As a pratical lens on this advice: people are excellent at giving feedback on their problems. They are terrible at identifying how to fix it.
"It felt too long" was right. The solution was not to make the story shorter. The solution was to look at the parts that felt long, and believe that feedback.
If you're building something, and your users tell you it's complicated or it's slow or it's not useful, they're right! The fix may or may not be to make it simpler, faster, or more useful. Maybe it needs to be organized better, or to create deliberate moments of action, or to be used at a different time. The problems are real, but the obvious solutions are not always right.
I’ve heard exactly the same advice re: focus groups. A focus group can give excellent feedback but terrible advice. Probably applies to comment sections in the modern day too.
So if they didn’t like your movie the movie probably is bad. But don’t listen to them about what they would change about the movie. They don’t know anything about the creative process.
Very useful way to think about politics. Always remember that people have valid concerns you might not understand... but also that their solutions are probably terrible.
Oh, every day citizens have terrible ideas too. Sometimes even worse. Sometimes our elected officials who "don't get anything done" are serving as necessary filters for those terrible ideas.
It’s exactly the opposite. Most concerns aren’t valid (even if and especially if they think it is) and most ideas for fixing things aren’t even contemplated let alone attempted.
It’s more like you should have 5-10 readers. If they all say the same thing they’re right. If half think the pacing is too slow and half think it’s too fast you are probably spot on.
There’s a similar situation in game dev. Players are very good at identifying problems - this isn’t fun, this feels too hard, etc. However, the solutions they suggest are often terrible, resulting in broken, unfun games. The same advice applies: Figure out what’s actually wrong and fix that.
Is that level really too hard, or did you just fail to properly introduce a new ability? Is the story boring, or is the story taking away from the enjoyable gameplay?
Totally wrong. Game mods constantly create game experiences that should have been there on day 1 and weren’t because dumbass devs refuse to correctly use the very tools they built.
Game after game you get some half baked feature kept gimped by poor choices of values from the developers, and a bunch of modders have to go fix it to keep the game good.
Rome 2 total war (divide et impera)
Empire at war (thrawns revenge)
Rimworld
Skyrim
Stalker (project gamma)
Blade and Sorcery
And so many more games are just like this!
Actually gamers and modders DO know how to fix the game and it does NOT break the game. Folks like you would argue that the “lethal” difficulty added to ghosts of Tushima “broke the game”.
Star Wars Jedi knight 2/3 are infinitely better when you turn instakilling with light sabers on. I had to do that in the games built in command line.
Game devs are fucking morons. The cello maker is not the cello player. The map is not the territory.
I've found the traditional publishing industry really interesting. It's so hard to get approved or even noticed from the gatekeepers[0]. Even getting a rejection from an agent can take months. And agents are just the very first gate. Being agented can be lightyears away from getting published.
And after so many layers of gatekeeping and due process, what got to the shelves are like, uh, Kiss of the Basilisk. I mean it totally makes sense in from a marketing perspective, but the whole situation is a little bit funny.
As far as I can tell it's nearly impossible to get picked up by a major publisher now unless you're bringing a very large social media following.
If you've got the social media following, your book can be really bad and it'll still get published (examples... abound). The book hardly matters, guaranteed sales via an audience you bring to the table (so, no work for them) is what they're interested in.
I mean, it was already nearly impossible, but now it's nearly-impossibler (nearlier-impossible?), with the social media following being almost necessary to make it even a very-long-shot instead of a no-you're-definitely-getting-rejected.
The best possible position is to have a breakout self-published hit. An author with that can hand the boring difficult expensive parts - print and distribution - over to a trad publisher, and keep the rights to ebooks, audio books, movies, and the rest, hiring negotiating talent as and when it's needed.
For breakout authors, publishers will often get in touch directly.
Agents are basically - well, I don't know any more. There used to be a point to them, but now they're running a kind of cottage industry of pointless gatekeeping for wannabes who will make pennies even if they are picked up.
It's not the same industry it was fifty years. It's not even the same industry it was twenty years ago.
A lot of wannabes haven't worked this out yet. They still think a proper author goes through proper channels, and is properly anointed with a proper agent and a proper contract.
And then most of them are surprised to discover their properly published book sells less than a thousand copies, and it's off the shelves almost immediately - because that's how print works unless you're a Big Name - and they can't give up their day jobs.
I read about a screen test of The Deer Hunter, in which people said the movie was amazing but the beginning (the hunt, the wedding, etc.) was too long. The producers cut a bunch of scenes and tried again. This time the feedback was, "the movie sucks."
Maybe in this case the editor's comments were not helpful, and maybe OP is right for that. I do not see how this generalises to a rule "do not take advice from editors that reject your manuscripts".
For one, in scientific publications, when you get rejected based on reviewers' comments, chances are if you send the manuscript to another journal the article will be sent to the same reviewers, and if unchanged will be rejected again. Not taking advice into account, as a general rule, sounds like very bad advice.
> You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts.
Continues to tell us how he did listen to the advice because the editor actually had a point that made the story better, got the book published and won him an award.
Yeah I think the lesson is that specific suggestions for what to do aren't as helpful as just hearing how someone else experienced your work, and then drawing your own conclusions about how to fix that.
Bug reports should describe the problem but often shouldn't try to prescribe a solution.
In my opinion, it's relevant to Card's credibility. If he shows poor judgement in one area, why would I want to listen to his opinion on something else, even something which is considered to be in his wheelhouse? Poor judgement is poor judgement.
The not-so-short story Ender's Game was great. The novel Ender's Game was awful. I hope someone told him it was too long, too repetitive, and too Gary Stu. I wish he had taken that feedback to heart.
