41–50 of 100 posts
> You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts. Continues to tell us how he did listen to the advice because the editor actually had a point that made the story better, got the book published and won him an award.
As a pratical lens on this advice: people are excellent at giving feedback on their problems. They are terrible at identifying how to fix it. "It felt too long" was right. The solution was not to make the story shorter. The solution was to look at the parts that felt long, and believe that feedback. If you're building something, and your users tell you it's complicated or it's slow or it's not useful, they're right!…
So if they didn’t like your movie the movie probably is bad. But don’t listen to them about what they would change about the movie. They don’t know anything about the creative process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In my opinion, it's relevant to Card's credibility. If he shows poor judgement in one area, why would I want to listen to his opinion on something else, even something which is considered to be in his wheelhouse? Poor judgement is poor judgement.
This is a great blog post and very sound advice. I, however, miss twitter's "twitterness". 140 characters and a link.
I am not sure how this is "sound advice". Maybe in this case the editor's comments were not helpful, and maybe OP is right for that. I do not see how this generalises to a rule "do not take advice from editors that reject your manuscripts". For one, in scientific publications, when you get rejected based on reviewers' comments, chances are if you send the manuscript to another journal the article will be sent to the…
Well, perhaps Orsen Scott Card does not need editors’ advice. But odds are you do.
Well, perhaps Orsen Scott Card does not need editors’ advice. But odds are you do.
Someone should have edited him all the times he was spewing homophobic garbage.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone shows poor judgement in one area. It sucks that he has those ideas, but he's a good writer.
The not-so-short story Ender's Game was great. The novel Ender's Game was awful. I hope someone told him it was too long, too repetitive, and too Gary Stu. I wish he had taken that feedback to heart.
The novella was an alright time, though.
I liked Zvi Mowshowitz' summary of this: If someone tells you what's wrong, listen to them. If they tell you how to fix it, ignore them.
Very useful way to think about politics. Always remember that people have valid concerns you might not understand... but also that their solutions are probably terrible.
There’s a similar situation in game dev. Players are very good at identifying problems - this isn’t fun, this feels too hard, etc. However, the solutions they suggest are often terrible, resulting in broken, unfun games. The same advice applies: Figure out what’s actually wrong and fix that. Is that level really too hard, or did you just fail to properly introduce a new ability? Is the story boring, or is the story t…
Game after game you get some half baked feature kept gimped by poor choices of values from the developers, and a bunch of modders have to go fix it to keep the game good.
Rome 2 total war (divide et impera)
Empire at war (thrawns revenge)
Rimworld
Skyrim
Stalker (project gamma)
Blade and Sorcery
And so many more games are just like this!
Actually gamers and modders DO know how to fix the game and it does NOT break the game. Folks like you would argue that the “lethal” difficulty added to ghosts of Tushima “broke the game”.
Star Wars Jedi knight 2/3 are infinitely better when you turn instakilling with light sabers on. I had to do that in the games built in command line.
Game devs are fucking morons. The cello maker is not the cello player. The map is not the territory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my opinion, it's relevant to Card's credibility. If he shows poor judgement in one area, why would I want to listen to his opinion on something else, even something which is considered to be in his wheelhouse? Poor judgement is poor judgement.
Everyone is very, very wrong about something. By your logic we should ignore everyone about everything.