Fail early

In response to Tara's latest post I thought I'd talk about something we covered in my own class.  Although my thing has more to do about videogames and playtesting I feel like it could easily be related to writing, art, or anything else that can be put up for critique. (and honestly what isn't put up for critique these days?)

I angst over putting out our work for the world to look at. There are a lot of things that discourage me from showing my work.

For me it usually boils down to the "it's not done yet." There's something that's not quite right, or I need to evoke more emotions from this one scene, or it's not how it looks in my head, there's a minor bug in the code, whatever.  So by the time I actually do decide to show my work to people I'm already fed up with it and never want to look at it again. (A big apology to all my artwork that I gave up on)

It's a big hurdle, putting your soul into something but being able to leave that "it's my baby!" attitude out.

Sure it's easy to get defensive,or try to explain why something is the way it is, or why it's not there at all. Maybe you didn't get around to it. Maybe it didn't work. Maybe it works better that way. We all know that not everybody is going to love our work. It'd be nice, but it's just not statistically possible.

Still feedback is feedback. Someone is taking the time to go over your work, to look at it, read it, play it, listen to it, what have you. Someone is actively paying attention to your baby. It doesn't matter if they tell you that your baby is the ugliest baby in the world if you know it's actually a pretty decent looking baby. (And it's what's on the inside that counts, right?)

Fixing stuff is great, if it makes it better. I can't even begin to describe how many times I've been working on a program, think I've fixed a bug and twenty thousand new bugs crop up. Remember fix stuff so it's better, not worse.

Not talking is a great way to see your tester (or reader) in their natural habitat. Watching and observing them is great too. This may be harder for things like artwork, but for games and stories you can definitely catch when people laugh or frown or look super confused.  If they're confused enough to ask you something, then something is wrong. Think about it like you're giving them a new microwave without a manual. It should be intuitive but if they need to look it up in the manual (you, the creator) something is wrong.

Oddly enough, for games players tend to offer solutions rather than telling you the underlying problems, but for stories people tend to tell you something is wrong rather than giving you a potential solution. Interesting, huh?

The last thing I do when I'm working on something is generally the hardest thing for me to do. I walk away for awhile (this is the easy part) then I come back and try to go through my project like I'm brand new to it. We develop bias and get used to certain things after a time with our developed knowledge of what's going on.  So we tend to skip over certain areas that we think are fine and don't need fixing. Go back read it like you've never read it before (like you're brand new to it). Spellchecker is your friend but it can't catch everything.

Also I really liked this blog called Terrible Minds. It's by a writer for writers. The author is amusing and brutally honest.

Terrible Minds: A Post about Editing
Terrible Minds: 25 Steps to Edit the Unmerciful Suck out of your story