I am a lousy copy editor. I can’t see the errors that I make in my own manuscripts. I have noticed from teaching that a programmer has difficulty finding his own bugs where another eye will spot them easily. I think writing is like this.

I joined Critters.org because three or four editors suggested that I do it when a story was particularly buggy. You can use critters to proofread manuscripts and hope that the critic is not too nasty.

I critiqued two stories this morning. One was a very long Harry Potter clone, and the other was a female viewpoint high fantasy that is something that I would not ordinarily read. Both had storytelling issues and a few typos. I tried to be nice and corrected the typos first. (I feel weird correcting typos – I am not the right guy for that job.) I tried to be kind about the story issues and I did not say that I did not like anything without a good reason and never without a suggestion for fixing it.

I then decided to see how other people handled the critiques. I was shocked. People are often insensitive, if not outright unkind. Here are some actual examples of what people said:

I’m a bit confused. What, exactly, is the point of this story? What I mean is, what is it you’re trying to convey? It reads a bit like a tone-deaf version of Les Miserables

This story seemed kind of cobbled together, to me. In some areas, it seems like there is too much detail, but more often, it seems like there isn’t enough detail to flesh-out the story. Some of my comments here may be worded as questions. I don’t expect personal answers for them. Their purpose is to point out spots that may be unclear or confusing for readers. Remember, these comments are my opinions, not facts.

I’ll start off by saying that I didn’t much care for this story. I didn’t find the world to be compelling or interesting. One thing which annoyed me was how the sentences and paragraphs were so short. Now there is nothing wrong with short sentences or paragraphs per say, but I find that they tend to break-up the flow of the story. I describe some of the other problems I saw below.

My initial opinion of this story was that it was very preachy. By the end, I decided that it was still preachy, but I wasn’t sure what it was preaching. The real “message” behind the story seemed muddled.

I think the beginning of the story was too jumbled and I didn’t really get it.

Some of these people were nasty. Most of them refused to follow the guidelines as how to actually do a critique. Most of them were opinions about the subject matter of the story or how they did not understand what was going on. Some of them were impossible to read because the program does not handle various kinds of text very well so they looked like garbage characters. Someone uploaded a zip file as an attachment (a virus?).

I am afraid to to submit any stories to the group for criticism now. I will try to do a few more critiques and next week see how other people handled the same story. If even a few were reasonably kind I can ignore the unkind reviews.

I also need to decide which story to send them. I should send one that I like, but has not sold like the one I have that has about 30 rejects. I should send a story that might have a better chance of selling, though. Maybe I should start with a story that is already sold.

Note: I sent them The Perfect Gold. A story I sold 2/3/2004. This was the second story I ever sold, so it was fairly choppy. I did a rewrite – enough to add many typos. We’ll see what people say.