Follow George Lucas' Advice (And Don't Stumble Like He Did)

If you're a fellow nerd, I encourage you to pick Simon Pegg's Nerd Do Well; there's this great passage where he finally gets to meet George Lucas and Lucas basically warns him about surrounding himself with yes-men in 30 years. Pegg took it as Lucas knew he created flawed Star Wars prequels but he realized too late that no one wanted to tell him no -- no one wanted to challenge his vision.

I've always felt that if you took an outline of the Star Wars prequels and showed them to a sci-fi fan circa 1985, it'd blow their mind. I never had any problems with the actual story, but the execution as a work of filmmaking was obviously flawed (though I seem to be in the minority where I enjoy them for what they are and still admire the imaginative universe they created). Seems like Lucas was basically admitting to Pegg that things could have been tighter, smoother, or just plain better had people simply said, "What if you tried doing it this way?"

Outside opinion doesn't take the vision away from us, it forces us to make it better by presenting. And if you're taking your craft really seriously, you should want as many opinions as possible. Doesn't mean you have to agree with them. The vision is still yours, but good ideas are good ideas. And really, don't you want your work to culminate in the best ideas possible. Criticism is a good thing, and when done right, it doesn't have to be hokey or apologetic or padded with other stuff -- just a refreshing perspective from someone who respects your work.

When I first learned about the critique process, my teacher made us all start with something positive. It was a rigid discussion, almost like what you'd expect at 12-step meeting or something, except instead of "My name is Mike and I'm a coffee-a-holic" it'd go like "Steve, I really liked BLANK about your story. However, I feel it could be made better by BLANK." You know what's nice about working with critique partners you trust? They bypass the bullshit and tell you what you need to do. Recently, I had Sierra Godfrey, Kristan Hoffman, and Christy Finn take a look at different bits of writing. And while their respective critiques created a lot of work for me, ultimately it made the work better.

No one enjoys being criticized, but when people respect you enough to tell you the truth, there's something very effective in that. From the instant Sierra commented on one of my opening chapters for A Question Of Lust, it really pushed my perspective and created a bit of big-picture thinking I'd totally missed. She'd reinforced this by asking the right questions. I took no offense to it, and instead was kicking myself (figuratively, of course; self-mutilation ain't a hobby of mine) for being so blind to what seemed so obvious now.

Similarly, Kristan had me really rethink how I presented key moments in my short story Staring At The Sun. She just asked me a few questions to consider, and the revisions came naturally. The result was a tighter story with a better use of dialog and flashback, and Finny helped me examine specific moments to really bring it together.

For those cases, the criticims were more than welcome becaue they were necessary to think outside of my normal rhythm.

So the next time you critique someone's work, remember that they're not going to learn or get better if you're too "nice" on it -- in fact, you're doing them a disservice. Treat both the writing and the writer with respect and we'll all come out better in the end.