To Critical Language That May or May Not Be Meaningful

The art of critique and description is invaluable to all, regardless of career. This is a small handbook of some from a wide variety of professions that can be used across genres. Please borrow, tweak and use as needed.

This fails to harmonize all the elements.

The idea is clear, but the presentation is messy.

I’m getting the sense you wanted to do more with this, but fear prevented you from taking the risk and you held back. This remains 2 dimensional.

You were in the pocket and then suddenly not. Then, you had no pockets and your hands were full.

If you eliminated half of this, distilled the other half down to its essence and then wove lighter and meaningful accents throughout, you’d really have something.

This lacks depth of thought and breadth of emotion, but it covers completely the topography of the subject like canvas on sand.

You have charted the quickest map to confusion and left us hungry for an organizing principle to define this.

What small news you have delivered in such a large space.

Please continue to rethink the value of your intended purpose. Please intend a purpose.

While woefully inaccurate, this distills a kind of meaning that truth rarely imparts. Fictionalized reality is still reality, only criminal.

There's a discreet dialogic between the the three basic premises here that one the one hand, negate the suppositions of each, while on the other create a new meaning between them. Good work!

If you meant to dismantle the relationship between audience and context, then you have failed. If you did not, this is subtle but without risk. No one will like it, but everyone will read it.

I've come to understand that holding all relevant information until the end is ineffective. Unless you are royalty in a dying county. And then you should hoard it until the bitter end when the subjects are rioting in the streets. This piece assumes they are gathering their pitchforks. They are angry and you are feeling heroic. Please look at least one in the eye before you begin speaking. And then revise this.