yoink

[inventrix]

Nabbed this from aldersprig

Pick a number and I'll try to answer that question. Then you can do the meme or not as you choose.

– 1. Of the fic you’ve written, of which are you most proud?
✓ 2. Favorite tense
– 3. Favorite POV
– 4. What are some themes you love writing about?
– 5. What inspires you to write?
✓ 6. Thoughts on critique
✓ 7. Create a character on the spot... NOW!
✓ 8. Is there a character you love writing for the most? The least? Why?
– 9. A passage from a WIP
– 10. What are your strengths in writing?
– 11. What are your weaknesses in writing?
– 12. Anything else that you want to know... (otherwise known as Fill in the Blank)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Seven!

[inventrix]

Oh no option overload... *hastily looks around, fixes on ball of embroidery thread*

A young man, rather sickly, grew up an only child in a wealthy aristocratic family and as such is the only heir. His mother is indulgent of his whims, even those which, to alleviate the boredom of his largely bedridden existence, consist of learning skills and hobbies generally reserved for the ladies. His favorite of these happens to be embroidery, and he has spent the past several years painstakingly embroidering an elaborate pattern into the fabric of a heavy silk-lined cloak. His mother is of course exceedingly proud of her son's accomplishment, but his father is increasingly concerned with his lack of Manly Virtues. Due to his poor healthy, however, said father is unable to take him out for more Manly Activities such as hunting or sports.

This talent for embroidery is more than meets the eye, however. The young sickly nobleman - though he does not know it, and the power has only begun to awaken - is able, through the working of needle and thread, to embroider into the very fabric of reality.

[rix_scaedu]

2?

[inventrix]

Hrm. Well, for fiction I'll have to say "past". Present tends to get awkward and/or confusing, and future would be a mess.

[aldersprig]

Eight!!

[inventrix]

Hmm! There are several characters I love writing but I think my favorite might be Theodore Gainsfeld. I am having a lot of trouble putting "why" into words, though... He's very enthusiastic and kind of obsessive and his word choice and speech patterns are just a lot of fun for me to play with.

Least favorite... hmmm. I don't have a lot of characters I don't like writing; I tend to stop writing them. Amy, maybe? I really like her story but actually writing her is less enjoyable.

[aldersprig]

I am not at all surprised Theo is your favorite :-D

[(Anonymous)]

6?

[inventrix]

I have many thoughts on critique. >.>

I consider receiving critique to be an important and very useful part of improving at any skill. People who take their creative work seriously tend to suffer from a sort of back-and-forth between increase in skill and increase in standards, with the latter almost always being above their personal skill. As a result, getting objective external feedback on your strengths and weaknesses is incredibly important to knowing what are things you might actually want to work on and what things you're potentially being overly-self-critical about.

Of course, objective critique is completely different from subjective feedback. Subjective feedback can be useful for seeing whether or not you've managed to elicit a specific reaction with your work, but it also tends to be heavily biased and based very little on your actual ability. Basically, the effect of subjective feedback depends entirely on how much you want people to "like" your work, and hardly at all on how good your work might actually be. Good subjective feedback on your work can be a great mood-booster but can also lead you to develop bad habits by shining over potential flaws in the piece. And bad subjective feedback can crush your self-confidence and make you even more excessively critical of your work, to its detriment.

Additionally being able to give a good objective critique is a great help for self-improvement. The skills you need to develop in order to give a good critique help you learn how to separate your personal investment in a piece from your perception of its flaws or merits. Being able to see actual flaws in your work is obviously necessary to improve, but being able to see what you did well, the things that actually worked is equally important.

And of course my thoughts on what makes a critique a good critique: it respects the creator of the work you're critiquing, keeps the level of feedback reasonable and useful for the creator's individual skill level, and makes sure to emphasize what was done right at least as much as what could use improvement. Any subjective elements should be clearly indicated as such (e.g. "in my opinion") and the overall tone should always be positive and with the aim of being beneficial to the creator.