Giving Constructive Criticisms

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Let’s face it: most Filipinos take criticisms personally.

It’s not entirely unjustifiable especially in the case of comic book creators. We pour our hearts and souls (not to mention blood, sweat, and tears) into our comic books and the last thing we want to hear is for people to say it’s no good.

Criticisms are important however especially if the quality of our work is to level up. Wikipedia defines constructive criticism, also known as constructive analysis, as “compassionate attitude towards the person qualified for criticism”.

It basically means that while we know that criticisms must be encouraged and accepted with an open mind and is an integral part of the process for self improvement, we also have to remember that people have feelings and that we have to exercise care in dealing with them. We want someone to improve, not to hurt his feelings but unfortunately, this is what happens most of the time.

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If you want to offer your criticisms you have to be more forthcoming as possible.

If you tell someone “your work’s terrible” and leave it at that without explaining why, it doesn’t really count as criticism and worse the person you directed the statement to won’t be able to make good use of it. Was the storyline too convoluted making it impossible to follow? Were the artworks too detailed distracting readers from the story? Was the lettering too small making it hard to read?

Be specific.

In the age of democratized publishing thanks to the interwebs, blogging, and social networks, never has the statement “everyone’s a critic” been more true but you can’t just say “your work is terrible” and qualify that as criticism.

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Without details the statement “your work is terrible” is just an opinion, not a criticism.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course but if your purpose is to help someone to improve, you have to present it with wisdom, wit, and tact. One of the primary purposes of the critic is to ensure that the general overall quality of the field he is in (movies, comics, books, etc.) remains high through detailed analysis and evaluation.

Besides, without offering detailed analysis and evaluation you’re not exactly setting yourself up as a credible critic.

“Having higher experience, gifts, respect, and knowledge in a specific field and being able to verbally convince at the same time, this person is intending to uplift the other person materially, morally, emotionally or spiritually.”

Personally, when giving constructive criticism, I like to start out with the following procedure:

1. Start by pointing out something positive about the work.
2. Identify the negatives and explain at length why it doesn’t work.
3. Give out some ideas on how it can be improved.
4. End by pointing out another positive aspect of the work.

As you can see it takes a lot of work to dish it out but considering that the people you’re offering your criticisms also did the same to produce the work, I think it’s only fair.