Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 182

Epic Knitting Errors

My attempt to multitask actually went pretty well yesterday. I revised three chapters, then hit a stopping point where my brain couldn't take any more of that, so I switched projects. There I initially ran into a brick wall because I wasn't sure where to go next, but then did some brainstorming and came up with a really fun idea. It was something I came up with and then discarded for this character's story line in the first book, but it totally fits here. Hint: a Broadway actress figures she knows how to stir up a revolution because she was in the chorus of Les Mis for six months. I'm looking forward to diving into that story line today.

I also seem to have recovered from the epic knitting error. I'm not back to where I was, but I got back to a good starting-over point and have moved forward, and all the math now fits. I'm knitting a lace bedspread, and I sort of made up the pattern based on a shawl pattern, enlarging it and making the border only go on three edges (because I don't want a pointy edge at the head). The trick is that figuring out the number of stitches to cast on required not only figuring out the number of stitches for the pattern repeat in the body, but also figuring out the number of rows in the border, and then the number of rows on the border changes at the corners because there are double and triple joins. I'd given up on calculating all that and just picked a number of stitches that was the right size and that worked with the body pattern, figuring that I could adjust the number of double and triple joins when I got there. And I did, but it turns out that the adjustment is actually counterintuitive, and what worked on paper was the opposite of what I needed to do. And I didn't figure it out until I got to that point and started counting. I should have been able to fix it by undoing about four rows, but in double joins it's hard to tell what you're undoing and I undid too much, somehow. I had to undo around the whole corner and start the corner again. But now it works and I've even counted off and marked the stitches. I think I'm going to end up with more yarn than I needed, but I love this yarn and this color, so I can always come up with something else to make with it. So far, I have a throw and a tea cozy and the bedspread in progress.

I'm really going to have to write a character who's a knitter. Then I'll be able to justify all this as "work." You know, for research. But all the current projects were started before this obsession developed, so I'd have to retrofit the knitting into existing character traits, and I think that kind of character trait needs to be more organic than that. I have that idea for the gothic style story with a twist, and I think Victorian knitting would fit very well in there. The heroine who's shaping up in my head would probably enjoy all the math of matching border to body and figuring out the stitch count. She'd look totally engrossed while she's doing it because it's very detailed, complicated work, and that would allow her to eavesdrop, since the people with her would assume she's too focused on the knitting to pay attention to what she's saying. And she has a lot of tension to work out, so she'd be more or less yarn bombing her own room, knitting for the sake of knitting rather than because she needs a particular knitted item.

Onward with the Week!

I got a late start this morning after a knitting disaster of epic proportions kept me up way too late last night. It was one of those cases where trying to undo a little mistake led to even worse mistakes, and that meant going back to a particular point where I could regroup and start again. I'm on no deadline for the current project. It's mostly something I'm doing for the sake of doing it, so the setback isn't a huge issue, but it was still a frustrating thing.

Ah well, I did get other stuff accomplished over the weekend. Friday I started diving into revisions and found that my editor had some good points. Then I managed to get a scene written in the other book. Saturday and Sunday I did a lot of baking, so I have bread and scones in the freezer.

That means I'm ready to dive into the week and make real progress on both projects. I should set up a reward system for if I meet certain goals for the week. Anything to get me through all this project juggling. And if I can manage to juggle multiple projects, then maybe I can get over my all-or-nothing mentality when I only have one writing project going.

In other news, I need to start making my summer convention decisions. I've accepted an invitation to ArmadilloCon in Austin, and I'm seriously considering the North American Science Fiction Convention, DetCon, in Detroit (sort of the US answer to WorldCon when WorldCon is overseas). I have books coming out that need to be promoted, and I have money again (yay!). It's hard to wrap my mind around that.

But first, I have to get one of those books written.

Sanctioned Procrastination and Progress

I got a start on making progress yesterday. I think I've worked out some ways to deal with the revisions, and I planned and got started on the next scene I'm writing in the other book. There was a minor rabbit trail, as the editor for the steampunk book e-mailed me and said she wants to put a map in the book. That led to me trying to find a map that fits the time period and place that I can mark story locations on and give to the art department. Since the street layout in Manhattan hasn't changed that much since the 1880s (and any disparities can be blamed on alternate history), I ended up hitting Google Maps and printing three pages that I spliced together to get all of Manhattan at the level of detail I need. I'll compare the general shape of the island to my historical atlas of New York to see when the various landfills were done (which changed the shape of the tip). Then I'll outline the key points in dark marker and trace over it to create a fresh map I can put my locations on.

