Wow. That’s… a lot of comments. Apparently, this question struck a nerve here in the fandom, eh?

I’m going to qualify my post here with some info: I’m old school. While I think that epublishing is the way the industry is moving, I still think that, in order to have any real success, you need things like an agent and a publishing house behind you. Agents negotiate better contracts. Publishing houses have things like real editors and marketing departments and all the things that are necessary. No one can write well without a decent professional editor backing them up. Period.

The problem with the current wave of self-publishing in the Twilight fandom is that there is no one offering constructive criticism. No one recommending plot changes that would help a story be the best it can be. No one really checking for readability and flow and all the other things that can make a decent story great. Show me a book that’s traditionally published in which the author doesn’t thank a boatload of people for helping them with editing and being the hardass that’s needed.

If you withhold chapters or offer “incentive” chapters in exchange for smoke blown up your metaphorical ass, you are getting nothing back in terms of improving yourself as a writer. Everyone can be better. I’m fairly certain even Shakespeare would think he could have made changes to improve.

What happens with a manuscript (or a fic) is that you get so wrapped up in the world you created you can no longer see those pieces that need fixing. If no one questions plot devices or word choices, you are unable to improve your story. It’s why things like crit partners are so highly sought after in writing groups.

The Twi fandom is the opposite of a writing group. Constructive criticism is frowned upon. People who leave a review saying “Hey, I see what you are trying to do with this character, but it’s not coming off that way because of X and Y” are vilified, often publicly. Again, how does this help improve writing? It improves ego, that’s for sure, but ego isn’t craft. And if you aren’t in this for the craft, then why publish at all?

It’s possible that there are people whose aspirations involve nothing more than making a few hundred dollars and holding a copy of a printed story with their name on a cover. If that’s the case, by all means, carry on. But own it. Don’t use words like “craft” and “vision” and “sharing with an audience,” because if that’s the case, how could you not want your creation to be the absolute best it could possibly be? To be the best, you need someone to tell you what you are doing wrong. Olympic athletes have coaches. Writers have professional editors.

@TwiCharmed I think some confuse the two. I can tell you that I have gotten reviews that had a problem with an element of my story, and for the most part, I was able to explain what I felt the character’s motivation was and why I wrote something a certain way. In other cases, I took what the reviewer said and evaluated my fic in light of their comments. Sometimes I changed the way a certain scene I was writing played out based on that feedback.

Of course, there are always flames, like the ones who hide behind member-only communities because they are too afraid to actually crit a story, or the ones who leave anonymous comments quoting the author’s profile 10x. Those you can laugh off.

I can tell you that I sent my OF to someone intentionally thinking that person would hate it, and I was totally right. That feedback, however, added to some comments from another reader that weren’t as specific, helped me to see where the story lacked something, and led to a complete overhaul of my story’s opening and the addition of two entire chapters that hadn’t existed in my first draft. Had I asked only people I thought would love the story for feedback, I’d have missed that input entirely, and my story would have suffered for it.