Feedback
In one of the links in our roundup last week, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Junot Diaz reflects on making a choice:
“
Spent the whole night reading everything I had written, and guess what? It was still terrible. In fact with the new distance the lameness was even worse than I’d thought. That’s when I should have put everything in the box. When I should have turned my back and trudged into my new life. I didn’t have the heart to go on. But I guess I did. While my fiancée slept, I separated the 75 pages that were worthy from the mountain of loss, sat at my desk, and despite every part of me shrieking no no no no, I jumped back down the rabbit hole again. There were no sudden miracles. It took two more years of heartbreak, of being utterly, dismayingly lost before the novel I had dreamed about for all those years finally started revealing itself. And another three years after that before I could look up from my desk and say the word I’d wanted to say for more than a decade: done.
– Junot Diaz”
I’ve made a lot of choices in more than 20 years of writing. And now as an independent editor, I see them from a different perspective: as a door I must sometimes open for other writers if I am to be of real help. When I edit, I look for the deepest issues in the text because if those aren’t fixed, all the superficial polishing in the world won’t make a work solid — and it needs to be solid, especially if people have publishing goals.
It takes a lot of guts for someone to submit their work to editing. It takes courage to say, Tell me what’s working and what I can do better. Some people want to learn. Some people want magic. Some people want to be told that their work is perfect. I think the learning attitude is the most productive for writers, but that doesn’t make the learning easy.
I’m a writer. My responsibility to my work is to make it good, even when that’s hard. And I’m an editor. My responsibility to the work given to me is to show the writer how it can be better. Even when it’s hard. To help the writer look into deep places, and to offer tools that will help them climb in and bring back the gold. But that writer is also a person, with vulnerabilities and hopes and fears. Reaching deep into their text, as Nicola and I do when we edit, is akin to reaching into their rib cage without anaesthetic and rearranging what’s inside. For the writer to hear the feedback and decide whether or not to jump back down the rabbit hole takes another kind of guts.
I think if one wants to become a writer, it’s an essential lesson. I’ve learned it again and again, in exactly this way — by getting deep feedback, and having to get down to the bedrock decision: What’s more important, the work or how angry/hopeless/frightened I am right now? That’s a choice every writer makes alone. Again and again.
We both know how it feels. And so as editors, we want to take care of the writer as well as the text. Please tell us: what makes it easier or harder for you to take feedback on board? What do you do to help yourself through it? And what can we do as editors to help?
Posted by: Kelley
Early on when I first started learning to write, I was really open to everyone’s input and would always look at what I had done from different perspectives. It was a good place. I find that as I have learned many lessons and done my best to incorporate them, I have gotten much much better. Not surprising considering I got my lessons from published authors with years of writing and teaching experiance.
But as I’ve gotten better I find that it can be harder for me to accept feedback. I judge the quality of what I write now against the quality of the things I have written before, and I am far better than I used to be. It does give me a sort of silly feeling that what I write is just about perfect, though intelectually I know it’s not true.
My natural instinct these days is to immediately defend against feedback and if I can’t win the person over to my side I will just ignore what they said.
Since I recognize that flaw in my self, what I do to get over it is just step back. I keep it in the back of my mind and just let it sit there. Then I’ll look at the story a little, then put is aside for a while. And repeat that process until I am in the right frame of mind to, at the very least, see why someone would have that opinion about what I’ve written.
What makes the whole thing much easier on me, is specifics, logical ones at that. The more detailed the better. If the person giving feedback can tell me exactly why I should something different, of specifically where and HOW I failed to get a point across then I’ll be able to see what they see. It’s all about understanding for me, I need to understand becasue if I don’t then the feedback, no matter how good, just doesn’t register.
I had a teacher who would sometimes give examples in the line of “This is how I would do it. . .”, which is so very helpful as it makes it clear where the person is coming from and how they interprit what I’m saying. People can read the same thing but see it in many different ways.
I remember once he asked me change something in a poem I had written about hiding abuse, wanting me to alter an aspect that was too wordy and simplify it with a refference to Janus. I agreed, however he never explained the refference specifically, I just assumed he knew what he was talking about and I never asked. So I made the change, figured it would be better simply becasue he said so and moved on to other stuff.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I learned Janus was a two faced god. Where my teacher had asked me to make the change coupled with the refference itself, really did make what I had written much better. It just wasn’t until I understood it that I realized just how much better and why it was better.
I guess the short of it, is that for me it’s all about the WHY and the HOW.
I always say that anyone who wants to be a writer should be an opera singer first. You learn all about how to take feedback, critical, supportive, helpful, or damaging. You also learn how to winnow out what isn’t helpful, because otherwise you’ll never sing another note.
