What do you think about authors who get really defensive when given constructive criticism on FP?

Before I comment on that, I’d like to take a step back and generalize the question:

Q: Why do people get defensive in general?

A: Simply put, because people are invested in what they do.

That isn’t the complete story, as there are different degrees to which people are invested in activities they partake in, things they create, or things that they internalize to their self identity. It’s an issue of magnitude and awareness. Whether or not the person is aware of the fact that they are invested in something and whether or not the person is comfortable with the degree to which they are invested in something also plays a key role in how they handle and react to criticism (constructive or not) of that item.

If you do anything, you are invested in it to some extent. When you write a story, even if you are writing it for fun, you are invested in it because you took the time to write it and give your idea form. At the very least, you’re invested in its idea to a very light extent, even if not in its presentation. And when such a creation is criticized, the impulse of being unhappy or in denial about it arises, even if only slight in magnitude

But that isn’t the problem: it’s a natural thing to, even if only for a moment, be in denial when something that you’re invested in is criticized. The problem is how you handle, modulate, or expand that impulse, and what you do to accomplish such a task.

I’ll start with an analogy. Say, for example, that someone accidentally hits you in the face for a reason that doesn’t entail either you or them being idiots. It’s something that, just by pure chance and un-luckiness, happened. When you get hit in the face in that manner, your first impulse, even if only for a split second, is to feel angry about it: that’s the visceral, first response reaction, and having that feeling isn’t something that you can blame someone for. As stated above, what defines someone in this aspect is how they handle it after that impulse has arisen. In this particular example, you can handle it a number of different ways:

1. You can get angry at the person who hit you, curse them out and blame them.
2. You can try to figure out whether it was intentional or not, then act accordingly.
3. You can play the stoic card and let it go

And so on – that’s by far an incomplete list. The point is, it’s not the presence of the impulse that defines a person’s reaction, its how they handle that impulse.

So when it comes to stories, there are different degrees to which people are personally invested in them, and these degrees (among other things which I’ll get to later) influence how authors tend to handle criticism of them. If an author’s piece is criticized, they will initially be unhappy or in denial about it, even for the split second when they first read it. But after that, then what? Do they remain in denial or not? Do they react explosively or not? This defines the author’s reaction. This concept can be extended to how people react in real life.

Writing is an interesting hobby. There’s a whole spectrum of how big of a part an author’s product is of themselves, their self-identity, or whatnot. So I’ll start by laying out two extreme boundary cases, and one in between.

1. Least invested – This constitutes things that authors write “for fun” or just to screw around. These creations usually don’t inhabit or represent a part of the author as a person that they may care about, or a result of a significant amount of effort, and they are invested in the idea of the piece if even that.

When an author receives criticism of these types of pieces, usually they don’t react explosively, if they really did just write it to screw around and are wholly aware of that fact. Most of the time, the criticism is ignored or accepted.

Often times, however, using the moniker of writing for fun is used as a defense mechanism, implicitly saying “please don’t criticize me, I can’t take it”. In this case, the author isn’t being honest with themselves, and are not actually writing it for fun so the piece doesn’t really fall into this category.

2. Most invested – This constitutes very personal pieces. When I say personal, this doesn’t necessarily mean a pillowbook, rant, or any form of direct manifestation – authors can place deep parts of their personality, views, indulgences, and attitude in the things that they write in very subtle ways, often times regardless of whether that was their intention. These creations usually represent some form of extension of the author as a person, or an expression of things that they hold dear to them.

When an author receives criticism on pieces of this type, there’s a lot of potential for them to take it personally, especially if the piece contains something that is part of their identity or something about themselves that they may be very insecure about. Since they are emotionally invested in the piece, criticism of the piece, whether constructive or not, is taken as criticism of them as a person. This tends to happen regardless of whether the criticism focused on the content that’s relevant to that aspect of them as a person or not.

Now, an author who creates a piece like this and receives criticism may not necessarily react in that manner, if they are mature enough to separate the piece from themselves when it comes to an evaluation standpoint. That is, if they recognize that the piece is a manifestation of an aspect that is central to their identity or whatnot, and not the pure embodiment of the aspect itself. This prevents them from extending criticism of the piece to themselves, and allows them to more clearly accept the criticism and isolate its effects to the areas that are relevant. This is a sign of an author’s maturity.

