Writing Negatively

How not to be the Writing World’s Simon Cowell

As a writer, there will come a time when you will be called upon to exact judgment on another writer’s craft. Whether writing a book review, providing Beta-Reader feedback, or simply commenting on a blog post or article, we, the writing-reader, hold a double-edged sword in our hands.

I have the unfortunate habit of reading books and critiquing them at the same time. It’s very difficult for me not to read a phrase and think about how I might have written it or how it could, perhaps, have been written differently. Better, too, maybe, but not always. Many times it’s just differently. I tend to communicate superfluously. I love turning a sentence into a paragraph that might even make Charles Dickens scratch his head, but linguistic gymnastics aren’t everyone’s forte or preference, and in much of today’s writing compound-complex sentence structure is actually frowned upon; an unfortunate truth to be sure. (My point made, I’ll move along now.)

As a writer, we have the opportunity to build up other writers or break them down every day of the week. Sometimes, a negative comment is necessary, particularly if there’s a glaring grammatical error or syntax snafu staring out from the page, but bonking someone over the head with words is usually not the right course of action. That is, of course…