criticism

One of the sad truths about cranking out weekly reviews: sometimes your reviews suck. I’ve written my share of clunkers over the last three-and-a-half years, from reviews that consisted entirely of summary (“And then this happened… and then Yumiko did this…”) to reviews so overblown and self-important they’re almost funny. (Almost.) I say this not out of false modesty, but out of a desire to share what I’ve learned from those cringe-worthy reviews. Below are some of the most egregious mistakes I’ve made — and continue to make, I might add — as well as some suggestions for avoiding similar pitfalls in your own writing. Behold: the Seven Deadly Sins of Reviewing!

1. WRITING A BOOK REPORT.

Remember book reports? Your third grade teacher asked you to describe the plot of Freckle Juice or Ramona the Pest, right up until the big denouement which, of course, you weren’t permitted to discuss. You were then expected to wrap things up with a few sentences praising the book — “I liked the part when Ramona bugged Beezus” — and maybe a statement urging curious readers to pick up their own copy. Alas, some reviewers don’t seem to have moved far beyond Miss Applebaum’s book-appraisal formula; they summarize books in exhaustive detail without really critiquing them. As a consumer, I find these kind of reviews maddening because they don’t tell me anything I couldn’t have gleaned from the back cover, though they do give away details and plot twists that I’d rather experience for myself.

Quick fix: I shy away from proscriptive formulas about the ratio of summary to analysis, but a good rule of thumb is that your summary shouldn’t be disproportionately longer or more detailed than your critique of the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

2. DAMNING A SERIES WITH GENERIC PRAISE.

How many times have you read a review in which the critic called a book “fantastic” or “original” without justifying those assessments? Stating, “The art is brilliant in Children of the Sea,” means nothing if you don’t provide context for your praise, whether it’s comparing the book to something that’s widely acknowledged to be good, describing your own aesthetic preferences, or explaining what, exactly, moved you about the artwork.

Quick fix: Be specific! You don’t need a fancy technical vocabulary to discuss artwork, narrative, or characterization, just a willingness to substantiate your opinions with evidence from the book, e.g. “The art in Children of the Sea is photorealistic in its beauty,” or “Daisuke Igarashi draws sharks and whales in precise detail, right down to the way the light reflects off their skin,” or “The underwater scenes in Children of the Sea look like something out of a Jacques Cousteau special.” Notice I didn’t say anything about perspective, screentone, or Photoshop filters; even a reader who knows nothing about manga or cartooning could guess why I think the art in Children of the Sea is fantastic.

3. DESCRIBING A GOOD SERIES AS AN “INSTANT CLASSIC.”

Do you know why I don’t rely on Jeffrey Lyons or Michael Medved’s movie reviews? Both have a bad habit of waxing hyperbolic, throwing around empty phrases like “instant classic” or “Oscar-worthy” whenever a movie rises above the merely good benchmark. Go to that well too many times, as Lyons and Medved have done, and those phrases lose their descriptive power; can AKIRA, Fruits Basket, Lucky Star, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, Old Boy, Pluto and The Times of Botchan be equally “Eisner-worthy”?

Quick fix: If you’re tempted to call something an “instant classic,” scan your last ten positive reviews. If you haven’t declared anything “brilliant” or “timeless” within recent memory, fire away; if you’ve already deemed six books “the best manga of 2010,” look for another way to express your enthusiasm.

4. INSULTING READERS WHO DON’T AGREE WITH YOU.

Whoo, boy, here’s a commandment I’ve violated more times than I care to admit: namely, any time I’ve read a book that’s filled with needless panty shots or dippy, dithering heroines who can’t seem to get it together. The problem with statements like, “Only a horny teenage boy could possibly like this,” or “My inner feminist is appalled that any woman would enjoy Black Bird,” however, is that you needlessly antagonize readers whose taste differs from yours. (The same goes for positive assessments in the vein of “Only someone with a hole in their soul could hate this manga,” or “You’re not a real manga fan unless you like Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji Ikari Raising Project.” Says who?) Identifying a series’ potential audience is one thing; dissing that audience in the process of saying, “Hey, this book’s for you,” is another — unless, of course, you’re looking to manufacture controversy.

Quick fix: Steer clear of sweeping pronouncements about who will (or should) like a particular series.

