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/lit/ - Literature

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20938298 No.20938298 [Reply] [Original]

How good of a critical eye do creators generally have? I'm in the process of writing my own stories, but I also try to critique to see what I can do better, but I often times find that I'm terrible at it or don't see the point in doing it. Does a creator need a good critical eye?

>> No.20938531

>>20938298
Lol, that man is Samuel Johnson. An essayer and perhaps a man of the critique. Read all of his essays, anon; They're fun. Also your second sentence is a grammatical failure, so I imagine there is a point in learning to critique your own work.

>> No.20939151

This is a rather stupid question anon, of course an artist needs a good critical eye. Without one how could he distinguish between good work and bad work?

>> No.20939163

To critique well you need a good mental model of what makes great literature in the first place, which needs you to engage with the canon of great books and keep them all in your head. Only then will you be able to do stuff like pinpoint cliche expressions or bad narrative structure.

>> No.20939328

>>20939151
But they're two completely different skill sets?

>> No.20939419

>>20939151
How do I know if my criticisms are good ones? How do I know if it's just my personal bias or an actual flaw the work? How do I separate the objective from the subjective?
And if it is the case that creators do have a good critical eye, then why do so many critics end up making bad content?
>James Rolfe with the AVGN movie
>RLM with space cop
>Mr Enter with Growing Around
>Doug Walker with Demo Reel

>> No.20939423

>>20938298
You get blind to your own faults. Your brain fills in shit that isn’t in the text. This is why you leave a manuscript alone for months and then get back to it fresh to spot problems. Or you hand it to someone else.

>> No.20939437

>>20939419
These aren’t good critics besides RLM and RLM’s production problems is that they’re writing to an audience and largely don’t believe in their own capacities, so the films they’ve produced have all been attempts at B movie parodies that do little more than appeal to their fans and make genre references. Being a good critique does not necessarily make one better at producing art if one is not also refining their talent with production and study towards that end, a better example would be Harold bloom whose own novel is considered shit even by himself, yet he had read and analyzed so much. Again with him it’s the difference between just being a critic and actually practicing the art until you aren’t shit.

Being a critic helps the form and structuring but if you’re not practiced in making a line sound good it’s gonna be shit, absolutely do what the anon says and return to your work a month or so later and see all the flaws, those flaws are the best ways of getting better, you’ll know what not to do and what to do next time.

>> No.20939448

>>20939423
Definitely this. In Portuguese, we even have the "drawer text" expression for it. It is sad that they don't teach those things in schools here.

>> No.20940488

>>20939437
This

>> No.20941732

bump

>> No.20941973

I don't think so. You read what you have done and revise it when you don't like it and in this manner a work grows from the author. All you need to know is what you like and to not flinch from your own taste. Plenty of great writers were stupid people completely blind to themselves and others almost, or sometimes exactly, to the point of madness, and often it's this madness itself that draws readers into their skewed worlds for years after.

Read the Saunders book with the Pond title to see the critical eye at work if you want to see it, but don't get worked up about it. We're all stupid.