In terms of who or what needs to be protected, I think the most common person who gets hurt in a writing critique is the writer. A bad critique (especially one where it feels like it's about you and not about what's on the page, or something where you feel like you are being required to do something that you are totally incapable of doing) can really shut down your ability to keep writing.
Which is not to say that the author is always right. Just that constructive criticism needs to be constructive.
But if someone in the group has PTSD triggers, then the balance of who is most likely to get hurt switches to the person with the trigger.
As I'm thinking more about it, I feel like the issue may be about squicks vs triggers. So far, I have never workshopped with anyone who had specific triggers that we were trying to accommodate (even though everyone was writing about trauma in one way or another). It has always been about squicks and hot-button issues.
And once I frame it like that, it seems more important to protect the writer from people saying "the immutable facts of your life squick me" than to protect the reader from being squicked
Though a perfectly valid thing that a reader can say to a writer is, "You may not realize how much this description of XYZ is viscerally upsetting your readers, and you may want to either change how you write about it or be more intentional about the effect you're having." And that's a place where different readers can argue back and forth about what reaction they had to that particular passage.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-03-26 05:27 pm (UTC)Which is not to say that the author is always right. Just that constructive criticism needs to be constructive.
But if someone in the group has PTSD triggers, then the balance of who is most likely to get hurt switches to the person with the trigger.
As I'm thinking more about it, I feel like the issue may be about squicks vs triggers. So far, I have never workshopped with anyone who had specific triggers that we were trying to accommodate (even though everyone was writing about trauma in one way or another). It has always been about squicks and hot-button issues.
And once I frame it like that, it seems more important to protect the writer from people saying "the immutable facts of your life squick me" than to protect the reader from being squicked
Though a perfectly valid thing that a reader can say to a writer is, "You may not realize how much this description of XYZ is viscerally upsetting your readers, and you may want to either change how you write about it or be more intentional about the effect you're having." And that's a place where different readers can argue back and forth about what reaction they had to that particular passage.