Writers! Here’s the Best Way To Respond to Trolls.

It’s Easy! It’s Fun! And it Works!

I hate to argue with people.

That’s why I’m grateful that cartoonist/philosopher Nina Paley has suggested a phrase that always serves me well when somebody starts to argue with me.

I look them in the eye, smile, and say, “You may be right.”

That usually stops them.

I’m not saying that they are right. I’m only saying that they could be.

I mean, anything’s possible, right?

The important thing is that I’m not agreeing with them. But I am shutting the argument down.

The equivalent of this situation for a writer is when some troll turns up in response to something you’ve written and starts attacking you for reasons having nothing to do with your work, or they attack your work for saying something that it doesn’t actually say, or for being too PC, or not PC enough, and so on.

In other words? Unconstructive Criticism.

Constructive criticism is different. When a reader responds to your work with thoughtful, insightful suggestions about what you’ve said, you can listen and learn.

But trolls come at you not to help you but to hurt you. They don’t want to help you improve as a writer. They want to take you down.

What to do? Dr Jeff Livingston recently shared his all-purpose response to trolls, dimwits and other readers who post argumentative unhelpful and/or incendiary blather in response to his work:

“Thanks for that and thank you for reading.”

Note that it doesn’t agree or disagree with the unhelpful critic. It doesn’t engage with them at all.

But it shuts them down.

I’ve now adopted this as my Mantra for Deflecting Unconstructive Criticism.

I would suggest that you do the same, so instead of battling trolls, we can focus on doing what we’re here to do.

Write.

Writing Coach Roz Warren can help you improve and publish your work. Roz writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, has been in 15 Chicken Soup for the Soul collections, and has published 15 books, including a collection of library humor called Our Bodies, Our Shelves. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)