A general question to the house

[ksmith]

When critique crosses the line into cruelty, who is served?

Besides the author au jus, that is.

UPDATE: posted in the Comments section.

Comments

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

Author au jus doesn't sound very appetizing.

Usually, I do multiple passes on a friend's work. He's not published in fiction, and probably never will be, but he still wants to write *well*. So I get the first draft, and read for glaring problems ("I got really lost in the stats section, can you rework it?"). I get the second draft, and read for lesser problems ("Vic, in and on are not the same thing."). I get the final draft, and read for punctuation and typos.

Burninating a friend for a critique just seems like a bad plan. You can handle even things that might hurt, like the in/on thing, in a way where it's not hurtful. Coz well, if you burninate your friend, you might not get anything more to read out of them. And that'd be *bad*.