Young Writers Society

All,


Before launching into the meat of this post, I'd like to state that these are not, obviously, hard and fast rules. You will likely catch me deviating from these ideas often, but it is only when I feel like such a thing would be beneficial.


Different boards seem to have different expectations when it comes to line-by-line criticism. Recently, I joined an email group with some old friends, and I got a detailed lbl on a poem. My reaction was one of dismay. I thought, "There is a forest here, not just trees."

Which made me start thinking about lbl critiques in general. And it made me realize that I don't like them. I don't like giving them (though I will occasionally) and I don't like receiving them. I think the tendency toward giving them results in a habit of nitpickery instead of treating the poem as a coherent whole that should be judged as a coherent whole.

A friend of mine said that her problem with workshops is they assumed the poem was broken instead of assuming the poem was finished. That observation really hit home with me, and changed my approach to workshopped poems.* With that change came my change in attitude toward line by lines. I wouldn't read a novel and critique it that way--though this does seem to be a fairly common trend on this site, particularly with SPEW members. I wouldn't read a book of poems and critique each one that way. Only as an exercise would I break a poem down into its components in such a way.

So, here are my thoughts:

1. Line by line critiques encourage fault finding and nit picking.

2. Poems are more than the sum of their parts and few poems can withstand such total deconstruction.

3. Poems should be approached as if they were complete and only when that author wants more specific information should the poem be completely dissected.

4. Line by line critiques inject too much of the critiquer and do not often benefit anyone but beginning writers.

Of course, I am interested in everyone's thoughts here regarding these ideas. I'm particularly interested in what SPEW-members might have to say, and why they choose a (perhaps "nearly") lbl criticism style as opposed to an overview style.

That said, there are times when I "break the rules." I like to call out SPECIFIC lines that I thought succeded or point out flaws the author might have missed through laziness or sloppiness (two VERY common workshop errors.). Meanings of words, grammatical errors, spelling errors, clumsy line breaks, inadvertently humorous similes or metaphors, etc. etc. I also appreciate someone catching my errors while still in workshop mode.

In other words, when done well, I prefer both line criticism and overview.

What I don't like are quid pro quos, positive or negative. I've left workshops because they got too chummy. People told other people what they wanted to hear so they would return the favor. Unfortunately, this is the vast majority of criticisms and reviews given here. We can only grow minimally as long as this remains the norm. I have been called out for being "too academic" or "too professional" in my criticisms--some of you may agree with those classifications, but I do not see the problem.

I'm struggling to be a professional writer, branching out into poetry and fiction while still feeding the kitty with freelance stuff.

I prefer to winnow through all the chaff to get to the grain. Both going and coming. The fact is: I do what I do so I can grow and improve and so others, serious about their writing, whether professionals or not, can, too.

--
*Having participated in multiple workshops in my poetry career, I would like to throw out a brief caveat: by "broken" I mean the exact opposite of complete--when we consider poetry, we should think of it as being finished but in need of repair (indeed, all things could use repair).

I'll just say I agree with your (newfound?) approach to criting poetry. I've always found it...'wrong' to crit a poem line by line. Though a piece like Poe's "The Raven" would be perhaps an exception...

Hehehe... the majority of SPEW members are more into the stories, save for about five. Maybe? So you haven't seen a lot of poetry critiques from us, hehe.

Line-by-line critiques are generally for novels and short stories. Whereas, poems have to be taken as a whole (generally, I read it all and find the parts that don't seem to fit in), for novel-writing, it's standard since most stories are written in a linear format. So you read it, look at the lines, and do a general synopsis. But really... line-by-line critiques are something to get used to. If you're accepted for publication, an editor is going to do a line by line critique of the novel. XD

Sounds fun, no?

Frankly, Incan...I agree about the l.b.l. It does tend to devolve into the nitpicking - though I've never articulating the feeling.

With prose, it can be needed at points. But something written thoughtfully and read-over by its author shouldn't need each sentence scrutinised as much as it needs the overall continuity, plot and character remarked on.

...Probably more an issue in poetry. Though I don't end up in the poetry forums too often. !_!

Okay, I don't critique poetry, but I do critique fiction line-by-line. And yes, it's a quid-pro-quo thing, although not quite the way you meant it. I critique that way because that's the way I like being critiqued. (Which is not to say I don't like other forms of critique, because I do, but that's another story.) Someone once compared having spelling errors to having her fly undone — if people noticed and pointed out, she was grateful because, yeah, it's kind of embarrassing, and she could fix it ASAP. For me, it's the same way with grammar, problems with sentence flow, tense changes, etc. Outsider feedback is especially helpful for sentence flow, because sometimes I'm too close to the story to notice something that's glaringly obvious to everyone else. (CL once pointed out that I have a habit of phrasing lists like: ___ and ___ and ___ a lot, and I never really realized it before. For me, that was enormously helpful, and I've been trying ever since to pare it down.)

Breaking down a story sentence-by-sentence means that I can examine the effectiveness of the writer's style — the strength of their phrasing, their ability to create tension, their use of various devices in writing to improve their narrative. For me, it's pretty basic: if you don't have a reasonable grasp on the mechanics of writing, how on earth do you expect to tell a story effectively?

When I break down a fiction piece sentence-by-sentence, I do try to critique (and by "critique" I mean "criticize", because that's mostly what I do) non-nitpicky aspects of the story: plot holes, character depth, etc. But those basic, infuriating things like grammar, spelling, and wording, are fundamental to a story. They affect readability. A comma can disrupt focus, or completely miscontrue the original meaning, or make the story sound blander. When critiquing, I try to point out things like that, the things that get on my nerves/affect my enjoyment of the story. And because I'm easily annoyed, it becomes a line-by-line critique. Yes, it's nitpicky, but with the intent to improve the story, not to unearth every idiosyncratic fault of the writer's.

Hopefully, that sheds some insight.

Ah...what do I think. Good question.

To me (naive old me ) poetry does have a deeper meaning- and so does fiction. And with both, if it doesn't come in a pretty package, no one will read it. Grammar nitpicks and such are necessary, but just not from your valued YWS critiquers. That's something you should do- since it's not very fun to critique for anyone and when you do get a critique like that it isn't very satisfying. (And of course, smaurness, I'm talking about someone who ONLY does grammar. Sentence structure is something that no one really thinks about- and yet is oh-so-important.)

I also think a Fishr-style evaluation might be nice for a poetry reader- that is, having someone tell you all the things that it could possibly mean and how to bring each one out further.

Ooh this is a difficult one. Ive been on the reveiving end of L.B.L's often and I find that they are very helpful, after you get over the disappointment that your [iece requires such treatment. I dont get L.B.L's for stories anymore, but I have for poetry (Im looking at you Incan) and with poetry I dont think its as helpful as it is for short stories. I completely agree that poems should be taken as a whole.