A Critique of Critiques: A Short Primer

While working on something else, I ran across these "official" critiques of a script I submitted to a contest a few years ago:

"This appeared to be a different take on "Ghostbusters", but it really did not work. The story goes all over the place, so there's no direction and we aren't engaged as there is no reason to care about characters or situations."

"Have you thought about changing the main characters to kids and making this into some type of cartoon for Nick or some kids network? I think the kids would seem cool doing the same thing that adults are boring at and because they're kids, the actions would seem more believable. Right now, the story is flat with no place to go and the reader ends up disinterested."
 

To be fair, this was a script I threw together on the fly, and while I liked it, I never really beat it into super fine shape or anything.  I did some editing, gave it some space, then decided that I liked it well enough to leave it alone.

Now, I can't say whether the criticisms are valid or not.  I'm sure they came from two different people, to be sure.  But somehow, it's always thrown me that the two different approaches to this were so... different.  One person is all, "This didn't work.  No one cares."  As far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty heavy handed critique.  It's just one slam short of being a Simon Cowell dismissal.  And hey, I would almost expect as much from some random screener in some contest that probably got hundreds (if not thousands) of submissions.

But on the other side of the coin, the other reviewer thinks it might be cool if kids did it?  Really?  It doesn't make sense or kick if adults do it, but a bunch of kids might make it more compelling?  I actually spent time pondering a rewrite for a day or so before it occurred to me that the kid suggestion was ludicrous and I should just let it go.  I can't fathom a world where a child doing something is more entertaining than an adult.  The only example I can think of is when people deliberately misplace kids into adult roles, and that's a one-trick pony of a joke that gets tired quick.

Lesson being, it's okay if people don't love your work.  But you can't let them get too into your head along the way.  Take some criticism.  Apply it if you can.  But if you can't, then don't lose any sleep over it.  I hardly doubt that my submission was Academy Award winning work, but at the same I certainly didn't get a lot of enlightenment from the people that chose to give feedback on it.  This is probably why I don't bother with paying extra for feedback when I submit to contests and the like.  Sometimes, it's just not worth it.