5. WRITING LIKE A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT.

Fail: a review that reads like a hastily composed freshman English paper. And no, I’m not talking a typo here or there, or the occasional, WTF-does-that-mean sentence; we’re all guilty of those, sometimes on a weekly basis. I’m talking about the kind of reviews that are so poorly written I instinctively reach for my stash of red pens because I want to fix them.

Quick fix: Learn the difference between it’s and its. Split run-ons into two or three shorter sentences. Ask a friend or partner to proofread your work. Visit sites like Copyblogger and Grammar Girl for the skinny on “bad” versus “badly.” And consider downloading After the Deadline, an open source application that offers more intelligent editorial suggestions than Word’s pre-installed Spell- and GrammarChecks. (Hat tip to Alex Woolfson for introducing me to After the Deadline.)

6. ADOPTING SOMEONE ELSE’S VOICE.

There’s a style of writing about comics — call it Fanboy Expert, for want of a better term — that’s all over the internet. Its best practitioners make it look seductively easy, as if all an aspiring reviewer need do is coin a few catchy phrases, drop references to Cool Stuff (read: indie bands that no one’s heard of, obscure comics from the 1960s, Derrida), and voila! a funny, insightful essay is born. By focusing so much on the performative aspects of reviewing, however, many Fanboy Experts neglect the equally important tasks of critiquing and contextualizing the comic at hand. The result: a review that sounds snarky and derivative and tells me more about the writer’s interest in Bang Bang Eche than his knowledge of the comics medium.

Long-term fix: If you can’t blow like Charlie Parker, develop your own sound; not every review needs to be a dazzling display of verbal virtuosity.

7. TAKING YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY.

In a recent think-piece on the state of movie criticism, Andrew O’Hehir offered this helpful analogy:

…reviewing movies is a lot more like performing stand-up comedy than like delivering a philosophy lecture. None of those grand ideas even begin to matter if you’re boring and you can’t write.

O’Hehir doesn’t knock the importance of knowing the medium’s history, or discussing movies in the greater context of politics, literature, and art, but he does challenge the idea that good criticism is inherently high-minded. And he has a point: it’s easy to get carried away with the idea of being a tastemaker, educator, or — God forbid — truth-teller at the expense of having something worthwhile to say. I’m all for a post-Marcusian analysis of desire in shojo manga, but only if said analysis really sheds light on a hidden aspect of the text; otherwise, I’d rather read a blisteringly funny takedown of Hot Gimmick! Why? Because that takedown might be more insightful and true to the source material than ten paragraphs of theoretical rumination.

Quick fix: Before invoking Adorno, Darwin, Durkheim, Foucault, Freud, Horkheimer, Jung, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Said, Saussure, or any of their proteges, ask yourself this: is my critique of Naruto enhanced by a reference to post-colonialist discourse, or would the text be better served with a straight-up review assessing the characters’ ninja prowess?

Have you ever read a review that was so riddled with misspelled words, grammatical errors, or nonsensical phrases that you began to keep a mental tally of the gaffes instead of following the author’s argument? I have. And while it would be easy to make light of such reviews, I feel compassion for the writer. I’ve made more than my share of mistakes online, from misspelling an author’s name to penning a sentence so tortured that, in hindsight, I wasn’t even certain what I meant. The majority of these mistakes can be chalked up to one thing: failing to edit my work carefully. Deadlines, job pressures, and personal commitments can make it easy to neglect editing, but failing to do so can compromise your authority as a writer and a critic, and anger creators who want to see their work treated respectfully; it isn’t pretty to be called on the carpet for writing a negative review that’s as problematic as the book under consideration. (Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. In a word: aaawwwwwwwkward.)

Below, I’ve outlined the steps involved in editing a review. These suggestions reflect the many years I’ve spent honing my own writing as a student, a teacher, an editor, a writer, and a Gal Friday with proofreading chops. This outline is not intended to be a one-size-fits-all proscription for catching mistakes, but a tool to help writers develop their own process for assessing and improving their work. Have an online resource that you think would be helpful for writers? Let me know in the comments and I’ll update the post to include your suggestion.

How Do I Edit My Stuff?

Most writers equate editing with checking their work for cosmetic problems—typos, extra carriage returns, and so forth. And while it’s true that proofreading is an important step in the editorial process, it’s generally the final one. The first—and most difficult—stages require you to scrutinize your prose for clarity, consistency, and economy (namely, can you say something in 10 words instead of 15 or 20?). Here’s a rough outline of the steps entailed in editing an essay or story:

Step One: Set the draft aside for one or two days.