I considered this editor-sanctioned procrastination. I needed to have the map before I start revisions because as I come across a location in the book, I need to be able to mark it on the map. I may have to work to resist the urge to learn a period-appropriate calligraphy and do a lovely antique-looking map, since I'm sure the art department will do their own thing. But it might be fun to have as an office decoration.

The plan for the day is to do maybe a chapter of revisions, then go to the library (I have books to return/pick up), then work a while on the new book. And then after Grimm I'm going to try to do one of my good old Friday-night marathons -- make some tea, put on some music and write until I can't stay awake anymore. When I was in my 20s, I could make it to 2 in the morning. Now, I might hit midnight.

Saturday is supposed to be rainy, or at least cloudy, and I may do what I did last weekend, alternating writing, reading and housework sessions. The Nebula voting deadline is approaching, and I still have tons of books to read.

Strange Urges

I got some sad news in children's choir last night. Alas, it seems that Problem Child has started playing baseball, and practice conflicts with choir. Oh no, what shall we do? My co-teacher admitted that when she told the mom we missed him, she might have been crossing her fingers behind her back. Baseball is probably a better activity for him, so I hope he is happy and enjoys himself and maybe works off some of that energy. The rest of the group is still crazy enough, even without him, but I worry less about physical injuries when he's gone. Last night wasn't too bad. I didn't even get through every item on my lesson plan because they got into one of the things I planned and it took longer than I expected.

And in case you hadn't heard, the DVD of Frozen came out this week. This is apparently the most exciting thing to ever happen in a kindergarten girl's life. I may have to get the DVD myself and learn "Let it Go" so we can let them get that song out of their systems (it's the only thing they really wanted to sing last night). According to the glazed-eyed mothers, that movie has been playing on constant repeat since they got it Tuesday.

And I may have really confused/freaked out the girls because they were talking to each other about whether or not they were going to get married. The other teacher said something about that, and one of the girls said very dismissively, "Oh, you two are already married." I said that I wasn't married, and they didn't seem to know how to deal with that because in their world, all adults are married. Not that I have anything against marriage, but I figure it doesn't hurt to let kids know that there are other outcomes in life. It kind of fits with the Frozen thing, where it doesn't end with a wedding.

In other news, now that I have a pile of work to do, with revisions on one book, copy edits on another, writing on a third, and some work to do for non-US digital release of the first four books in the Enchanted Inc. series, I have been possessed by a powerful urge to clean and organize my house. I almost NEVER want to do housework, and suddenly it sounds like the most exciting thing ever to do. I did manage to lift a stain from a countertop (thank you, Internet, for the rubbing alcohol suggestion!) and then stopped myself before clearing off the entire counter and polishing it. I also really want to exercise and practice music. The music practice I need because I have a solo coming up in a choir piece, and I need to build some strength in the upper end of my range, which requires daily work. I managed to avoid having to sing it in rehearsal last night, but we're starting to rehearse this piece, which means I'll need to be ready to sing it next week in rehearsal (the choir isn't performing it until May).

But I must work. I will outline my worldbuilding stuff for the steampunk book (the editor doesn't seem to understand my magical system) and write a new scene for the book I'm writing. I may let myself Swiffer the floors, just to satisfy some of the cleaning urge. I have to take advantage of that while I have it.

Getting Radical

Yesterday afternoon, I finished the major rewriting, then went back and re-read up to the point where things take off. I was relaxing and finishing my tea after that when the doorbell rang, and I found a package on the doorstep -- another round of revisions on the steampunk novel. I kind of wanted to scream or cry because it seems like I can never get any momentum going on this book.

But I'm going to try something really radical. Since I'm dealing with two very different processes -- writing/creating and fine-tuning -- I'm going to see if I can manage to keep both going, doing a little of each every day. Maybe do some editing while I'm feeling more logical and then writing later. Or if I run out of ideas and get stuck writing, I can go do some editing. I might even try editing during the day and doing writing marathons at night on the nights when I'm free. That used to be my Friday-night routine in the day-job days. I'll probably have to work a bit more every day to make progress on both projects, but that's probably good for me anyway. For at least a few weeks, until the edits are done, I may have to cut back on "play" time. And I still have copyedits to get to. In order to accomplish everything I need to do this year, I'm going to have to be a little more dedicated and focused.

But it beats a real job!

