I feel like I really get the most out of a comment when someone makes specific references to my story. Someone mentioned a description of one of my characters, Leah (by name), and described the moment Leah came home, and how well she thought it worked with the story. She explained that it worked because it depicted a real-life situation in detail, and then went on to describe how it reminded her of her own family.
That's another thing that sticks out to me; when a person adds something of their own to the comment they make, rather than simply regurgitating information about my story or introduction. This commenter told me how it related to her own parents, and that helped me see how my story related to real life, and I was also assured that my view of the situation wasn't uncommon.
It's nice to hear people say, "How cool that you did this!" or "I loved your cake!" but when they give me a tidbit of (just an example) their own engagement story, or a little advice on taking trips to Disney or something, that gives me a reason to read it. Of course, I'll read all of them, but it's easy to skim something when it basically just repeats what you wrote.
I think I've done a pretty good job at commenting on others' stories and introductions. I usually end up asking the person a bunch of questions that come to mind, whether about their personal life or their reasons for different things they did in their writing. However, sometimes when nothing really sticks out to me in a story, it can be hard to come up with something to say that isn't simply regurgitating the facts about their story in compliment-form. In times like these, I try to think about what I would have done differently, and offer it, or think more about the formatting.
Chandler,
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't surprise me that you really do strive to make a personal connection with the content of the stories that you read. I say this because you put so much care into the the stories that you write, it would only make sense that you would show that same detail when reading the stories of others. this is much better than simply "regurgitating the information" as you put it. I've never thought of it from that perspective, but that does tend to happen.
Something else that I wanted to mention is that I love how you use pictures that actually draw your readers interest in. For me, the picture is the first thing that tells me if the story is going to be interesting or not. Of course, this isn't always the case, but it doesn't hurt to have an interesting picture to go with the story.
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