Some Points of Etiquette Related to Being a Critic

Of Your Fellow Writers' Work

The course is also a "workshop," and, since it's online, you will communicate at some point with your classmates about their creations. As we do this, let's follow these groundrules to encourage civility and positive feedback:
 

* If you are walking around and telling everyone the ideas that you have for stories or scripts, your ideas and concepts aren't copyrighted. However, when you begin writing down these ideas, they automatically are copyrighted. So, always remember that your work, and that of your classmates, is copyrighted by you as a piece is written. If someone has an interesting idea for a story, poem, etc., you may not appropriate the piece and do a minor variation on your classmate's creation.

* When you are providing feedback, avoid negative or unhelpful comments, such as, "This is the stupidest thing I have ever read," "Good God, what kind of junk is this?", etc. You may want to claim, "But I'm a straight-forward, guy! I calls them as I sees them." That approach isn't necessary, as can be seen by a look at the story-boarding practice at the animation studios of Disney and Warner Bros. When other artist(s) had a story idea, no one was permitted to attack the concept. If someone disliked an idea, he kept his mouth shut, knowing that a positive discussion of the concept would cause its strengths, and its weaknesses, to emerge.

* So, instead of tearing a colleague's head off, find some specific recommendations for improvements (e.g., "It's wordy when you say 'in this modern complex world in which we live today,'" "I didn't understand the second sentence in paragraph 2," "I'm having to guess at the meaning here," etc.

* If you make a suggestion about, say, a plot change, that doesn't make you a co-author of a classmate's piece.

* Try to emphasize what you like about a piece.
 

For the major projects (stories, chapters, poems, etc.), your instructor asks you to e-mail your assignment/project to the instructor early enough for him to provide you with feedback before sending it out to your classmates. The instructor will e-mail the story back to you for you to revise it.  Try to send your assignment as part of the message and as an attachment.

After you have e-mailed the revised version of your piece, the instructor will probably do the following:
 

• The instructor will remove any name identification.
• If it's not already there, the instructor will put the notice "COPYRIGHT MATERIAL" on the major work.
• The material will be sent out to the writers' workshop for feedback. If each writer has particular questions about his/her piece, this is a good time to have the questions included as part of the feedback mechanism.
• When you receive a piece for feedback, hit REPLY TO ALL in order to share your comments with classmates.
• The authors of respective pieces will NOT defend their works. They will either keep silent or ask neutral questions: e.g., "Would the story work better if the writer had set the story in San Diego instead of Peoria?" (That is neutral and works better than, say, "I used to live in Peoria, for God's sake, and it's stupid for you to want it placed somewhere else!" Again, no defending the work: It will have to stand on its own two paper feet when it is submitted by and by to an editor or agent.

NO PERSONAL ABUSE

In the critiques, you and your classmates may not engage in personal abuse (e.g., "Only a psychotic would write something like this. . .You really need to get a life. Only a loser would act this way," etc.).  First of all, neither you nor your classmates sign up for a class to be abused. Second, the words on the page are NOT the writer. Someone may stray one time, but, if abuse occurs a second time, that student will be deleted from the critique listing and will lose any future points on critiques.

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