Board Thread:General Wiki Discussion/@comment-4833240-20140301051701/@comment-1196539-20140302212347

Princess Callie wrote: Believe it or not, I know this from experience. Telling the person the straight truth has caused improvement more often than "It could use improvement, but's it is not bad. Even though it is." Honesty is the best policy. But constructive criticism is NOT the same thing as "sugarcoating." Sugarcoating is lying. Saying "it's not bad" when it is bad is sugarcoating. You can analyze what, specifically, is wrong with a story without words like "just bad," "shitty," "terrible," "awful," etc.--words which don't actually define any aspect of something but just insult it for no reason.

"Such-and-such is an incredibly overused cliche, and the relationship between whatshisface and whosthatgirl needs a lot of work because..." is an example. It's called "critical analysis," and no self-respecting critic would use the word "shitty" in an analysis because it tells everyone "I don't know how to quantify this."