alixtii | Feb. 4th, 2006

( Annoyingly Obligatory Disclaimer )

The Critical City on a Hill: Thoughts on Concrit and Its Role in the Fannish Community

People have been saying extremely interesting things about concrit, and have gotten me thinking about these things. In this post,

peasant_ defines concrit as such: ( definition ) I agree with the definition, but more and more I think that the term is somewhat ill-chosen. "Constructive" criticism implies that it is going towards "building" something, usually the craft and skills of the author, and I mostly agree with

karabair that constructive criticism isn't the best mechanism to help a mediocre author get better, and that there's probably no saving at all for a poor author (here and here). But I don't think that's what concrit is for, ultimately.

Of course, sure, I do want to become a better author (mainly so as to better serve the interests of my fannish community), but that's not why I desire concrit. I like concrit because it's more honest. If someone tells me that they think Kennedy was acting out of character in paragraph 7, then that means I can all the better trust them when they tell me that the fic is wonderful and they loved it. Otherwise, I'm left wondering if the fact that the feedbacker picked out a sentence from the penultimate paragraph means that she thought the rest of the fic was drek. Are they mentioning the thematic richness because the plot was horribly structured?

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