So there you are. You’ve dabbled in writing, sure, but now you’re in a workshop—a workshop! With people who probably know more about writing! And they’re looking at your work, and you’re looking at theirs, and that means you’re going to have to—gasp—critique people who probably have been doing this for longer than you have, [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: beginners, workshops, writing | 
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There’s a certain expectation, even among people who like criticism, that the creator and the critic will end up in conflict, or at the very least misunderstanding each other. Someone steps away from an artform after receiving what should have been a compliment, goes all icy after a critique that she did ask for, and [...]
Categories: Concepts, Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Technique, The Real World |
Tags: criticism, details, intent, role-playing, writing | 3 Comments »
When something doesn’t work out the way we’d hoped it would, or even the way it worked before that didn’t seem to be too bad, there’s one question we immediately ask ourselves: “What am I doing wrong?” It’s pretty much human nature, after all: we remember the bad things and try to fix them.
There are [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: criticism, improvement, roleplaying, writing | 3 Comments »
(Again for RPG Blog Carnival.)
If you’re the kind of person who likes to serve as a muse, it’s quite likely you’ve done so for your own GM. The good news (for the GM, anyway) is that you’ve got more hands-on knowledge about the game in general, and your character in particular, than anyone else she’s [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, Inspiration, Player Advice, Technique |
Tags: helping the GM, Inspiration, muse, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival, writing | No Comments »
RPG Blog Carnival this month, over at Campaign Mastery, is on inspiration. Technically, the question is “What inspires your games?”, looking for non-game media that inspires people’s games, but it’s not always media that gets me inspired, nor inspires the people I’ve gamed with. Sometimes, it’s other people that can provide the best inspiration—and sometimes, [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Inspiration |
Tags: Inspiration, muse, roleplaying, RPG Blog Carnival, writing | No Comments »
Hello, my name is Erika, and I have a passion for literary criticism and metatextual analysis. But you’ve probably figured that out and accepted it if you’re a regular reader here. I’m a compulsive proofreader and proud of it, I’ve taken writing classes, I read crit blogs for fun, and my major in science makes [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
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I once had a conversation with a friend of mine about a game he was running that we were both in. Specifically, about three antagonists, all of whom were aside from one little issue some of my favorite characters in the game. (As we all know, I love a good antagonist.) There was a point [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Player Advice, Symbolism, Technique, Thematics, World-building |
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What can a badly cooked hamburger teach us about how people choose what and how intensely to criticize? Yesterday, I got to find out.
It was evening, and I’d just been picked up from work on the base and gone to the nearest In-N-Out for a quick dinner before choir. The fries were underdone, one of [...]
Categories: Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, The Real World |
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As most of you are aware, comments were out for a while. They’re back now, thank goodness, but the absence got me to thinking about feedback and what it can mean—for a blogger, for a gamer, for much of anyone else.
I’ve always been rather attached to feedback in my various creation-related hobbies. Every game I [...]
Categories: Blogger Notes, Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, The Real World |
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It’s a pain trying to explain the analysis style I use. Sure, “Exploring reasons why things work or don’t work, why they’re successful, whether or not they’re likely to offend someone and why through chains of questions and being unwilling to accept ‘because’ for an answer” fits, and I could say that, but I shouldn’t [...]
Categories: Concepts, Feedback, For Roleplayers, For Writers, Technique |
Tags: original posts | No Comments »