From:        Doug Murphy, Draxon-X@msn.com

of humour in my jokes and the predictability of my plots.  His very thorough,
very specific letter inspired me to do better, and I hope you'll agree, if
you'll go through my work, that it has improved in those areas.

Did he post this message to the mailing list so he could have something to 
do? Telling an author something is wrong is one thing, doing it in public 
is another. Reminds me of a review Kergma did for a fic a while ago. He 
said that it 'bordered being a parody' that all the characters acted 
wrong, and that the add in character's ways of joining the Knight Sabers 
were...pathetic. This was all useful information, but had he posted it on 
the ML I would have, um... disliked him. 

Well, I have a couple of responses to this:

a) I won't say anything in private e-mail that I wouldn't say in public, 
and vice-versa. What I think about a fic is what I think about a fic, and 
it doesn't change whether I say it in public or in private. Sometimes 
I'll hedge when something bothers me but I'm not sure what, or what to do 
about it; sometimes I'll look for a polite way to express a problem I had 
with a fic. But that's common courtesy, not thinking about an audience, 
and I for one would be disappointed if people softened their public 
critiques simply because they are 'in public.'

b) A good, thorough analysis of a story is something I think just about 
everyone who's interested in improving their writing can benefit from, 
and that's what I try to do in my longer critiques. There's bound to be 
disagreements over some judgements in a review -- after all, no two 
readers are alike -- but if the opinions and reasons behind them are 
explained, they can still serve as useful fodder for learning and 
improvement.

For these reasons, I'd like to see as much C&C be public as possible. If 
an author says that he'd prefer private C&C, I'll respect that, but it 
won't change anything I'd say about the fic.

Since these fics are posted to a public forum, I tend to assume -- 
perhaps wrongly -- that the author doesn't mind public C&C, unless they 
say otherwise. I don't know how many others here feel the same way... but 
if an author wants just private C&C, it might not be a bad idea to say 
that in the intro/header to the fic.

I won't say my opinion on people who just want positive comments in 
public, and want all negative comments sent privately; I hope it's 
reasonably clear from context. <wry g> Seriously, I think that if an 
author wants to get positive comments in public, then he ought to be 
willing to get the negative comments in public as well. That's only fair.



Travis Butler
(The Professor, formerly of Myth and Magick!, Lawrence, KS;
 tbutler@tfs.net, now from the Wandering Powerbook;
 <http://www.tfs.net/personal/tbutler/>;
 Mac page <http://www.tfs.net/business/tbutler/>)

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.