There may be times when this simply isn’t possible, but allowing yourself time between drafting and editing will improve your chances of spotting problems.

Step Two: Read the review out loud, asking yourself the following questions:

Do the sentences flow smoothly? Circle or highlight any sentence that sounds choppy or awkward—the grammar may need correction, the word order may need adjustment, or the sentence may need to be shortened.

Do you use the same words or phrases too often? Circle or highlight those passages, then grab a thesaurus and search for alternatives.

Do you needlessly repeat information or opinions? There’s a fine line between elaborating a point and belaboring it; if you’ve described a book as “exciting,” “pulse-pounding,” and “thrilling” all in the span of a single sentence, you’ve said the same thing three times.

Step Three: Make your first round of corrections, then re-read with an eye towards structural issues. Ask yourself the following questions:

Does my review flow seamlessly from point to point? Look for awkward phrases, abrupt transitions, and weak topic sentences.

Have I achieved an appropriate balance between summary and critique? Generally speaking, reviews should be no more than 50% summary. If in doubt, trim any information that may be viewed as a spoiler, or is not addressed in your subsequent critique of the manga.

Have I substantiated my critique with evidence from the volume(s) I’m reviewing? If you describe a book as “dull” or “irritating,” be sure to explain why you feel that way: is it the dialogue? A particular character? The obvious plot twists?

Does the overall tone of my review match my opinion of the book? If you enjoyed a book, that should be evident from your word choice; the same is true for books that you didn’t like. If you’re ambivalent about a title, it’s OK to say so in the opening or closing of your review.

The Discard File

One of the main reasons we have difficulty editing is that we become attached to a favorite sentence or paragraph. Having crafted something that we like, we’re reluctant to delete it no matter how clumsy or inappropriate it may be in context. I have a remedy for deletion anxiety: cut and paste the offending passage into a separate file. That way, you can retrieve a sentence that, on second judgment, seems useful to your argument. Or you can do the eco-friendly thing and recycle a great turn of phrase in a future article. My own discard file has been a terrific resource for overcoming writer’s block, improving a weak review, and preserving kick-ass sentences that amused me but might never see the light of day.

Proofreading Tips

Allow at least a few hours (if not longer) before you begin proofreading, or you’re bound to miss mistakes. I find it helpful to read the document backwards—the strangeness of the experience forces me to look at the prose more carefully, though the technique might not work for everyone.

I have a simple checklist of things to look for when I proofread:

• Extra spaces or carriage returns
• Spelling errors, typos (e.g. extra or missing letters)
• Subject-verb agreement (e.g. “They is” instead of “They are”), switching tense
• Its vs. it’s, which vs. that
• Punctuation and capitalization errors
• Missing words (e.g. forgetting an article, “In this volume, the family gets dog.”)

Two other things on my radar screen are parallelism problems and passive constructions. Most writers don’t realize that when they make a list of items, all of the items of the list need to be structured/phrased in the same manner, e.g. “Among the things she owned were a broken TV, a rotary phone, and a cracked mirror.” Note that all of the items in this list are expressed as article-adjective-noun. The same rule applies to sentences using participles and verbs, e.g. “He enjoys many activities, from playing golf and swimming to gardening and walking the dog.”

One of my other pet peeves as a writer is the kind of vagueness that goes hand-in-hand with passive constructions. Phrases such as “Urasawa is widely acknowledged as a genius” do more harm than good, as they leave your reader to wonder, Who says Urasawa is a genius? His critics? His mother? A better strategy is to rephrase these sentences in the active voice: “Urasawa’s fellow manga artists revere him as a genius.” There are, of course, plenty of times when the passive voice is a perfectly acceptable choice, especially in academic writing, but if it’s possible to identify an agent, do so. Your writing will sound more authoritative.

The final thing to keep in mind when proofreading: be consistent. If you give the name of one city as “Austin, TX,” all the cities in your essay should be formatted that way (as opposed to “Boston, Mass.” or “Yonkers, New York”). If you decide to hyphenate Asian-American, then all occurrences of that word should be hyphenated. And so forth. There are several excellent style manuals on the market (such as The Chicago Manual of Style and The MLA Handbook) that provide the nitty-gritty on hyphenation, capitalization, italicization, etc. Don’t want to shell out the clams for a bound copy? Many universities have posted Cliff Notes versions of these venerable style guides; one that I find useful in a pinch is The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue.

