User blog comment:Princess Callie/Why you shouldn't feel bad about criticism/@comment-25251081-20140801180741/@comment-5000412-20140806234807

I can agree with you, but there's times where a story's bad because of major, underlying reasons. For example, a mediocre to bad story could see much improvement through edits and revisions. However, a story could be bad because the idea/concept itself is unorganized or terrible, in which "improving" it essentially means writing a new story.

As to your second statement, I mostly agree, but there are times when there's really is no compliment to be made. This can be rare, as there's typically at least some good to find in most work, but I've seen some really short and lazily written works over the years. I'm not trying to be cynical, but sometimes the best compliment you can give is "you tried".

-E