3. In between case – an example of this is a piece that may not necessarily emotionally tied to the author in a deep fashion, but is at least something that they have spent a decent amount of time and effort working on.

When an author receives criticism on this type of piece, it can go either way. The author is at least invested in the piece by the effort that they put into it, and whether the criticism implies that effort as paying off in some form (even if small) will determine whether the author will be inclined to react angrily or reasonably. In a very general sense, criticism of the piece can be taken as criticism of their effort or capabilities in a worst case scenario. If the author put a lot of effort into it, and the criticism basically implies that they didn’t put in any at all (either by only pointing out negative things or explicitly saying that they didn’t think the author tried), the author may react in an angry fashion. Otherwise, they are usually more reasonable about accepting the criticism.

And of course, there are cases that fall in between and on any side of these three. Now, for the subtleties.

I should start by proclaiming that being invested in something isn’t a bad thing. What is a bad thing, however, is if someone isn’t aware of how invested they are in something (such as a story piece), and if someone isn’t comfortable (i.e. insecure) about how invested they are in it. These two things are big signs of immaturity, whether in the context of writing or in real life. I’ll explain.

If someone isn’t aware of how strongly they are invested in something, they tend to underestimate how strongly they can react to criticism of that item. Therefore, they aren’t in a good position to modulate or think about how to handle their instinctive impulse clearly. Often, this occurs as a defense mechanism or a sign of ignorance, since people don’t like to admit to themselves that they have vulnerabilities. It’s also an issue of control, since people like to believe that they are in almost-complete control of their mentality and reactions without actually testing or proving that hypothesis. The result? The impulsive reactions comes out at slightly less than full force, after which it is justified by who-knows-what reason as a defense mechanism for the person’s conception that they are a rational person.

The second item, being insecure about the degree of self-investment, is complementary to the aspect that was just described. In this case, the person has admitted to themselves that they have an insecurity, but are dealing with it in a way that allows that insecurity to control them. At this point, they tend to seek others to validate the proposition that the insecurity either doesn’t exist or is not important enough to continue to acknowledge. Therefore, when they receive opinions (criticism) that does not align with the validation of this proposition, they tend to react explosively as a defense mechanism.

So the key to preventing oneself from reacting impulsively, is to map out one’s own mentality to find out how invested they are in a given activity or creation, where that comes from, and accept that fact that such a mental investment exists. Much of this occurs subconsciously, but it does take it share of conscious effort. This applies in stories as well as in real life.

So as a summary, what did I say in all of this? The key points are as follows:

+ People are invested in what they do and the things they create to various degrees.

+ The first impulse to criticism of something that someone is invested tends to be denial or unhappiness.

+ The presence of an impulse does not define or dictate a person’s reaction, how they handle the impulse does.

+ How a person handles their impulsive reaction depends on how invested (and in what way) they are in the item in question, whether they are aware of such an investment, and whether they are comfortable with it.

What is constructive criticism to you?

In its most general form, constructive criticism is a review that evaluates a story/chapter/whatever against the template of what it seems that the author intended, and gives pointers or possible directions for how an author can better match the template that they had intended. That’s kind of vague, but I’m of the opinion that criticism can only be constructive if the evaluator understands the intent of the author. If advice is given without taking that into account, then the evaluator is simply giving advice on how to make a story match their standards or preferences, not what the intent of the author is, and in my opinion, that’s not *really* constructive to the author.

There are two different types of constructive criticism:

Writing Constructive Criticism is the type that focuses on how well written (or not) a story is. This includes checking out errors in grammar, flow, sentence structure, whether certain techniques did what they were supposed to like syntax-matching with scene pacing, wordplay or descriptive style to impart a particular mood or feel, etc. In my opinion, it’s easier to give this type of constructive criticism, since there’s less guesswork involved with figuring out what the author had intended on this front, and the standards for what constitutes something that’s well written are fairly well established for different types of stories. If an author is serious about their writing, it most likely goes without saying that their intent is to have good grammar, pacing and flow that matches with their scene, and sentence structure that doesn’t interfere with the reader’s ability to absorb the content of the story.

