Craft Chat A quiver of bromides?

[Ed Simnett]

I was trying to come up with a way of thinking about (too much) well meaning but not always on point feedback. Especially prevalent when you submit to a competition and the poor readers have to come up with something to say in their feedback...

A quiver of bromides

Proposed definition:
Readily-available, overused writing critiques that certain reviewers always seem to have at hand, ready to fire at unsuspecting authors. Show don't tell! no adjectives! no exposition! no prologue! protagonist lacks agency! No likable characters!

 

[RK Wallis]

ahh...judgmental comments that show no thought has gone into the reading of a manuscript. Very condescending. Just the kind of help an writer needs-NOT!

Nice definition! Or a murder of bromides, lol

 

[Rich.]

A quiver of bromides

Love this! The implied violence of quiver, and its meaning of tremble, capture the feeling such feedback provokes.

No one likes a plethora of platitudes.

 

[anaximander]

Pet peeve: raising questions that can simply be answered if the reviewer just keeps reading.

 

[Sarit]

I made a decision a year ago to never enter a pay-to-play comp again. Only free ones. Because I realised that the best comp is called the Query Gauntlet, which is entirely free and a fascinating anthropological study at the same time. Tip: you can keep re-running the gauntlet as nobody remembers that you queried them 2 months ago...

 

[BrianY]

I've learned to ignore most post-submission comments. They will almost never have anything to do with why they rejected me.

Also - if somebody says "I'm not interested in this genre at all, but I've got something to say" there comments are likely to be worthless but could potentially be really destructive. Be careful out there!

 

[Ed Simnett]

Pet peeve: raising questions that can simply be answered if the reviewer just keeps reading.

Related I remember getting feedback from 2 of 5 readers (who were supposed to have read the whole book) about head hopping, which I did deliberately at the very start for a specific effect, but *never* in the rest of the m/s. Did rather make me wonder how much they actually read...

 

[Sarit]

I've learned to ignore most post-submission comments. They will almost never have anything to do with why they rejected me.

Also - if somebody says "I'm not interested in this genre at all, but I've got something to say" there comments are likely to be worthless but could potentially be really destructive. Be careful out there!

Totally agree and this is what's really annoying. I wish people were just honest. Just say "Your writing is crap" or "my client is writing the same thing" or "I'm just scouring for ideas"...

 

[BrianY]

I have too many examples of my own. Worst are comments that have nothing to do with my project - for example, when somebody responds to my farmers market cookbook proposal by saying "I loved the scene with the boy and the wizard, but when the action moved to the asteroid, I was lost." Or obviously wrong advice like insisting I use British measurements for recipes intended for American publishers. This is just the tip of the iceberg. People who don't know, don't know. And their comments aren't worth listening to.