META: The Problem of Subjectivity

[EDMLite]

On Mar 12, 9:11 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:

I'm a fan of the Roger Ebert school of writing reviews,
where the goal is not to say whether you liked or
disliked the subject, but rather to let readers
know enough about the subject that they can decide
whether it's worth their time to see/read/eat/make
passionate love to it.

> The question then is "What _does_ constitute objective / constructive
> criticism?"  Off the top of my head, I can think of a few categories
> of mistakes that authors can make: BLATANT ERRORS, INTERNAL
> INCONSISTANCIES, FAULTY LOGIC and LOGICAL CONTRADICTIONS.

Those are all helpful criticisms, but I think they'd
be better expressed via an e-mail to the author (or
a post to the LNH Authors site) than a message here.

The best critiques I've received (both here and
elsewhere) often come in the form of questions.
Why is this character acting in this way?  Why
did you choose to present the events of the story
in this order?  What is your obsession with waffles
about, anyway?

I don't always agree with the critic's
assessment, but I appreciate it when someone takes
the time to think about my work -- and it's even
better when they get me to think about it in a
different way.

In a perfect world, every review of my work would
tell me how wonderful they thought it was.  But
even a lousy review means someone out there is
reading what I've written.  That means a lot.

--Easily-Discovered Man Lite
--Liked Spider-Man 3, but not as
much as 1 or 2...