Story Constructive Criticism is the type that focuses on whether the author succeeded in conveying what they wanted to convey in terms of content. This focuses on things like character impressions, plot coherency / events, mood of the scene, effect of setting, etc. This type is much harder to give, since it usually requires more of an investment on the part of the evaluator – they have to absorb enough of the story content before they can have enough information to work with, and this requires reading of multiple chapters and a sensitivity for discrepancies in events. The difficulty with this is centered on the fact that the evaluator has to make an educated guess as to what the author had intended, and the standards for comparison are not homogeneous by any means. Note that if the evaluator is unable to construct any conception of what the author’s intent was from the information given, then that is constructive criticism in itself.

What drives us to create? Why do we like what we like?

It’s apparent that each one of us prefers to create specific types of stories. For example, I like to write fantasy / science fiction. Characters only make sense to me if they act in a certain range of manners, I prefer my plots to unfold in similar ways, and I tend to enjoy imagining similar types of settings. Some people like to write romance, or contemporary stories, and are appealed to be completely different sets of plots, characters, and settings. I cannot write romance, nor do I prefer to. The details of my specific case will be explained later in the blog.

The types of stories we prefer to create are strong functions of what we’re trying to express to begin with, and the underlying reasons we are driven to create these fictional occurrences in the first place. Those latter aspects are intrinsically linked to our emotional needs and emotional states.

Before I go any further, I’d like to proclaim that everyone has emotional needs of varying extents, whether they recognize it or not, and whether they accept them or not. These needs have been embedded in us by the effect of our life’s experiences, and what we chose to take away from them. The fact that these things are there is not something to be embarrassed about by any means. It’s my opinion that the existence of these emotional needs is what drives people to create the worlds that they do (fiction) or say the things they need to say (non-fiction). It’s a means by which someone can either explore their own self further, or feel as if their needs are being met. In my particular case, I tend to create stories which appeal to the types of emotional needs I have, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this principle applies to everyone.

Now, let’s pause for a moment. This might be an area where someone has been offended. I’d like to take the time out to construct counters to two common responses that many people tend to have toward my proposition that they have emotional needs.

Common response 1: “My life is under control, and I am in complete control of myself.” This usually comes from teenagers who still feel that they are invincible.
My response: That in itself is an emotional need. You need to feel as if you have a dominant influence on all aspects of your life. This reflects an emotional need for control, and ignoring the uncertainties does not make them go away. Subconsciously, this is probably a concept or need that you know very well.

Common response 2: “I am a rational person, and I see things in a logical manner.”
My response: I’d first like to begin by saying that being ‘rational’ and ‘emotional’ are not mutually exclusive. Everyone is a bit of both, and what dictates a ‘rational’ outlook to any given person is, in general, somewhat based in their emotional intuition – and completely based in it if one doesn’t recognize the nature of their own predisposition, which is usually formed without them knowing. Being rational doesn’t mean you don’t have emotions or emotional needs – it means that you are able to handle them well. If you consider yourself rational because you feel that you control what emotions you have and which ones you don’t, well, then you’re in denial. To me, a rational person is one who is able to manage the interaction between their raw feelings and the way they affect their conscious outlook, not simply ignoring their instinct. Easier said than done, and I don’t necessarily consider myself to be such a person, but I try.

Now that we have that cleared up, back to the subject at hand.

I believe that we write / create stories because subconsciously, we want something. Either we have something that we really want to say (such as our views), or we have some sort of emotional need that we would like to feel is met. My motivation is a combination of both, actually, and I believe that the nature of our emotional needs determine the types of stories that we prefer to create. For example, one of my needs is to feel as if I am part of something greater than myself, something that I knew was making a unique and positive impact on the world around me. Therefore, I create stories which focus on a group that fills that role, and the characters in that group. Through the activities and roles of those characters, some of which I design to be types that I relate to, I subconsciously feel as if that particular need is being met when I think about the story and put myself in that character’s shoes.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I go around thinking that I am the character in my story. I feel that my need is met when I think about the story, because I’ve constructed a scenario where a character who is similar to me (at least in part) – someone who I relate to, someone who has some of the same struggles and emotional quips that I have, is able to handle them and succeed. In a sense, I’ve created something to look up to, and I indulge in that concept because I sometimes need to escape from the uncertainty of whether I will succeed in that role in my real life. Note that there is also another thing expressed by doing this: by constructing a scenario where a character similar to myself succeeds, I reflect my belief that it is feasible for a person like me to succeed, because I’ve been able to imagine a set of somewhat reasonable circumstances in which that happens.

