Also I think there is room for discussion of strengths that is not praise. I think it was very useful for me to have a dad who was willing to talk about how some things came easier for me than for the other kids and I should not be a jerk to them about it without it being a form I recognized as praise. Sometimes getting past people's praise reception mechanisms--whether they're "awww yay me!" or "no no you're just being kind" or whatever--into genuine discussion is useful.
This is why I don't like the "shit sandwich" school of delivering criticism: when it's transparently phrased as "begin with something nice, then criticism, then end with something else nice," writers often receive the negative forms of criticism as the only forms of criticism and the positive forms as formulaic, empty of content. When in fact "DO NOT FUCK UP THIS PART THAT YOU GOT RIGHT, THIS IS CRUCIAL TO KEEP IN YOUR STORY" is incredibly important and not just me being nice.
And when I say, "This story is basically working," that is not me not putting effort into a crit, that is me examining the story closely and feeling that it's basically working.
tl;dr I have lots of intense feelings about the conflation of "praise" and "any positive remark."
no subject
This is why I don't like the "shit sandwich" school of delivering criticism: when it's transparently phrased as "begin with something nice, then criticism, then end with something else nice," writers often receive the negative forms of criticism as the only forms of criticism and the positive forms as formulaic, empty of content. When in fact "DO NOT FUCK UP THIS PART THAT YOU GOT RIGHT, THIS IS CRUCIAL TO KEEP IN YOUR STORY" is incredibly important and not just me being nice.
And when I say, "This story is basically working," that is not me not putting effort into a crit, that is me examining the story closely and feeling that it's basically working.
tl;dr I have lots of intense feelings about the conflation of "praise" and "any positive remark."