posted
1. True, a critique can be had in as little as 13 lines.
2. False, a helpful critique can need more than 13 lines.
Therein lies the difference; the amount of criticism offered/required. The meat of it, which is to say the readers impression, is short and often binary - like or dislike, with some reasons. Offering suggestions for improvement are what will stretch a short, functional critique into a longer one, worthy of the time the critiquer spent reading the initial piece, meditating on it, and writing a thoughtful response.
Jayson Merryfield
[This message has been edited by Wolfe_boy (edited August 03, 2007).]
posted
I don't think the statement holds. A critique is more like journalism or analysis than like a story.
A story can captivate in a few words without giving you anything of substance. A critique can tell you the substance in a few words without giving you enough information to fix any issues the critiquer has.
I respectfully suggest that Master Wolfe has overstepped slightly by saying that no helpful critique can fit into 13 lines; very short critiques can be helpful. A person once gave me a critique that probably could have been condensed to "Choose what you want this to be: a story or a treatise." At the time, that was exactly the course correction that I needed. That said, more detail often helps expose the specific language that slowed you down, or where the characterization was off, or whatever.
posted
That doesn't really make sense. The *meat* of a story is not in the first 13 lines. You just start it in 13 lines. From a F&F point of view, I can decide in 13 lines if I think the project is worth reading the rest. But even if I don't want to read more I would never presume that I got the whole gist of the story in those 13 lines.
I've almost never read a crit that wasn't worth reading all the way through and the couple of times I did, it had nothing to do with a line count.
posted
I think it was the OP's notion that since F&F is restricted to 13 lines that in theory there is perhaps no need for crits of first 13's to be more than 13 lines as well.
For myself, I believe that long crits work as long as the critter is explaining something in depth such as a technique to achieve a desired end.
Since I am given to contextual and connotation critiques, I am apt to need more than 13 lines because what I am asking for is often more of a subtle thing than a strict grammatical or otherwise technical detail.
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