bare-bones premise actually sounds kind of lame when I tell other people about it. A group of guys get transported into the world of their fantasy roleplaying game. For every person who was intrigued by that last sentence, another six people just went back to watching porn.

I got the same reaction when I told people what I was writing while I was writing it. "That sounds a lot like the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon," they'd say. Yeah? Well it's nothing fucking like that.

So what do you do when you tell people about what you're writing and their eyes glaze over, or they actually come right out and criticize your idea. ("That's been done before." "So you're just writing out your D&D adventure?" "Stop licking me.") First and foremost, you should be doing more writing and less talking about it.

But you're excited about it, and writing a novel is a hard, lonely road. I get that. Sometimes you're going to want to talk about it.

So what do you do about the people who are obviously faking enthusiasm until they can find an escape from the conversation? You learn to pick up on that and then try to help them find their exit. They don't want to listen to you, and so you're not going to get anything useful out of them.

Hopefully you'll run into some people who are genuinely excited by your idea and gush about it. You don't really need advice for that; you know exactly what to do. Bask in that shit.

That leaves you with the people who are paying attention, but just aren't too keen on the idea for whatever reason... hopefully a reason which they will share with you. People who are willing to give you legitimate criticism, be it for your idea about your book, or any aspect of your life, are well worth listening to... at least initially. Take the criticism graciously, consider it thoroughly, and either accept or reject it.

For example, rejecting most of the initial criticism for my book's premise was easy, because I knew why people were criticizing it, and I knew that they were wrong in their preconceptions of what it was going to be. They fell mainly into two camps. People who thought I was trying to rewrite the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, and people who thought I was simply narrating the D&D adventure that I was currently playing with my friends. I was doing neither of these things. 

But don't let seemingly easy rejections go entirely unexplored. Rejecting Joan's advice to change the POV on my completed first draft manuscript from omni to limited third person seemed like a no-brainer. First of all, I thought it sounded just fine as it was. Secondly, fuck no! That's a shit ton of work to do. But she talked me into it, and it was, of course, the right thing to do.

And hell, even if your idea is lame, keep writing it anyway... at least until an idea comes along that you're absolutely one hundred percent certain you want to abandon your current project for. Writing something shitty is better than writing nothing. You've got to pound out some shit before you write something good anyway. Also, when you're typing through your lame shitty idea, you might be surprised at how often your characters will take the wheel and do something entirely unexpected and cool. In the end, you might find you have something worth salvaging. 

Keep writing.

Thank you, Mr. Bevan. -J

Robert Bevan can be contacted via Twitter and Facebook. His books and short stories can be found on Amazon.


Critical Failures  
"Cave of the Kobolds"
"ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!"



Next week: "In-spuh-ray-shun."

CRITICISM

CRITICISM

Or: I Am a Mass of Photosynthetic Cells.

If you're anything like me when I first started out, showing your junk to anyone is like willingly walking into a nightmare. I felt like I did when I sat down in my first lecture hall in college, absolutely sure I'd gotten in by mistake and either my name wouldn't be on the roll, or worse, my name the prof would call my name and yell "Impostor! Impostor!" and the wrath of all things holy and unholy would rain down on me and the hapless nerd sitting to my right.

Then, getting back your junk would be akin to the nightmare realized, eh? Red scratches – no, gouges! – across whole f*cking paragraphs, literally tearing the very soul of your creativity to shreds.

Not-so-Quick fix for this feeling:

If you have truly never critiqued/been critiqued before, and if you're like me (pretending to be braver than you are) online forums and writers' groups allow and often encourage you to observe before participating. Take advantage of this to learn how to take criticism, what constitutes valuable criticism, and how to give criticism.

Some tips on receiving the C word:

·         It does NOT define you. In fact, it has pitifully little to do with you as a person. Especially on online forums, no one knows or cares what you look like or whether you're the CEO of some Forbes 500 company or a high school student. The criticism is about your message. One more time: the remarks are about yo' message! No one is saying you're a bad person. You won't find notes saying "I think you're ugly" or "I really like that floral print blouse; I wish you'd wear it more often". That second note is a sign that you should probably call the popo.

·         Consider the source. Just like you probably won't take medical advice from a website that touts chocolate as the panacea to all communicable diseases (if only, right?), the same wariness can be applied to criticism. Does the dude who made the comments regularly contribute to the forum? Check out his critiques on other pieces. Were the pieces stronger for having implemented his suggested changes? Conversely, does he always have something to say but his comments are off topic, unnecessarily harsh, or simply written to make the writer feel bad?

Consider the source's background to the extent of how it affects your current story. For example, a person who regularly reads or has published stories and books in the genre of your piece may have comments contrary to what others (who don't or haven't) are saying.

·         In a writers' group, you have the advantage of seeing people face to face. Usually this means people will exercise tact, soften their remarks. Still, hearing something is off with your junk can still sting. Again, remember that the comments are about your message, not about you, though comments may often start with "You're using that word wrong" or "You're storyline is so old, I saw it on a cave painting". Think of the "You" in those sentences as simply a word to differentiate you, the mass of cells named Hilda, sitting between the mass of cells named Tim and the mass of cells named Cathy. That "You" does not mean you, Hilda, neurosurgeon and mother of 2.5 children, dreaming of becoming the greatest writer of racehorse love stories of the twenty-third century. Here's a mantra to help overcome reservations about criticism: "I am a mass of photosynthetic cells. Criticism is like sunlight. It may burn sometimes but it will help me grow."

·         Lastly, give the comments themselves fair consideration. You can usually trust a comment or critique from a proven, reliable source or beta reader to help make your piece stronger – that's what the critique process is all about, after all: making the piece stronger, making your message clearer. But trust yourself too. The source or beta reader may not have read all 310k words of your space opera, and the comment may not apply to the grander story arc in your head. Or, you may be experimenting with a new form or style or whatever. And even if 999 out of 1000 beta readers say the exact same thing, you may want to dig your heels in and refuse. Cool. It's your story, your choice (though if 999 out of 1000 people are saying the same thing, chances are your aim is missing your mark). If you believe, beyond any logical way of measuring doubt, that what you've written is exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it, then hold your ground.