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You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

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Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#51

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #37
GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does his opposition of homosexuality some how make his point about writing critiques less interesting? i'll bite: yes. it belies a lack of compassion, imagination, openness and curiosity required to create compelling fiction or writing advice that resonates with people who aren't bigots.

Orson Scott Card is one of the best selling sci Fi authors of all time, and has won the hugo and nebula award multiple times, and has been translated into 35+ languages. I think you would be pretty hard pressed to show that his writing isn't compelling to many people.

a lot of that happened before his views were more widely known. much like jk rowling. a lot of people have written both best-selling authors off as bigots; this is just a matter of fact. they may be financially comfortable but their standings have been irreparably harmed by their own statements.

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#52

Post by asdfman123 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #48
asdfman123 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s exactly the opposite. Most concerns aren’t valid (even if and especially if they think it is) and most ideas for fixing things aren’t even contemplated let alone attempted.

What's an example of a concern that you don't think is valid?

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#53

Post by stared »

mwigdahl wrote: post #2

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.

"Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them" - Mark Rosewater (Lead Designer of Magic: The Gathering, from his famous "20 Years, 20 Lessons" GDC talk, http://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/twenty-years-t...)

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#55

Post by balamatom »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #51
IncreasePosts wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orson Scott Card is one of the best selling sci Fi authors of all time, and has won the hugo and nebula award multiple times, and has been translated into 35+ languages. I think you would be pretty hard pressed to show that his writing isn't compelling to many people.

a lot of that happened before his views were more widely known. much like jk rowling. a lot of people have written both best-selling authors off as bigots; this is just a matter of fact. they may be financially comfortable but their standings have been irreparably harmed by their own statements.

Yes, and that's a completely different point from the one you were making.

Your claim that they became massively popular before they revealed themselves to be bigots, contradicts your claim about their

> lack of compassion, imagination, openness and curiosity required to create compelling fiction or writing advice that resonates with people who aren't bigots.

You are doing the cause a disservice. Think better.

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#56

Post by theluketaylor »

justonceokay wrote: post #42
trjordan wrote: post #18

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!…

I’ve heard exactly the same advice re: focus groups. A focus group can give excellent feedback but terrible advice. Probably applies to comment sections in the modern day too. 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.

A phrase I heard from a tv writer on a podcast was "note behind the note".

The gist of the conversation was about TV execs giving all sorts of bonkers notes all the time that are usually terrible. This writer tried to think about what might have triggered the exec to make a note. Maybe the characters are not engrossing enough, or the plot is too complex, or the dialogue isn't snappy enough. If the exec had been engrossed in the story they wouldn't have made a note. This writer rarely implemented any note from an exec, but did make all sorts of changes in and around noted sections.

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#58

Post by protocolture »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #49
Silamoth wrote: post #34

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…

Totally wrong. Game mods constantly create game experiences that should have been there on day 1 and weren’t because dumbass devs refuse to correctly use the very tools they built. 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)…

>Actually gamers and modders DO know how to fix the game and it does NOT break the game.

eehhhhhh if I was going to install a skyrim mod at random, I would probably hate it. Even if I did this 1000 times, I would probably hate 99%+ of them. In fact just in terms of volume these are all likely to be porn mods of some description.

Skyrim modding hours, and output, converted into paid dev time would be a disaster. ROI would be negative a few million percentage points.

You seem to be taking examples where an individual player can tailor an experience to be just what they want, and extrapolating it back to presume the developers, who have to make a game for a wider audience, are stupid somehow.

Its a bad opinion, based on nothing and very much in the mode of the modern gamer.

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#59

Post by protocolture »

raincole wrote: post #6

I've found the traditional publishing industry really interesting. It's so hard to get approved or even noticed from the gatekeepers[0]. Even getting a rejection from an agent can take months. And agents are just the very first gate. Being agented can be lightyears away from getting published. And after so many layers of gatekeeping and due process, what got to the shelves are like, uh, Kiss of the Basilisk . I mean…

I have noticed some publishers are changing the way they do things, sliding into writer spaces and looking for books that are nearly ready to be published but havent found their way onto the slush pile, because no human can actually digest a slush pile anymore.

Re: You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts

#60

Post by thrwaway55 »

protocolture wrote: post #58
Der_Einzige wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally wrong. Game mods constantly create game experiences that should have been there on day 1 and weren’t because dumbass devs refuse to correctly use the very tools they built. 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)…

>Actually gamers and modders DO know how to fix the game and it does NOT break the game. eehhhhhh if I was going to install a skyrim mod at random, I would probably hate it. Even if I did this 1000 times, I would probably hate 99%+ of them. In fact just in terms of volume these are all likely to be porn mods of some description. Skyrim modding hours, and output, converted into paid dev time would be a disaster. ROI w…

Maybe pick a more restrictive modding engine or cut out obvious fetish and meme material from evaluation? Even gems of games ala Factorio 1.0 aren't really as good as their peak mods ala Space Exploration. If you limited to larger scale overhaul style mods I think your economic argument starts collapsing quickly
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