Since most of the editor's issues seem to involve her not understanding the rules of magic in my world, I think today I'm going to work it all out in answer to each of her questions. I know this stuff, but I think it may help to put it in writing before I find a way to weave the info into the story. And then I need to work out some things for the next scene I need to write in the other book. So today's going to be a thinky kind of day. Meanwhile, I need to do lesson plans for choir.

In the meantime, I may have found my favorite version of Les Miserables -- the Cookie Monster version. I wish these songs were full-length because I'd love to be able to sing the "Not having cookies makes me sad" version of "I Dreamed a Dream" while I'm baking. If I could write decent lyrics, I'd get right on that.

Modern Fantasy Worlds

I'm still fixing the first third of the book. I've done the major chopping and am almost done with writing a new scene that was needed to replace some cut scenes. Then I'll probably go back to the beginning to read through and make sure it all flows and fix a few details that I've changed to make everything work. And then from there I hope to move forward. I was pretty productive yesterday, getting some housework done, taking care of a bunch of to-do list items that had been lingering (I finally ordered some new ballet tights) and getting the writing done.

I've also been reading a lot, trying to work my way through the Nebula Awards ballot (guess what my weekend plans are!). I made it through three books in the past week. Most of them weren't my cup of tea, but there was one that I found intriguing, a teen fantasy called A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty.

It's kind of hard to describe the plot in a way that makes sense without giving too much away. It actually took me a little while to settle into the world because I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. I sometimes call these the "I'll have what she's having" books, otherwise known as the "obviously someone has access to the GOOD drugs" books, but it did finally all click into something rather lovely.

There are two parallel stories going on. One takes place in some other fantasy world, and this was the part I had a little trouble figuring out at first. It seems like a quaint European farming village in a world with magic-like stuff going on, so I was picturing your standard fantasy Ye Olde village. But then the technology level seemed wrong, and I kept upping my estimate of the analogous timeframe until I realized that it was essentially a "modern" fantasy world with cars, televisions and teenagers who wear jeans. It still felt like a fantasy world and still had a lot of that "Ye Olde" quality to it. I guess an analogy might be the original Willie Wonka movie, which was set more or less in the contemporary world of that time, with all the right technology, but there was still that timeless fairy tale quality. At any rate, the main character in this world is a teenage boy who's driven to find his father, who went missing about a year earlier. Some people in town believe he was attacked by a nasty Color (there are attacks by various flying Colors that these people have to deal with. Just go with it), while others think he ran off with the schoolteacher who disappeared that same night.

Meanwhile, in Cambridge, England, in our world, there's a teenaged girl living with her mother after they both ran away from her jetsetting father. One day, she notices a little corner of white sticking out of a broken parking meter and pulls out a little piece of paper that says "I am being held against my will." Thinking it's a joke and feeling whimsical, she writes back, pretending she's addressing a parking meter. Then in the other world, the boy finds this piece of paper sticking out of a sculpture. His world has heard of ours and he's even studied it in school, though there's been no contact for centuries. The two start corresponding, but she doesn't really believe him and thinks it's just some local person making up all this fantasy stuff.

This book goes from "what the huh?" to really very charming. I'm assuming there's a sequel coming because the end seemed to really kick off the real story in earnest. It certainly kept me guessing, and there were some fun twists. Once I got the other world in my head, I rather liked this quirky, quaint, but still modern place. I guess it's like when an American visits a historic European village and finds it a little jarring that there are modern people living ordinary, modern lives in this medieval setting. It's like a storybook fantasy world has kept progressing with time, just as our world has, and that got me started imagining how other fantasy worlds might have developed. What would a "modern" Narnia look like? (Ignore for a moment that Narnia ended while still in a medieval phase -- I generally try to ignore that book, anyway.)

Oh, just checked Amazon. The sequel comes out next week.

Anyway, one of my favorite things about the fantasy world was the really messed-up weather. It's described as "Seasons drift across the Kingdom, moving on whenever they get bored." That's pretty much been this winter for us, with the 80-degree day followed by the ice storm the next day, and then back to warm and sunny. That explains so much about Texas weather. It's not a constant stream of fronts. It's seasons drifting around, getting bored and moving on. I wish we could keep some of that going in the summer. It would be nice in July if a little bit of fall or even mild winter would drift in for a few days.

A Productive, Fun Weekend

I had a really good weekend in which I got a lot done and had fun. There was a nice rainy Saturday in which I alternated reading, writing and cooking. I made a wonderful beef stew. It turns out I'd been doing it wrong, but when I followed a recipe, it came out so much better. I may have to make it again, since I've got some stock left and some more chuck in the freezer. Then Sunday, some of my friends were hosting Heather Dale for a house concert.

