On the other hand...

[kaigou]

Maybe I should stick to technical manuals as the only 'short' thing I can write, if I listen to the slush response at Baen:

All setup, and not even good setup. The relationships between the characters are not at all clear.

Hunh. I'd say we're 2-for-0 on Baen, because the feedback's critical -- as promised -- but hardly constructive. A'course, I'm also possibly 2-for-0 on whether I can write a short story. Thus once again I must remind myself of mikkeneko's comment about writing short stories:

It involves being able to think of all sorts of cool complications and developments that could come of a scenario, and being willing to say, "That'd be really cool. Someone should write it. Somebody who's not me."

ETA: I should point out that this particular short story is one in which, in the fourth paragraph, an entire paragraph is dedicated to a judge's announcement that character B now has custody of character A. And the only other speaking part of note is described immediate upon introduction as working with B, and being B's best friend. So I'm left wondering what relationships are in doubt -- brother, sister, friend/coworker, gee, I thought that was clear.

Then again, I wonder if this is the same person whose "critique" on the Georgetown story was simply, "This is too wierd." Which, again, just such a sterling example of useful crit.

*rolls eyes*

Comments

[tiercel]

Wow, that's... harsh, and as you say, not exactly constructive.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Baen's bar seems to pride itself on giving strong crit responses -- treating itself as a slush pile rather than crit group, granted -- but still, when I've been rejected by magazines or agents, the response is usually more like, "[this part] I liked, but [this part] made me decide against it." Or the more vague (but quite valid), "this just didn't grab me" or "this doesn't work for me."

...Which is to say, that there's a difference between rejection of "this is not for me," which is what I say if you make me eat tripe. But I'm not going to say, "this is repugnant" because what am I saying then about the other people at the table who do like tripe?

After all, tripe sells. I know. I've sure paid for enough of it to take up space on my bookshelf. My tripe just needs to find the right table of diners, is all.