Learning from My Mistakes

So, I got back my second and third critiques for my story, and yeah, they complained that there wasn't much of a story. Fortunately there were parts that the other readers liked. One of them said that humor was hard to pull of in Science Fiction, and that I was no Douglas Adams. (Which I find relieving. I don't want to be Douglas Adams :D) But anyway, even though the results of my first critique are somewhat discouraging, I already have ideas for the next version of the story. One of my readers rightly pointed out that they couldn't really sympathize with the main character--I thought that I might tell the story from someone else's point of view. I also know that I need to re-think the ideas in the story so that they come out stronger. Adding some ideas would probably help as well.

I was telling my sister that I was just as bad as George Lucas when it came to stories (see my initial post) but then she told me, "Well, no, because you sent out your story for critique." True. Very true. George Lucas, bless him, has gotten so big in the industry that probably none of the people who were close to him dared to say anything. It's also a bad sign when the prerequisite for most of the actors was that they be Star-Wars fans. Fandom has a history of overlooking bad writing--otherwise, how would anyone be able to stand fan fiction? (I'm not saying that all fan fiction is bad. I'm just saying that what I've read is bad.)

So thank goodness for people willing to critique writing. Sure, it kind of stings, but it's necessary. For one thing, I take the difficulty of combining humor and science fiction as a challenge, not a taboo.