The way you phrase this suggests you're looking for topics I'd *like* to include, but can't bring myself to. I guess the only thing I can think of is sex work. It's a normal part of life, I have nothing against it, and it ought to be present in campaigns, but I just don't want to introduce it.

Yay for love!

As important as this is for a creator, it is for readers and editors. Try to avoid giving advice when you're asked to appraise someone else's work. Instead, focus on what parts work for you and what parts don't, and leave it up to the creator to decide what to do about it. 🧵✂️

That doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to advice. Even though it's probably wrong, it still could give you a hint to the right answer. But don't throw away all your hard work to pursue someone else's suggestion.

So even though when they tell you something's wrong, that's a fact you have to accept, when they tell you how to fix it, 99% of the time they're talking crap. Their stupid "solution" will mess the whole thing up. You're the creator, not them.

But now we come to the other side of the coin. "Advice is usually wrong". No one knows your work better than you do. You've lived with it for months or years. You've put far more thought into it in that time than any reader can in a few hours.

Obviously, like any creator, I hate criticism. The last thing I want to do is rip apart something I've spent ages crafting. But if someone tells me something doesn't work, I *always* listen. Because like it or not, that's a fact and I have to accept it.

Ultimately, it's your work, and you're in charge. If you like it the way it is, you can leave it. But at least now you know that some proportion of your audience will have that reaction to it.

Once you receive criticism, you then have two options: to keep your work as it is, or to change it. That's true even for positive criticism: "I loved the character of Dorothy" might sound great, but it may also be a problem, if that character is taking too much of a spotlight away from others.

Criticism like this is incredibly important, because if one person had that reaction, you can be fairly certain other people will have it too. Not everyone will feel the same way, of course, so you can't read too much into one comment, but it's still a datum you have to accept.

(This is true, incidentally, even in cases where the person is being polite to spare your feelings. If they actually hated it but say "I liked the part about the dog", they probably did like that part. They just aren't telling you about the rest of it)

The thing to notice about these comments is that they're all personal impressions. They might not always be couched as such, but that's what they are. And as a result, they are always *true*. The reader *did* get bored. They *did* love that character. They *did* find it racist. These are facts.

Let's start with "criticism" and what I mean by saying it's "always right". Let me give a few examples of what I call criticism:
"I got a bit bored half-way through"
"I loved the character of Dorothy"
"That part felt a bit racist"
"The ending didn't make any sense"