That’s a simple example, and more developed, specific examples will ensue in the later sections.

The types of emotional needs that people can have are all over the board, and are as diverse as, if not more so, than the Earth’s ecosystem. I don’t think it’s valid to blame someone for the emotional needs that they have – because for the most part we don’t usually get to choose the kinds of experiences we have, much less choose the way in which they have affected our emotional state. What you can blame someone for, is refusal to recognize those parts about themselves, or refusal to take some responsibility for handling / negotiating with them if they do recognize them. Those types of people are the ones that the general public perceives as being ‘emotional’, since their reaction is completely raw – and they tend to feel that anything which satisfies their emotional needs is justified now matter what. Not people I’d prefer to deal with, but we all have dealt with them at one time or another, and I’m also willing to bet that we have all been of that type at one point in our lives. In terms of creating stories, people who don’t negotiate with their own emotions tend to create stories which are really over the top, extreme, and singularly directed. Hence, the one of the reasons for the rise of Mary Sue, because they indulge in worlds where their idealized self-conception is constantly confirmed without doubt.

This diversity of people’s emotional needs is the reason we have so many genres and different types of stories – because people with different emotional needs will be driven to compose different types of stories. It’s also the reason that I believe that there will always be insightful, new, and unique stories (and ways of presenting them) as long as people construct them honestly and with careful consideration of themselves – because there are an infinite amount of ways that someone can experience something, and an infinite amount of perspectives that they can use to handle it.

So why do we create stories? Because from an emotional standpoint, we are driven to find ways to fulfill our emotional needs, and creating stories is one such way. In some sense, I’d argue that channeling creativity is one of the most natural ways of meeting such needs. The types of needs that we have, whether consciously or subconsciously, determine the types of stories we like to create and their subsequent facets. They also determine the types of stories that appeal to us – the types of things we are driven to get into. I should probably also mention that our many of our emotional needs are subject to change and evolve as we grow as people, and therefore, the types of stories we are driven to admire or create change or evolve accordingly. And as a concluding note, it’s not always necessary for all creators to know specifically the emotional need they are trying to fulfill when they create something that tries to fulfill it. Many writers / artists / etc… do not, and they do just fine – they only recognize that after they’ve created the piece. But, this is all just food for thought, eat as much as you like.

However, this is also the reason why certain types of stories only appeal to certain types of people.

I’m of the opinion that defining what constitutes a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character is somewhat all over the board. So I’ll start off this post with my definition:

To me, a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character is one whose presence in the story is so overbearing that it takes away significantly from the importance of other characters’ roles and other aspects of the story (assuming there are other aspects of the story). I believe that character being a Mary Sue type is independent of what trait set that they have or what they’re like in a vacuum, and has more to do with the role that they play in the story. I don’t think putting yourself or an author avatar in your story makes them a Mary Sue, since the effect that they have on the other aspects of the story may vary. I don’t think that a character having an awesome trait set makes them a Mary Sue if the presence of those traits are not relevant to what the focus of the story is.

But, if the presence of a character does any of the following things, I call them a Mary Sue:

a) Render the presence of another main character pointless, that is making another main character seem replaceable or significantly degraded.

b) Draw significant attention away from other aspects of the story – setting/environment, plot, presentation – such that the latter are mainly presented as afterthoughts.

c) Be such that the story revolves around them in a vacuum and them only.

There’s probably more that could be added to this list, but that covers the main points.

Mary Sue characters tend to be perfect, or at least perfect in terms of what’s relevant for the story. Perfection is difficult to ignore in a story, whether because it’s overbearing in itself or because it throws a monkey wrench in the way the story fits together. Many authors make such characters because they are idealizing or because They also tend to be author avatars. That’s because many authors create those characters to simulate that kind of attention dynamic for themselves – they want to feel like they’re the show-stopping attention grabber on the block, they want to be important, they want things to be about them – it’s an emotional need. And creating an author avatar character of a Mary Sue type is the easiest way for an author to indulge in that.

