Being Open-Minded

Open-mindedness is an important trait for a creator to have. In this lesson, you will learn how to keep an open mind in the Geometry Dash community, especially towards your own levels.

Having an open mind starts by keeping objectivity when you get feedback. It is natural to be proud of your work (in fact, you should be), but you should not let your pride get in the way when you see a way to improve.

Being objective about your creations isn’t a concept specific to Geometry Dash. Popular American author Stephen King puts it nicely, ‘Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.’ 

While the concept of ‘killing your darlings’ might sound strange, there is real value in understanding how to accurately evaluate your work. There is a huge gray area between being overconfident and being overly harsh on your work, so let’s go over what ‘killing your darlings’ does and doesn’t mean.

The best way to give your creations a fair chance is to consider each suggestion and think about how it could affect the level. Of course, not every suggestion is worth implementing, but you should at least get into the habit of carefully evaluating advice instead of immediately discarding it.

Another tip to evaluate your work objectively is to step away from it. Take a break and do something else, return a day later, and look at your work again with a fresh pair of eyes. You'll be able to see areas of improvement that you didn’t quite notice before.

It’s not always so easy to accept criticism, especially if you put a lot of effort into your work. When you invest time into something, it can cloud your perception of its quality. This can prevent you from identifying and correcting mistakes.

Shielding your level from criticism may be your instinctual response, but this isn’t a good attitude to have. Instead, treat criticism as an opportunity to improve. If you receive feedback on your work, consider it carefully and try correcting your work. Most of the time, the level will come out looking better than it did before. Accepting negative criticism is never easy, but doing so will help you a ton in the long run.

Always attempt to get feedback on your creations early on to steer you in the right direction. Getting frequent feedback throughout your creating process can help soften that feeling of protection you have for your levels.

In addition to being too lenient on your work, you can also be too harsh on it. Deleting your levels in frustration without fully developing them is a huge waste.

Exploring your ideas takes a lot of perseverance and grit. It can be hard to persist through an “ugly phase” in your level when nothing seems to look right. This is why getting started always seems to be the hard part. Once you get the ball rolling, it will only get easier to keep adding to whatever you’re creating.

It is hard to change the way you think about criticism. It is important to be patient with yourself; developing an open mind won’t happen overnight. Much like creating itself, improving won’t be a convenient or streamlined process, and it can take a while before any sign of progress appears. What matters most is to frequently practice open-mindedness simply by asking for feedback more often from creators who can give you useful criticism.