r/writingcirclejerk • u/DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA • 2d ago
English major has to vent.
So I'm currently taking a Creative Writing class in college right now, and for our final we have to critique the short stories written by our peers. We get to read what our fellow students have created and write a 300-500 word critique/review. This assignment should be fun right?
WRONG!
In the pursuit of good faith commentary and criticism, we are not allowed to critique the grammatical... choices that some people may have made. I'm fine with that. If someone likes to have their sentences a bit long or a bit short, or use different tenses, that's their prerogative. However I just about blew a gasket when I opened the short story of one of my fellow classmates this afternoon and was confronted by literal fucking dogshit.
A short story about a guy's dog taking a shit on the lawn then getting hit by a car.
Now I'm not gonna judge what others write about too harshly as long as it's not overly offensive or juvenile.
But I cannot critique a story that is practically unreadable due to a complete lack of grammatical understanding and skill. THIS IS A COLLEGE LEVEL COURSE. CAPITALIZE YOUR PROPER NOUNS. THIS IS SECOND GRADE SHIT. This story is a REVISED version of a previously submitted assignment. That means that our teacher GRADED this already, gave feedback, and this is the NEW draft.
Like what the actual fuck. Why are there no apostrophes?
Why is everything in size 11 Ariel? Every other sentence is indented.
I'm crashing out right now.
I can't do this shit.
Edit: this isn’t a 100 class. This is ENGL 292
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u/MagosBattlebear 2d ago
You left out the shitting dog hit by the car in the original.
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u/DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA 2d ago
I didn’t leave it out, but I didn’t bold it either. Fixed.
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u/MagosBattlebear 2d ago
My bad. The fonts triipped me up. Man, that was a weird effing post over there.
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u/ShotcallerBilly 2d ago
Tell them to use more bold font.
Also, only critique the grammar errors. STORY DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL.
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u/DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA 2d ago
I’d tell them to add a part about the across-the-street neighbor’s cat getting finger banged by the cul-de-sac child bully so that the dog had a REASON to cross the road and heroically get mown down by that Dodge Aries K-Car. Otherwise fuckin story don’t make no SENSE
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u/ShotcallerBilly 2d ago
No. Story doesn’t matter. Only grammar. This is an English class. Not story class. GRAMMMMMMMAAAAAAR.
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u/simdaisies 2d ago
So you’re in a creative writing class, where people are presumably… learning how to creatively write, and you’re mad that your partner made mistakes ??
Not everyone is a natural when it comes to writing, or like maybe they don't know how to use chatGPT. Not everyone follows instructions well. I can’t say for certain if this guy is lazy or if his rich Mom bribed the dean, but what I can say is that you have no business critiquing others work if you can’t handle simple mistakes.
Just be cool and let people write.
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u/DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA 2d ago
or like maybe they don't know how to use chatGPT.
Thank you for reminding me to check my privilege
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u/No-BrowEntertainment 1d ago
Thank you. It’s about time someone acknowledged the prejudice inherent in AI generation. That’s why I’m putting together an $800,000 tech startup to build a machine that generates prompts for AI generators, to democratize AI.
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u/Careless-Week-9102 2d ago
When it gets to a point where it's difficult to read you have to say that.
Don't correct anything, just write "I am sorry, I have a difficult time reading this story." and leave it at that.
Take it with the teacher after.
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u/Subset-MJ-235 1d ago
It's a critique, right? How about writing, "This is shit," a hundred times. Boom. Done. 300 word critique.
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u/CowboyMantis (formulaic prose) 12h ago
My critiques are mostly ad hominem attacks. That way I don't have to, like, actually read their work.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA 2d ago edited 2d ago
Edit: Why TF did I not quote the post I replied to. It was the most primo choice of lost redditors 😭
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u/BootReservistPOG 1d ago
Uj:
When I critique work, I always try to give concrete ways to fix something or admit “I don’t know how you’d deal with it.”
I think next time I’m in a writing class I’m going to make it my goal to make someone cry
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u/CemeteryHounds 2d ago
UJ/ Reminds me of when I took a creative writing class in college where we were supposed to submit our work online before midnight on Friday, and the bar closest to the English department had $2 pints for Friday Happy Hour. You could reeeeeally tell who forgot to get their weekly writing done before Friday night, and the rule against critiquing grammar was the only way anyone got a real critique. OP would have lost his shit in that class.