That’s why Twilight has become popular. The story is pretty bad from what I know about it. The writing is substandard, and while I haven’t read it, some people have shown me excerpts and I’m pretty sure the majority of people on this site can write better than her.  But its fans overlook that, and it became popular because it appealed very strongly to an emotional need that is widespread in its fan base demographic, the need to feel taken care of, to be exclusive, etc. People will overlook that so they can indulge in the simulated feeling of those needs being met. Many people have a strong emotional need to be a Mary Sue! That says something in a socio-cultural context about what kinds of things go through those people’s minds, but I won’t get into that here.

Mary Sue type characters are created such that they can get away with damn near anything, regardless of its nature. That’s also another aspect – authors create those characters so they don’t have to feel guilty – the imposes on their idealization. The concept of being someone so awesome that you don’t have to feel guilty about anything you do is something that’s appealing to many people. Again, another socio-cultural implication. I really need to stop myself from mentioning that.

But in the end, the author is just indulging, same thing that many of us do when we write. It’s just a matter of degrees, and while I won’t criticize / blame an author for making such a character, I will tell them that I dislike their character and it really just doesn’t work for me.

I think that before I answer this question directly, I have to define what makes a character to me, which is linked with what defines a person to me. This is important since our definition of what constitutes a conscious being / person sort of orients what kinds of structures that we feel needs to be present for us to feel that we’ve created a “character”.

For the most part, I feel that a person is defined by their emotional needs. Like, for example, when I interact with people, I sort of feel that I need to have some sort of gauge on what some of the paradigms of their mentality are before I can say to myself that I have a reasonably complete conception of who that person is. These kinds of paradigms are heavily influenced by what types of emotional needs that the person has, and where they came from, and they manifest themselves in all of the things we see about the person (how they act, etc…) whether they acknowledge that or not. (Once again, this is another topic I’m not going to get into here – the origin of our emotional needs). Note that even if I form this type of conception of a person, it may be inaccurate – I’m not going to get into reading people here. But the point is, that type of a conception has to be there, and by nature it does take a reasonable amount of exposure to that person to form.

I’d like to think that I’m very slow to make judgments, since I feel that there’s a myriad of factors that determine why a person behaves they way they do and why they take certain actions, and I feel that I’m not in a position to make a reasonably sound judgment of said person until I understand or at least acknowledge those factors.

Anyway, I digress. So when I create a character, in order to feel that my character is complete / meets my criteria for being a real person, I have to map them out psychologically and emotionally. I need to instill them with types of emotional needs, and understand how those needs create the mentality that affects who they are and what they do. I need to map out where those needs came from and how each character chooses to handle them, or cause them to evolve / devolve. Then based on that, I start to map out their interactions relative to other characters, and define what types of roles that they tend to play.

So, one can imagine that there is a lot of me in my characters. Nothing could be closer to the truth: I feel that I am best at instilling my main characters with emotional needs that I understand adequately – either because I currently have them or I have had them at one point in my life. I mean, I can try instill them with emotional needs and whatnot that I am not as familiar with (in terms of what it feels like to have such need or the different ways that people can choose to handle it), but it does become apparent that the character is somewhat underdeveloped or unnatural because I have to fill in the gaps with projections and conceptions that I have only heard/seen, not felt – resulting in characters that tend to be a little more stereotypical (because I had to rely on knowledge provided by the stereotype to fill in the character gaps). I still do create these kinds of characters, since my stories have many, many characters, but these types are never main characters.

As a starting point, what I do to get a pool of types of emotional needs is that I look back on my life and examine all of the mental / emotional turning points. I try to understand what kinds of defining feelings and emotional needs that I had at those different stages, how I chose to handle them, and what factors influenced where they came from and what caused me to handle it in a certain way. I ask a lot of what if type questions:

What if I had chosen to handle it this way instead of that? What if I didn’t make this realization or that realization? What if I were placed in these circumstances as opposed to those ones? Etc…

Once I answer those questions, I think about what mentalities / emotional needs may have formed based on the answers to those questions.