The novella is the only version I've read. I came away both not understanding why a longer, novel-length version would exist, and with no interest in reading anything even slightly worse than that from the same author (which I'm given to understand describes most of his other work).
I don’t like when people use this without all the important context. Showing other quotes from the same person that is giving subjective advice on topics, lends to curiosity around how to filter their advice.
> It's is a complex and hard question, but the principles we apply to it have been around for a long time and are consistent with the site guidelines. If they weren't, we'd change the latter.
>
> I've explained all of this many times. If you, or anyone, would like to know how we approach the question, you could start here:
>
> https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [1]
it did not make me wish to engage in political or ideological battle, i found it an interesting reflection of a complicated person's thought process. So, any battling is on you (you no doubt have a lot of company: "don't you dare feed us raw meat, we'll jump up and down in our cages and spill the poop buckets")
reading TFA gave me a complicated perspective on OSC, and reading this comment gave me a more complicated persepctive on OSC, so I'm glad I read both, and I'm glad the long battle scenes were left out of both.
> Does his opposition of homosexuality some how make his point about writing critiques less interesting?
i'll bite: yes. it belies a lack of compassion, imagination, openness and curiosity required to create compelling fiction or writing advice that resonates with people who aren't bigots.
Orson Scott Card is one of the best selling sci Fi authors of all time, and has won the hugo and nebula award multiple times, and has been translated into 35+ languages. I think you would be pretty hard pressed to show that his writing isn't compelling to many people.
a lot of that happened before his views were more widely known. much like jk rowling. a lot of people have written both best-selling authors off as bigots; this is just a matter of fact. they may be financially comfortable but their standings have been irreparably harmed by their own statements.
"It felt too long" was right. The solution was not to make the story shorter. The solution was to look at the parts that felt long, and believe that feedback.
If you're building something, and your users tell you it's complicated or it's slow or it's not useful, they're right! The fix may or may not be to make it simpler, faster, or more useful. Maybe it needs to be organized better, or to create deliberate moments of action, or to be used at a different time. The problems are real, but the obvious solutions are not always right.
So if they didn’t like your movie the movie probably is bad. But don’t listen to them about what they would change about the movie. They don’t know anything about the creative process.
> If you ignore what we tell you its possible we'll fire you. However, if you do everything we tell you to do its almost certain that we'll fire you.
Is that level really too hard, or did you just fail to properly introduce a new ability? Is the story boring, or is the story taking away from the enjoyable gameplay?
Game after game you get some half baked feature kept gimped by poor choices of values from the developers, and a bunch of modders have to go fix it to keep the game good.
Rome 2 total war (divide et impera)
Empire at war (thrawns revenge)
Rimworld
Skyrim
Stalker (project gamma)
Blade and Sorcery
And so many more games are just like this!
Actually gamers and modders DO know how to fix the game and it does NOT break the game. Folks like you would argue that the “lethal” difficulty added to ghosts of Tushima “broke the game”.
Star Wars Jedi knight 2/3 are infinitely better when you turn instakilling with light sabers on. I had to do that in the games built in command line.
Game devs are fucking morons. The cello maker is not the cello player. The map is not the territory.
You are basically working for exposure until someone puts it on a screen.
And after so many layers of gatekeeping and due process, what got to the shelves are like, uh, Kiss of the Basilisk. I mean it totally makes sense in from a marketing perspective, but the whole situation is a little bit funny.
[0]: used as a neutral term, not a negative one
And even if you do get selected, you may fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of your writing.
If you've got the social media following, your book can be really bad and it'll still get published (examples... abound). The book hardly matters, guaranteed sales via an audience you bring to the table (so, no work for them) is what they're interested in.
I mean, it was already nearly impossible, but now it's nearly-impossibler (nearlier-impossible?), with the social media following being almost necessary to make it even a very-long-shot instead of a no-you're-definitely-getting-rejected.
For breakout authors, publishers will often get in touch directly.
Agents are basically - well, I don't know any more. There used to be a point to them, but now they're running a kind of cottage industry of pointless gatekeeping for wannabes who will make pennies even if they are picked up.
It's not the same industry it was fifty years. It's not even the same industry it was twenty years ago.
A lot of wannabes haven't worked this out yet. They still think a proper author goes through proper channels, and is properly anointed with a proper agent and a proper contract.
And then most of them are surprised to discover their properly published book sells less than a thousand copies, and it's off the shelves almost immediately - because that's how print works unless you're a Big Name - and they can't give up their day jobs.
I, however, miss twitter's "twitterness". 140 characters and a link.
Maybe in this case the editor's comments were not helpful, and maybe OP is right for that. I do not see how this generalises to a rule "do not take advice from editors that reject your manuscripts".
For one, in scientific publications, when you get rejected based on reviewers' comments, chances are if you send the manuscript to another journal the article will be sent to the same reviewers, and if unchanged will be rejected again. Not taking advice into account, as a general rule, sounds like very bad advice.
Continues to tell us how he did listen to the advice because the editor actually had a point that made the story better, got the book published and won him an award.
Bug reports should describe the problem but often shouldn't try to prescribe a solution.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It sucks that he has those ideas, but he's a good writer.
The novella was an alright time, though.
> It's is a complex and hard question, but the principles we apply to it have been around for a long time and are consistent with the site guidelines. If they weren't, we'd change the latter. > > I've explained all of this many times. If you, or anyone, would like to know how we approach the question, you could start here: > > https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [1]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47373246
I can't believe you wrote your comment on a computer with wouldn't exist without eugenicist shockley's nobel prize winning invention. Shameful!
i'll bite: yes. it belies a lack of compassion, imagination, openness and curiosity required to create compelling fiction or writing advice that resonates with people who aren't bigots.