Combining two previous blog posts and calling it a Bite commentary is hardly worth the effort, but I did want to follow up on a couple things.
So you might remember the story about the guy who threatened to blow WWE HQ because WWE fired Mickey James. You are also aware that said individual was arrested. No? Well, earlier this year, WWE let go of Mickie James – probably because they ran out of all the Piggy James jokes that dominated her last moments in the company. Some dude was apparently so upset by this development that he threatened to blow up Titan Towers in retaliation.
So authorities eventually tracked down and arrested this poor sack of flesh and he got his mugshot. And then a local news site posted it on the Internet. Click here to see the hapless nerd who attempted such a feat and will now be the laughing stock of the world. (2024 Update: Or not, since the link no longer works.)
Someone pointed this out somewhere and made an interesting point about the irony of the whole thing – Mickie James came into the WWE back in 2005 posing as a crazed psychotic fan of Trish Stratus and now some time after Mickie was fired, a crazed psychotic fan of Mickie James threatens to blow up WWE HQ. Amazing.
In slightly less disturbing but still somewhat awful news, the latest edition of Eric “Asalieri” Tellah’s Masterpaint Theater features his interpretation of a Twilight fanfic called Never give up, if you still wanna try (no, that’s how it’s written out) by CheetahBlackCat. And well, it was rather funny. What wasn’t funny was the aftermath, in which a bunch of people left some rather hostile comments regarding the low quality of this person’s text.
I read some of the story in question and it is poorly written. I can sort of understand that the person doesn’t speak fluent English, but using that as an excuse for why your writing is below par can only take you so far.
Anyway, among the more hateful criticisms, I posted the following review on her page – carefully worded so that I don’t come off as dickish but still critical.
I have to be honest – I actually read through the first couple chapters before I gave up and lost interest. The story does nothing for me – either because it’s a Twilight fanfic or because the writing is generally poor. A combination of the two would be more accurate.
I can understand that English isn’t your first language and so I can tolerate some mistakes in moderation and for generally short stories. But for a long epic such as this, that simply isn’t a good enough excuse for generally lackluster writing. If I were to jump ahead to one of the later chapters, I’d find the same problems that were prevelant in the earlier bits: some words not being capitalized when they should, improper use of punctuations, grammatical issues, just to pick out a couple general issues.
People enjoy your story and you know what? Good for them. You’re producing something that’s garnering some interest, but the thing is some people can overlook poor writing if the story works for them and others will crap all over you regardless of how good your story is. Having a bunch of people proclaiming “your story awesome, please write more LOL” while saying NOTHING will not help you get better and only serves to make you not try harder to improve upon your work. It’s nice to have since it shows some interest in your work, but if someone points out some flaws in your writing and offers some constructive criticism, you should at least try to use the criticism to improve upon your writing style because they took the time to give you some advice in hopes that it’ll help you get better. That’s a good thing to have.
As for the more hostile people out there? Just ignore them. Lashing out at them isn’t going to make them go away – it’s just going to encourage more of the same attitude and quite possibly make things worse.
My intention is not to discourage you from writing. In fact, I read your other story and I enjoyed that one for the most part, but it did have some of the same problems that plague this one. The only advice I can give you would be to read some other stories, see how they’re written and structured, and compare it with yours to see if there’s any way to improve upon what’s already written. Just because a lot of people like your story doesn’t mean you can’t make it better and improve upon it.
I hope this was helpful. Good luck and take care.
I’m awaiting the backlash for this thing… or not really, I don’t care. However, someone must have read my thing and then sent me an e-mail with only two words written in it.
OK THNX
Clearly the height of intellectual discussion.
Okay, I’m done.
dtm666 