I kind of do this to a limited extent for the people that I feel I know fairly well. I take those emotional needs and scale them to the appropriate degree for fitting certain roles in the story at hand, and extrapolate them to fit the setting at hand.

Once those emotional needs are established, I think about variation in how a person can choose to handle them, starting with the way in which I chose to handle them and thinking about how other people have handled such needs – or appeared to have handled the perception of such needs. By handling – I mean how does one seek to fulfill that need, or modulate how that need affects their decisions. It’s more negotiation with that need. This will be fleshed out more in my example section, but here is a quick one:

Emotional need for constant attention / recognition – someone can handle it by trying to quickly attach themselves to the people they interact with (clingy), usually attempting to force connections to develop at an unnatural pace out of desperation. Or they can handle it by convincing themselves to find purpose in anything that’s popular – often becoming an outspoken proponent of such trend. Or they can handle it by (etc…the list goes on…)

Now, my experiences and that of those around me are highly limited, so I can never come up with an exhaustive list. It’s also apparent that I’m more familiar with certain mechanisms as opposed to others, but while I try to not limit myself to those – they do have a habit of showing up. The number of ways that someone can handle the presence of a particular emotional need is practically infinite when considering a wide range of conditions. But I don’t need one – I just need a few for each emotional need that I establish. I also have to make sure that the things which drove a character to choose to handle their need one way as opposed to another have a basis – this is usually how I create the basis for character back stories.

So now I have 2 of 3 elements needed for a character. Presence of Certain Emotional Needs + Array of Methods to Negotiate with Emotional Need + 3rd term = Character. This third term is Manifestation. Basically, I have to think about how does a character’s emotional needs and their handling methods show up in their behavior. Externally, what traits does this drive them to have? How would the fact that a person has these types of underlying superstructures show up in the way they conducted themselves? Short example:

Emotional Need: Attention / Recognition. Handling Mechanism: Attempt to leave strong impressions on those around them with limited commitment / exposure. Manifestation: Character is probably loud, obnoxious, tends to act in ways that people find difficult to ignore, is usually overwhelming to the people especially when they first meet him, dresses in clothes that stand out either in their general accepted-ness or the exact opposite, but not in the middle. Usually talks too much, rarely gives a person they are engaged with in conversation the space to reply / chime in. Not a very good listener, can often be very impatient.

So after all of that, now we’re cooking. Now we have a character. In summary:

1. Establishment of Types of Emotional Needs. Choose defining need, and scale it and all of the other emotional needs that the character has appropriately.

2. Determine array of negotiating mechanisms, why they choose certain ones over others, which ones apply more so in certain situations than others.

3. Map out how the presence of those needs and their respective handling mechanisms show up in the character’s external behavior.

Note that, this isn’t a one way street. A plot event may change a character’s emotional needs, or the way they handle them, so there’s room for variation in how these things show up.

Now, this hints at something that I haven’t defined explicitly. I see characterization as something that is done on one of three levels.

1. Surface: Habits and Behavioral Traits. Is someone loud? Quiet? Do they walk confidently? Quickly? Do they talk in a formal tone or a sloppy one? Etc…

2. Reactionary: How would a character react in certain situations? If insert event or set of circumstances happened to insert character, in what ways would they be inclined to respond?

3. Mentality / Emotional: What is the driving force for why they choose to behave and react in certain ways? Where did that force come from? What is its nature?

As I’ve mentioned in other threads – it is not necessary for characterization on all three levels to be conducted in a story. It depends on what kind of story you’re going for, who your target audience is, and what is appropriate for the world / story you’ve built up. Some stories can get along fine in the eyes of some with only 1st level characterization. I do feel, however, that it doesn’t usually work to do one of the deeper levels without the shallower levels. For example, I think it would be really difficult to do 2nd level w/o doing 1st level, etc. For me, I have to do all three, because I always start at the 3rd level.

As for how long does it take, well, it does take quite a while. It’s also not something that I do all in the beginning – this kind of thing is an ongoing process that evolves with the progression of the story, so I can’t say exactly how long it takes to go through such a process, because well…it’s kind of convoluted.