My work is technically competent and reasonably talented (which is enough to make it stand out amongst a mass of incompetent inexperienced amateurs). But that is the baseline for critical quality.
I can ignore someone who says "I've run a word count on your piece and you've used the word 'was' too often, which makes it passive", because she has (probably) got a bee in her bonnet. If she then adds that her attention kept straying because it was too slow-moving, that's a problem.
If someone says that there's no sense of urgency in my action scenes because they are too digressive and wordy, that's a problem. If yet another someone says that a speech seems to be going on so long that she is wondering if the speaker was deliberately stalling for time, that's a problem (and a certain pattern...)
If someone says that a character is sitting there calmly analysing her situation for the readers' benefit when her circumstances imply she ought to be jumping up and screaming in horror, that's a problem. If another person says that the start of a chapter comes across as just a run-down of all the characters present in the action, that's a problem.
And I've had all these comments over three separate stories in the course of the past month or so. None of these things are elements I pay any conscious attention to when writing a story -- I just rely on my subconscious to get the pacing etc. right, and if it's not picking things up then I don't have a toolkit of experience to deal with it.
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I can ignore someone who says "I've run a word count on your piece and you've used the word 'was' too often, which makes it passive", because she has (probably) got a bee in her bonnet. If she then adds that her attention kept straying because it was too slow-moving, that's a problem.
If someone says that there's no sense of urgency in my action scenes because they are too digressive and wordy, that's a problem. If yet another someone says that a speech seems to be going on so long that she is wondering if the speaker was deliberately stalling for time, that's a problem (and a certain pattern...)
If someone says that a character is sitting there calmly analysing her situation for the readers' benefit when her circumstances imply she ought to be jumping up and screaming in horror, that's a problem. If another person says that the start of a chapter comes across as just a run-down of all the characters present in the action, that's a problem.
And I've had all these comments over three separate stories in the course of the past month or so. None of these things are elements I pay any conscious attention to when writing a story -- I just rely on my subconscious to get the pacing etc. right, and if it's not picking things up then I don't have a toolkit of experience to deal with it.