Heather was the music guest of honor at FenCon last year, and I barely got to hear her but instantly clicked on what I heard. I'd say if you like Loreena McKennett, this is along the same lines -- Celtic/folk sound with some twists and updates, and new songs in that style, but based on legends and folklore. And she's on pitch (can even do whole songs a capella on her own and stay on pitch). That's an issue I have with a lot of folk-style singers, but I can sit right in front of her and not even twitch at all. I came home from the concert with two new CDs that I haven't even played yet because I like to just sit and listen to new music and I haven't had a chance. I've learned not to play new music for the first time when I'm driving (especially at night) because I never know if some ballad will make me cry and blur my vision.

Since I ask others to spread the word for me, I'll return the favor here and mention Heather's current crowdfunding project, Celtic Avalon, which is going to be a stage show, DVD and educational project about the King Arthur legend. I'm particularly intrigued by her vision for using those stories to interact with kids and do some character-type training, since it seems like teaching chivalry would be an excellent way to combat bullying. Good behavior sounds a lot less "goody-goody" when it's something badass knights do.

One other thing from this weekend (well, Friday afternoon) was that I may have found my dream house. There's a house I pass on one of my routes to the library that I've had my eye on because I liked the outside (it has a very Victorian-style front porch). A couple of weeks ago when I was heading to the library re-opening, there was a for sale sign in front, and it had a bin of flyers. When I got home, I checked out the Realtor's web site for a virtual tour and decided that the floor plan really wasn't right for me. But there was another house on that Realtor's listings that seemed to have the perfect interior for me (I realized later that it's essentially a larger version of my current house with an extra bedroom, but since my current house works aside from being a bit too small and not having that extra room, that's okay). This house was under contract, but I'm nowhere near ready to buy anything. Since it's in a subdivision, I figure there's likely another house with the same floor plan that might come up when I'm ready to buy. I couldn't remember the exact address, but the street is about a block from where I live, so on Friday I walked over there. I was hoping that maybe the sign would still be up (the listing was gone) and I might be able to figure out what other houses might have the same plan, based on the exterior layout. It wasn't, but I did spot a house that instantly spoke to me. It looked rather different from everything else on the street, like when the subdivision was first built, those owners had customized it. This house looked like a half-timbered Tudor manor. I fell in love. It's not for sale now, but who knows what may happen in a couple of years. I'll keep an eye on it. I figured out once I got home that the street address for the house I'd been looking for was in the name of the web site for the listing, so I tried typing that street name into my browser, found the address, and learned that this house is next door to the Tudor. The layout looks different, though, so it's possible that I won't love the interior, as was the case with the Victorian front porch.

But this gives me something to visualize and aim for. It's good to have an extra incentive to sit down and write. I find that I'm more productive when I'm at least a little dissatisfied with something and writing is the key to getting what I want.

A Depressing Epiphany and a Charming Rogue

I think I figured out the reason behind some of the story nag. My subconscious must have needed the conscious part of my mind to get out of the way so it could work, and it did it by creating busy work for it. I decided I needed to take another look at my plot outlines for the current book, since I've changed a lot about the plot, and I had a really depressing epiphany: The "crossing the threshold" part of the story that's the end of act I doesn't come until nearly halfway through the book. I tried a few ways of charting it to try to call that the "approach to the inmost cave," but it wouldn't fit. Even when I gave each character his/her own journey, it didn't work. The moment I aligned that scene with crossing the threshold, everything else snapped into place.

That means I need to cut a lot, probably at least 60 pages. The really sad thing is that I don't have to strain my brain to come up with which parts to cut. I think I was always sort of aware that I had a lot of wheel-spinning going on. That's probably where that "but there's no peril or urgency!" issue came from a few weeks ago. Adding danger to the scenes didn't help the real problem, which was that the scenes weren't necessary. There's some information in those scenes that will have to be added in a different way, but otherwise, I can cut them. The really depressing thing is that one of them is a "kill your darlings" scene -- a scene I've been visualizing since I was midway through writing the previous book. It's a lovely scene that tells us a lot about the characters, but I think I could cut it without changing anything other than removing later references to it. However, it might be a better fit for a sequel to this book, so I'm not trashing it entirely.

