Judge so, lest someone fear judging you.

After producing a piece of creative work—a sculpture, a short story, a comic book—you will likely ask someone to review it for you, to tell you what she or he “honestly thinks” about your work. One of two results follows. 1) Your critic tells you that your work is “Wonderful. Don’t change a thing.” 2) Your critic makes suggestions.

While the first consequence is nice to hear, it leaves you nothing with which to work, no direction to follow in improving your craft. This grows maddening. It always feels a bit dishonest, as well. You know that you haven’t yet mastered your craft. Surely, your work cries for improvement. Did your critic believe that you couldn’t handle her or his honest opinion? If so, that opinion must’ve seemed devastating. Now you know your work sucks, but you don’t know why or what to do about it because your critics won’t tell you!

This proves remarkably irritating after you’ve gone through the trouble of joining a writer’s workshop, perhaps one at your local university. You and your classmates exchange your works (I am assuming in this case that your work involves writing, a short story perhaps). You go home, read your classmates’ stories. You struggle to offer your most sincere thoughts regarding it.

Afterwards, everyone returns the stories (critical analysis affixed) to their owners. You eagerly scan your returned drafts, but discover only useless scribbling to the tune of: “Good job” or “I liked it.”

Even your professor returns a paper with a weightless, red checkmark on it and nothing more. You deflate. You wanted nothing more than a list of helpful suggestions, thoughtful considerations regarding your protagonist and how to improve her. You want naked, heartless criticism.

Until you acquire it.

I imagine that everyone goes through the same stages when she or he finally receives an honest list of suggestions, opportunities for improvement.

·         Stage One: Denial. Your critic is an idiot. He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He clearly failed to grasp the point of your work. He clearly lacks the intelligence to “get” your work.

·         Stage Two: Reconsideration. Hmmm. Not everyone’s a genius. If you’re writing only for the super intelligent, you’re not going to sell many copies of your work. Perhaps you ought to dumb-it-down a bit. Perhaps you ought to rework your material so that the average person (whatever that is) can “get” what you’re trying to say. How to do that . . . Oh! That’s right. Your critic’s advice. Surely, it can’t be good, but it’s all you have. You might as well try it.

·         Stage Three: Experimentation. Against your better judgment, you undertake your stupid, moron critic’s advice. The strangest thing happens. Your work’s better now, clearer.  You don’t want to believe it.

·         Stage Four: Acceptance. Your critic isn’t such an idiot after all. You grow suspicious that when a reader fails to “get” your work, perhaps the failure is your own as a writer. Hmmm.

Even the nastiest, snottiest, dumbest critics can offer the most priceless guidance. It’s never worthwhile to dismiss a critic, not if you want to polish your work into the best possible version of itself. Sometimes though, it can prove an effort to wallow through all the nastiness and snot that some critics spew while sniffing their own asses.

I don’t encounter a lot of nastiness or snot in writer’s workshops. Every contributor faces the same firing squad; they don’t want the negative karma. However, nameless, online critics do not face such a firing squad.

Sometimes, I suspect the best critics are those whose own projects are approaching their début. Notice that I say “best,” not “only acceptable.” The more critics you have, the more criticism you receive. So much the better. Just follow the stages to Acceptance and a better, finished project. Your ego has no place in revision.

Critics of entertainment—may they discuss movies, books, television, video games, or whatever else—used to serve two important purposes. 1) They identified for entertainers the weaknesses and opportunities of their published projects for consideration upon future endeavors. 2) They suggested for the entertained where they ought to invest their time and money. However, over the years, the role of the critic has morphed into something hideous, something that serves neither of the aforementioned purposes.

I suppose it started with a critic who made jokes about those movies, shows, or games that she or he didn’t advocate. Eventually (and I am still speculating, here), the jokes grew more insulting. The fun caught on.

Now, audiences turn to critics not for constructive guidance, but for humorous trash-talk served against those who risk everything in the hope of entertaining the masses (and making money, I imagine, though there are far easier ways of obtaining it).

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. If you can’t entertain for fear of sarcastic critics, become a critic and entertain via sarcastic criticism. It’s not as if critics have critics of their own.

If there exists an audience hungry for these sorts of roastings, are the roastings bad?

The Escapist, an online magazine featuring movie- and video game critics, employees the talented Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. He calls his hilarious video publications Zero Punctuation

Yahtzee mercilessly insults the video games he reviews, and his language and references are not for the easily offended. However, his publications lack the spite-for-spite’s-sake formula that has crept into so many other critics’ works. Furthermore, Yahtzee’s ridicule often targets Yahtzee. Most importantly, he offers criticisms that call attention to his subjects’ missed opportunities, granting those game creators useful considerations for their future endeavors.

Video game designers can learn a lot by checking their egos at the door and humoring such a critic. I walk away from Yahtzee’s videos with a solid idea of whether or not I would want to spend time playing a game he has reviewed (the answer is usually “No,” but I’m more of a bookworm).

Even the meanest critics offer a seed of good opportunity. Humor them. Try every suggestion, no matter how absurd or malicious. The road to great opportunities is often paved with bad intensions.

As much as we want to report optimistically when reviewing a friend’s stinker of a project, sometimes it’s shortsighted to consider that friend’s feelings over the wellbeing of her or his project.

If someone asks you, “Does my butt look big?” the obvious answer is, “Of course, not. You look perfect.” Depending upon with whom you’re dealing, that might prove your best move. Then again . . .

·         Stage One: Denial. What an insensitive jerk! How could he say something like that to me? My butt does not look big.

·         Stage Two: Reconsideration. Hmmm. I suppose that I asked. Let’s face it, we live in a society where looks count. While my butt looks perfectly normal, “normal” might not cut it. Perhaps I ought to humor the shallow pig and speak with a personal trainer.

·         Stage Three: Experimentation. My trainer agrees with my shallow, significant other. I could stand to lose a pound or two. My trainer and I are going to work on a reasonable exercise schedule, and I’m going to drop the doughnuts from my diet while continuing to eat sensibly.

·         Stage Four: Acceptance. I dropped the weight. I look better. I feel better. I’m healthier. When I ask my “shallow,” significant other if my butt looks big, he says, “No,” and I know he means it, because he would say so otherwise.

Not everyone can digest honest criticism. Few people are graceful at presenting it. The trick is knowing when someone is asking for honest criticism, and when they are not. If you ask, accept that you may receive. Which do you want more, a nurtured delusion . . . or constructive advice with which you might struggle to turn your delusion into your reality?