When Deadlines Loom…

Pressed for time? At a minimum, run the SpellCheck function on your computer, but monitor it carefully—the SpellChecker can add mistakes to your work, especially if you use funky foreign words like fujoshi or gensaku-sha. If these are words you anticipate using in future documents, add them to your SpellChecker’s memory to avoid comically awful substitutions. I’m less enthusiastic about Microsoft Word’s GrammarCheck function. While it seldom misses glaring errors (e.g. “You is my woman”), it may gloss over deeper structural problems or flag a sentence that is, in fact, grammatically acceptable. Use sparingly.

Putting Advice Into Practice

Suppose you’re writing a review of a new series, Dogball D. You’re both bored by and frustrated with the first volume, as the characters’ mannerisms and physical appearance remind you of characters from Dragonball Z. At the same time, however, you recognize that the similarity is intentional. The challenge: how to express that idea effectively.

Version 1: The main problem with Dogball D is that the characters are boring and unoriginal and just like the characters in Dragonball Z. That’s understandable, since Yuki Yamamoto wrote her story for a magazine that was competing directly with the magazine in which Dragonball Z was a big hit for many years before Dogball D came out.

Version 2: Dogball D‘s biggest problem is the characters: they’re pale imitations of the Dragonball Z gang. The similarity is understandable, since Yuki Yamamoto’s story runs in Young Mister, a direct competitor of the magazine in which Dragonball Z was serialized.

In the second version, I’ve compressed the idea of “boring” “unoriginal” characters into a single, more forcefully stated comparison between Dogball D and Dragonball Z. I’ve eliminated several prepositional phrases (e.g. “for a magazine”) and conjunctions, and dropped the phrase “before Dogball D came out,” as the contrast in tenses (“runs” versus “was serialized”) implies that Dragonball Z preceded Dogball D — an impression confirmed by the initial statement that the Dogball D cast is a “pale imitation” of Dragonball Z‘s famous characters. You can only imitate existing models!

Here’s another before-and-after comparison, this one culled from my own writing. The first paragraph comes from my review of Chica Umino’s Honey and Clover; the second comes from the revised version now currently visible on the front page. Changes are highlighted in red:

Original: If you’ve spent any time around an art school or conservatory, you’ve met students like the Honey and Clover gang, a chatty bunch who are eager to share and compare influences, discuss their romantic lives in intimate detail, and wax poetic about their latest enthusiasms. In Honey and Clover, that garrulity reflects the characters’ deep-rooted need for community, both a boundary-drawing exercise — this is what I stand for — and an invitation to join the group. As characters grow closer to each other, however, they often find conversation inadequate to the task of bridging the remaining distance between them, a motif that Chica Umino uses throughout volume eight.

Revised: If you’ve spent any time around an art school or conservatory, you’ve met students like the Honey and Clover gang, a chatty bunch who are eager to share and compare influences, discuss their romantic lives in intimate detail, and wax poetic about their latest enthusiasms. In Honey and Clover, that chattiness reflects the characters’ deep-rooted need to define who they are and how they fit in with their peers. As characters discover common ground, however, they often find conversation inadequate to the task of bridging the remaining distance between them, a motif that Chica Umino uses throughout volume eight.

I decided to revise the paragraph because I found it wordy and, frankly, a little pretentious: “garrulity”? “Boundary-drawing exercise”? The emptiness of those words became even more apparent when contrasted with the review that immediately followed it, as my take on Mixed Vegetables was snappier and easier to follow. So I rolled up my sleeves and made several small but crucial changes by finding five-dollar substitutes for the fifteen-dollar words and eliminating the parenthetical remark from the second sentence. The result: a clearer statement of the same idea.

Conclusion

I’ve learned as much from my errors as I have from my successes, as they remind me just how difficult writing really is. The more I practice drafting and editing my own work, however, the better the final product tends to be. Confronting my own shortcomings keeps me humble, but it also keeps me invested in improving, too — each review presents an opportunity to refine my skills a little more, and a chance to reflect on what constitutes good writing.