Other than going instantly from being halfway through with the book to being a quarter through with it, I feel pretty good about this. Usually, when I get stuck, there's a reason, and once I figure it out, everything moves a lot more quickly. Today will be plot machete time, then I want to do a good writing marathon tomorrow to get back on track.

In the meantime, that story nag is still there, but much less insistent. I have this vague idea of a modern woman from our world captured and taken to a fantasy-type land, where she in desperation tries to prolong her life, Scheherazade-style, by telling stories -- the fairy tales she remembers from childhood. But it turns out to be the history of the world she's in. But I don't know where to go with it from there or how to use the stories if they're history.

I will confess that part of my current interest in Once Upon a Time has nothing to do with fairy tales and everything to do with Captain Hook, which really surprises me, as I've never been the type to go for the bad boys. This version isn't really a villain. He started as a rogue with a personal agenda that aligned him with one of the villains, but since then has become more of a Han Solo type who works with the good guys. Still, I've never been into the Han Solo types, so I was surprised by how appealing I found this character. Then we got his backstory and learned that he started as a very earnest Horatio Hornblower-type young naval officer who turned pirate in rebellion against a king who betrayed his people. That explains a lot. He's not so much a Han Solo as a Luke turned cynical by having his ideals betrayed. And then I saw an interview of the actor, and it seems it's very easy to make him blush furiously (and his co-stars know exactly how to do it). I hadn't thought that blushing really showed up on camera, but he managed it. If he didn't have the current job, I guess he'd be a good fit to play Owen because he can pull off the visible blushing (the coloring is right, too, though I don't know if he could play American, as he's rather Irish). So now I don't feel quite like I've turned against my usual patterns. If you haven't seen the show, this should give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Be warned that it loads very slowly since some of the pictures are animated.

In other geeky news, SyFy has announced an actual show with a spaceship in it. Wow! They describe it as being like Battlestar Galactica meets Downton Abby. I'm not quite sure how that would work, but it sounds like it would be right up my alley. However, about 90 percent of the appeal of Downton Abbey for me is the costumes, and that would be lost with the typical spaceship jumpsuit attire.

Story Nag

Well, I didn't make the USA Today top 150 list, but that was a long shot, considering it covers all books, including children's picture books. I was surprised how many self-published-looking 50 Shades clone-type books were on the list. I guess if you want to be a bestseller, write a book about a naive college student hooking up with a hot, kinky billionaire. Not my thing at all (where are these college students meeting all these billionaires?), but it looks like there's a market for that sort of thing.

Still, I gained a lot of new readers, which was the point. The "bestseller" thing was purely for ego and marketing purposes. I hope the new readers find the rest of the series and then follow me to new books.

That is, if I ever get this book I'm working on written. I was in a weird fog all day. I tried to sit down and work but kept spacing out. Usually, that means there's either something in my brain I need to get out or the thing I need to write next isn't clear in my head. I think both may be the case here. The next scene isn't that clear -- I know what needs to happen, but I'm not seeing the mental movie -- and I think that's because there's something else in there. Unfortunately, that something else isn't really clear enough to get out because it's simply a case of what I think of as "story nag." That's when I have a nagging sense of a kind of story I want to write, but there's nothing concrete. It's all just out of reach other than a vague sense of dissatisfaction, and it's close enough to the imagery of what I'm working on to interfere.

I have this strange kind of longing to do something with fairy tales, a retelling or mash-up. I started getting this nag while reading one of the Mercedes Lackey 500 Kingdoms books earlier this year. Something in me kept going "This! I need to write this!" Then there was the ice dance routine of the gold-medal couple, set to Scheherazade, and that got me thinking about the story behind it, that idea of desperately telling stories as a life-saving measure. That added to the story nag. And then last weekend there was a catch-up special on the series Once Upon a Time, and the story nag intensified as the writers and actors talked about the appeal of the series in taking these timeless characters and delving into their pasts and doing different things with them.

I just have no idea what to do with the general concept, especially not how to make it unique, since it's being done all over the place now. I like the idea of blending the stories so that they all take place in the same world, and usually there's a new story that serves to tie them together, like in the musical Into the Woods. In the Mercedes Lackey books, she's playing with the idea of the tropes that people are aware of because the magic in that world comes from the traditions and tries to turn everything into stories. So we do get stories with things like girls who need to be awakened with a kiss, but they're not exactly the Snow White or Sleeping Beauty story we know. Once Upon a Time really mashes things up by making everyone related, then throws the characters into the modern world, but with flashbacks into the fairy tale land to give us their backstories.

