So About that SPN Big Bang

[lovesrain44]

So about that Big Bang for SPN this year. Every year I ask myself the same question, and that is, what do I have to say about the Big Bangs? Every year I contemplate giving feedback, and every year I don't. That's because sometimes, feedback isn't welcomed. Sometimes the writer just wants to write a really big, whopping story and be done with it. They don't care about feedback. And sometimes, people who give feedback get whomped on. Which isn't very fun.


So this year, along came the spnanonmeme. I don't know if it existed before this, or if the thread for the Big Bang is new this year, or what. All I know is that I seriously contemplated taking the time to give feedback anonymously in the anonmeme. And then I thought...why would I take the time to give honest feedback, and not sign my name to it. I mean, already, my online name is not my real name, so I'm already hiding behind a mask. Must I hide behind two masks to make a statement?

It seems like the anonmeme thread about the Big Bangs might be in reaction to the same feelings I've had - I've tried to give feedback and have gotten my hand slapped. Although, truly, I can understand someone just wanting to write a story and then be done with it, and some people can't take critical feedback, and if I leave it in their journal or write to them privately, it fails, and I fail, and it's miserable for everyone.

Back in the day, I got some hard feedback from a very well respected fan. She told me my story lacked depth because it seemed I had distanced myself from it. I was a bit hurt, but I did my best to absorb what she was telling me. But that was back in the day, when I knew her and she knew me, and people took the time to listen and communicate ideas, without there being this whole attack mode when someone disagrees with you that seems to go on all the time these days. So yeah, I get the anonmeme, totally.

But I don't want to be silent anymore, when I have things I want to say and share. If I didn't want to share, I wouldn't have signed up for an account. I figure, when I'm talking about a story, I'm not attacking anyone, I'm not making it personal (at least on on purpose) and I want to talk about the writing. Why can't I do that?

Anyway, I came across someone's LJ, where they were talking about the Big Bangs for SPN for this year. And at the top of their rec list (or maybe it was just a regular post that included Big Bang recs) she (or he) made this disclaimer, that went something like, "If you've found your name using an LJ search, then you might find I've read your story and had something to say about it, both good and bad..." and she went on to say something simple about how it was her right in her own journal to make such a comment. I thought it made sense, and I'd like to include a link to the journal, so if you know, let me know, and I can thank this person properly for inspiring me.

At any rate, the bottom line is that I would like to talk about stories in my journal, to keep track of what I read and why I liked it or didn't like it. I want to remember what I read, and think about it, rather than swallowing stories down whole. I don't know any of these writers personally, so my comments are going to be about the writing, always about the writing.

Anyway, that's it. I'll be making comments on stories that I read.

Comments

[amalthia]

Well said! :) I look forward to reading your reviews.

[lovesrain44]

I look forward to writing them!

[spankedbyspike.livejournal.com]

Great idea.

I read a lot of stories, and sometimes re-read them because I did not keep track of what I was checking. I save tens of stories every week to read when I am away from my computer or an internet connection.
To save a forest or two I invested into an ebook reader but even then, I talk to one friend about the great or not so great fics I've read and then it get lost...

I am grateful that I do not read a lot of fics difficult to stomach, I might be getting good at searching what I want to read or the summary people post...

Anyway, any review and rec for me is a plus, because you get a third party opinion on a work.

From a small writer pov I like real criticism, the one that inspire discussion and explanation on how and why things went that direction or the other and what an alternate option might have been.
I am in particular interested in comments that can help you develop a good characterization of your protagonists.

When I give feedback I try to really pin point the things that worked for me. My friends though get my questions as well. Why did you do this rather than that kind of stuff until everything is honed and satisfy us both by the time it is published.

In any case, I do not write long fics (as mentioned earlier, I am just not spending enough time near a computer) but I read as many as I can and I understand how an author might be burned out right after the completion of a big bang story; those things must be draining.
So I am thinking that they might be more appreciative of comments a few months down the road or while they work on the story after the draft is completed.

Of course, I can't say for sure...

In any case, I'll look forward to your comments and try to make some kind of list for my self as well. Thanks for the idea, it would be awesome if I could implement it.

[lovesrain44.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks, it sounds like you have the same deal going on that I do - there's plenty to read, but not enough time to think about each story. My attempt with these reviews is to make myself slow down, and figure out why each story did or didn't work for me. And always with the understanding that one reader's joy is another's junk - it's all about how the story affects the reader.

And hopefully, I can make sense of what I'm reading and incorporate what I've read and thought about into my own writing. Otherwise it all goes by so fast.

If you need rec's here's the best list ever.

http://amothea.livejournal.com/

She's got Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, and Merlin. Enjoy!

[spankedbyspike.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much. As soon as have a chance I'll start to look at the recs but also to try to find a system that can be used for all fics I read. This way, my comments would be in a comparable format that can showcase particularities while keeping in mind the context of each story. That is not as easy as it seems (cause that assumes I can anticipate what I will be reading, I need to do things maybe like a lit class would do it.

How about you, will you follow some form of format or have a free falling approach to comment on your reading?

[lovesrain44.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a couple of ways.

So, for example, for the big bangs, I have a list of all the stories I intend to read from that list. I looked at them all and included slash and gen, but no het, and then I rated them on a scale of 1 to 5. I'm going to read the 5's first. When I'm doing reading that story, I erase it from the list. Anal, right? : D

As for any story I happen to read (which is a lot of SGA at the moment, on my ebook reader), I can review those too, even if they're not on the list. No sense in being that anal. : D

As to the format of each review, as a reader and a writer, what I want to keep track of is not whether I'd recommend a particular story to all my friends, but more, how the story struck me and what I got from it. More a reading diary (which sounds really dusty put that way), than a rec list. So I'll be writing about the lines I liked, what concepts I liked, what elements, what I didn't like, what didn't work. Etc.

More important is how to track what I've read, and keeping track of, like you say, the particularities of each story.

I use Delicious which is http://www.delicious.com, as an add on to tagging story reviews in LJ.

If I tag a story in my LJ with "review" "fandom" "pairing" "any warnings" and so on, that's fine, but after 900 entries (or so Amothea tells me) I can't go back unless you know exactly what date I'm looking for.

So I also tag my reviews in Delicious. That is, I'm bookmarking my own LJ entry in my Delicious page. In Delicious, I can look up by "review" AND "fandom", so I can narrow my search for a review/entry in a particular fandom.

So here's a link to my Delicious. I enter "review" and see what comes up.

http://www.delicious.com/rain_girl/review

Well, guess what, I not only get my reviews, I get a couple of other peoples as well. It might be good for me to add "lovesrain44" to each entry that is for my LJ, and then when I enter "review" and "lovesrain44" and search on both of those, I get only my reviews.

It's a good way to keep track, because Delicious is endless. And boundless. : D

Is that the kind of idea you were thinking of? Or did you have another way to keep track? I mean, I love charts and stuff, but the internet moves so fast, it would be more work to keep that up.

[amalthia]

My only piece of advice and I wish I'd done this when I started but if you're going to add other author's names and warnings and stuff, it would not hurt to pick a generic tag for them so you'd have author:amothea or warnings:non-con

I say this now because if you don't start at the beginning it's a real bitch to go back and retag stuff and it'll be that much harder to create bundles. Right now you only have a few bookmarks but once you have thousands it'll really help to have a system for being able to find authors out of a cloud. Using Authors: will sort all authors into the A section of the delicious cloud.

Um hope that made sense but really it's worth looking into.