A critic may describe a work’s failure to become something its maker never intended.

Much criticism measures a work against a target it was never aiming at. The complaint that a quiet book lacks incident, or that a small film is not ambitious, describes a failure to be a different work. That is not always useless, but it is a description of the critic’s expectation rather than of the thing itself.

When feedback lands hard, sort it before absorbing it. Ask whether the comment addresses what you were trying to do or what the person wished you had done. Both can be worth hearing, but only the first tells you anything about the work. The second tells you about the audience, which is a different and less urgent question.