But I'm not sure what out of all those thing the story nag is drawn to. I get the same response from the Patricia McKillip books, which don't use recognizable fairy tale stories but that still have the same feeling.

I started playing with the fairy tale concept last summer when I tried writing a short story that will probably have to become a novel that was about the behind-the-scenes stuff going on in Cinderella, but it didn't satisfy the story nag. I don't know if I want to throw these characters into a modern world, have a modern person thrown into their world, if I want to do a series with each book focusing on a single story, all set in the same world, or if I want it to be a sweeping epic with all these things going on at the same time.

Whatever it is, it's using valuable brainpower that needs to be focused elsewhere. The problem with a bad case of story nag is that, unlike the Shiny New Idea, writing down everything I know about it doesn't make it get quiet for a while since I don't know enough to write down. It just results in more trying to catch something just out of reach. It's like having a word on the tip of your tongue that you can't quite think of, and that takes over your brain until it pops up at three in the morning.

Giving Feedback

Earlier this year, I discussed the different kinds of editing and feedback. So, today I'll talk about what to do if you're the person who gets asked for feedback on someone's writing. You may have formed a critique partnership with a fellow writer, where you give feedback on each other's work, or someone who knows you know something about writing might ask for your advice. You might also be able to apply some of this to evaluating your own work.

The first thing you need to do when asked for feedback or a critique is determine what the other person wants from you. They might really just want a pat on the head or encouragement to go forward, and if you give a detailed critique, it can get ugly. I often ask people for what I call a "sanity check" -- yea or nay, does this work at all, is it worth developing further, should I stop trying to write while taking allergy medication? In that case, I don't want detailed constructive criticism, just did you like it or not, was there anything major that worked or didn't work. I might sometimes send sections of a book out with a specific question in mind -- which of these two versions works best? Does the other person want a detailed critique, a line edit or proofreading? It's okay to do some negotiating here because it's your time. It's rather pointless to do a detailed line edit or proofread on something that's still being revised at the plot level, so it's unreasonable for someone to expect that level of editing on a first draft. If you establish expectations -- on both sides -- up front, you're less likely to end up with hurt feelings or misunderstandings.

If it's a general beta read or critique where you're not doing final proofreading or answering a specific question, what do you look for? A good guideline is to look for the "hey, wait a second!" things -- anything in the story that gives you pause. Would he really do that? Why would he do that? Could he actually do that? How did he do that? How does this work? Why is this happening? Why didn't this happen? Can't they just talk about it? This includes things you don't believe, where the world building or characterization isn't strong enough to make you suspend disbelief. It also includes things you flat-out don't like -- you had me until this. Or it can be things you didn't understand. Look out for boring parts where your attention strayed or scenes that seem repetitive (they're doing that again?). Even if you're not doing a line edit, you can point out obvious problems like a word that pops up way too many times (how often does she grimace?) or a word that's being consistently misused (I once did a critique where I had to ask if the story was about soldiers or actors because the word "troupe" was being used throughout, but the context seemed more military, and I wasn't sure what the writer was going for -- the militant wing of the USO?).

Don't forget to point out the positives in addition to the negatives, and not just to ease any fragile egos. Knowing what works is important because the writer needs to know what to keep when rewriting or what to build on. A character who became one of the most popular in my series initially had a smaller role, but when I was sending chapters of the first book to a friend for feedback as I wrote, she really loved the character and wanted to know more about him. That told me there might be something there, so I gave him more attention and put more thought into his story.

Criticism should be constructive in the sense that it gives the writer something to work with. You don't have to offer a solution to the problem because that's up to the writer, but you need to give more detail than "this sucks" or "I hate this." At least give a "because." "This scene didn't work for me because your character, who seems like an intelligent person, was suddenly making idiotic decisions. Is there a reason why he lost his ability to think rationally, or do you just need him to make these bad decisions for your plot to work? You either need to justify his decisions or think of another way to make the plot work."

Finally, you need to check your own ego. It's the author's story, not yours, and even if you put in hours of blood and sweat on the critique, it's up to the author how much or how little of your feedback to use. I've had people resist making any changes, and their books went nowhere, and I've had people have great success in spite of disregarding my critique (I still think it was a plot hole, but it was a genre trope, so I guess it was a plot hole acceptable to the publisher). It's not your book, and once you've said your piece, it's out of your hands. You do, however, have the right to decline the opportunity to do future critiques if the writer is unpleasant to you about it or disregards all feedback with the sense that they really just wanted to be told how brilliant they were.