what if I didn't get it and the author thinks I'm stupid and I get a bad grade?

General principle: If you've done enough thinking to realise that there's a bad way to send feedback, then you'll think enough about what you send that it's good.

Flames are an indication that you're pushing people's comfort zones. I'm all for them.

Unless you get them because you lied in the headers, which is misleading marketing.

I'm not that great at sending feedback...okay, I suck...but when I do I try to actually say what I liked, what makes me read the story again and again, stuff like that. I still feel weird about pointing out things I don't feel work but I'm trying.

I love constructive criticism, but mostly I get ... well, "I wish you hadn't used second-person pov, it's strange and alienating" or "I don't see what this has to do with the show you're ostensibly writing about." Only I'm paraphrasing, because I don't feel like looking up the exact wording. I don't think anyone has used the word "ostensible" in feedback to me, which is a shame, because I'm fond of it.

Granted, it's hard to write detailed feedback for very very short vignettes; I think people who write long stories probably get more of it.

And by "constructive" I do mean negative points as well as positive ones. I think the only bit I've gotten--aside from betas--is someone who disagreed with my Darla characterization and told me why.

I've been reading too much of the Bureaucracy thread. I want to offer a PROPOSAL:

That anyone who doesn't think Micole is a marvelous writer and her fic are gems of painful beauty should be sentenced to three weeks of playing kitten poker with Riley and Parker and Scott Hope.

Feh.

Aw, you're sweet. I'm not in a bad mood about fic feedback at the moment. (Very! Impatient! for the last remix stories to get in and the glorious and hardworking Victoria P. to put them up.)

Of course, I always want more, more, MORE feedback, but mostly it's all been very pleasant. That's the problem: I feel like it's not real unless someone can point out what I'm doing wrong.

The really wrong-headed stuff just amuses me at this point.

That anyone who doesn't think Micole is a marvelous writer and her fic are gems of painful beauty should be sentenced to three weeks of playing kitten poker with Riley and Parker and Scott Hope.

I think Micole is wonderful, but I'm up for kitten poker if it's strip poker for Riley (I like big guys) and I can smack Parker and Scott.

I have gotten really very little feedback on what I've written. Kinda made it feel like I was going out into a vacuum, but for most of it I was reasonably content with the exercise, so it was okay.

morning.

I mean, I want to feel like I'm being constructive, and I mostly focus on "well, I thought this worked and I thought this was why," but then I feel like I ought to talk about the things that didn't work for me and why too

I think everyone needs or wants different things when it comes to feedback. Personally? I'm still trying to figure out if or whether there is or should be any difference between what I find utile in fic feedback and what I find utile in, say, a novel or short story. I don't think so, because I have a tendency to create my own universes and people them with a mixture of original and fandom characters: Darla's enclosed litle predation in Tuscany, Oxford in the sixties using Giles et al, Amanda Lisle's floating house as a refuge in an alternate "Gift" ending. So I do try to avoid giving the non-mine characters tats and bobs not there by canon, but I also want them in a very delicate little dance in my settings, with my characters.

And I think that's where the fic crit might be very different from the non-fic crit (straight crit? mainstream crit? Not sure what to call it). If a fan of the show and canon sees something in one of the characters that hits an alarm buzzer - "why would you make Fishcakes do that?" - it's precisely what I want to know.

One thing I refuse to either do or read, no matter the setting? Trashing stuff. I can't stand people who trash other peoples' work. In the days when I wrote book reviews, if I didn't like the book, I declined to review it. (On non-fiction, though, all bets are off; sloppy research and presentation gets me reaching for a flame-throwing pen....)

Very! Impatient! for the last remix stories to get in and the glorious and hardworking Victoria P. to put them up.

Not. Enough. Word. In. The. World.

I am so insanely curious.

I don't send constructive crit. I do that when I'm betaing, and it takes enough energy there that I'd rather not do it to someone's finished product.

Which actually, brings me to another question. I know I'm not the only one here listed as a beta on a few sites. When you get and accept a beta request, how thorough are you, if it's someone you don't know and have never heard of before? Do you make sure to point out the things that work as well as the things that don't work?