Judging what's bad and what's good with the objective of being able to do better seems to me the essence of what an Author Craft space on the forum is for, no ?
yes - ish? Analysis does not implicitly require a judgmental attitude.
I mean when you, neurovore, refer to 'writing' what are you really referring to? There are so many aspects of writing: character development, plot development, pacing, literary devices, voice(s), etc.
And it's a taste thing, to boot.
I haven't read
Mists recently enough to say if Bradley did a good job with all of those categories or not. But I enjoyed the method of presenting the story, even if I didn't love the pace. She did a good job developing most of the characters, but left some woefully in the Mists so to speak. But those characters (Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot) are the ones that everyone already writes about so it was intentional. You have to be a little more specific than "rotten writing" if you want to get me talking about a piece.
But no, I'm not going to categorize people's work as "bad" or "good" or "rotten" because there is bad and good in every piece, and it's an individual's tolerance for each thing that determines wether or not they like someone's writing.
So sorry, but I just disagree that judging is something you 'should' do in Author Craft. You can, surely, but 'should', nah. I prefer discussion to blatant dissing on people's work, personally.