There’s an old saying that goes like this: A singer has to have the brain of an Einstein, the voice of a nightingale, and the hide of a rhinoceros. True for all artists, I feel certain. And the rhinoceros hide is the hardest part to develop.
It’s a rare writer (singer, artist, dancer, ball player) who can achieve their finest work without feedback. We must have the courage to seek it, the wisdom to sort it, and the inner instinct to know what to do with it.
The only time I’ve struggled with critiques has been when someone was vague, and yet pointed to a truth I needed to address. For example, a writer called one of my characters “floaty.” I didn’t know what she meant, so I didn’t know how to consider the idea, or what to do about it. Though she was right, she inadvertently set me back. I knew I had a problem but I didn’t know what it was, or what to do next.
I prefer deeper critiques. I don’t mind if someone rewrites a section to illustrate a point because I know it’s my story. If the rewrite is way off base, that often helps me see where the original may have been unclear. I’ve never been annoyed by the offer of too many stepping stones to revision, but have been discouraged by the lack of them.
Jill Shultz
I’ve valued direct feedback, and found it easier to take when the person who is evaluating my work looks calm and professional. I’ve faced an editor who seemed angry that I dared to show him such weak prose and an agent who was pained from boredom at my work, and me, and was not shy about indicating it. I walked away with nothing. They might have had useful advice, but it was impossible to get past the attitude. Evaluators need game faces.
But assistance given with professional distance and preparedness has helped me exceedingly. One of my best SCBWI critiques came from Susan Patron (talk about being nervous). She was extremely prepared, direct, and gave me great ideas for fixing just about everything. I am sure that I didn’t impress her at that stage, but she sure impressed me.
@Tranceptor, I don’t think it’s a silly feeling at all (grin). It can play out that way for me too sometimes, especially if the person who is offering the feedback is someone I know to be less experienced as a writer than I. But I know that attitude is a) incredibly condescending (which is a very human way of expressing insecurity), and b) incredibly unproductive.
I have become much better at going up the “defensive” curve very quickly these days because of the intensive screenwriting process I’ve been involved in for a few years now. That feedback comes fast, and it’s
brutalvery efficient.I agree that specific examples and reasons are always best for me too. And I’m glad to hear that “here’s how I’d do it” can be workable (as opposed to intrusive). It is often an approach I use (coupled with explanation), but I’m conscious of the fact that some people feel stepped on by it, the same way that some actors never want to be given a line reading by a director.
@Louise, lovely to see you here! I’ve never been an opera singer, but I was trained as an actor and yep, there’s nothing like having to take feedback in real-time in front of other people to make one appreciate the relative security of a computer screen. And of course, writing workshops offer the same real-time dynamic. I think that experience of direct feedback is invaluable.
And your point about learning what isn’t helpful is really important too. There’s a fair amount of incompetent/unhelpful critiquing in the world. Not all writers or teachers (sadly) are good at it.
@Jill Shultz, I agree completely. Vagueness is a reflection on the critiquer more than the text being analyzed. And yet it can be so paralyzing for the writer.
I attended a Prestigious Workshop (this one was not the Clarion workshop, which I also attended and which was fabulous) at which another attendee critiqued my work by saying, “Well, this isn’t really my kind of thing and I don’t know much about this genre, but I don’t really like your story and I can’t exactly say why.” (And then she giggled. Urgh.) She was completely unhelpful and obviously clueless, but it still got to me — and I think it’s because I was doing my best to be open to feedback, not be defensive, not close down and keep out the learning. When a writer opens themselves to feedback and then gets piffle…. well, as Louise said above, we have to learn to separate the signal from the noise. And that’s partly because the noise can do damage.
@K Barsotti, it’s astonishing to me (although I’ve experienced it too) that people whose job it is to give feedback are often so bad at it, or at least so seemingly unconscious of the fact that how we offer feedback is as much a part of the overall experience as the content of the feedback. Communication and learning happen on both the information and emotional levels, no? And both must be respected during the interaction.
Game face, I like that.
I value directness too, and I like it flavored with a little bit of “we’re all human here,” which I don’t think is at all mutually exclusive from professional distance. In fact, some of the most compelling feedback I’ve received has felt like that blend: we’re here to interact professionally about something deeply personal.
I have absolutely no problem hearing feedback and acting on it. Unfortunately, too often feedback is given in terms of what’s wrong, not in terms of what can practically be done to make things better. I have several once-complete scripts that I’ve torn apart (at the advice of professional readers) and have never been able to figure out how to put back together again.
One quick example: I wrote a quirky Rom-Com about a college student with multiple personalities. The final scene, she’s getting married to her best friend, with all her alter-egos in the wedding party. The priest asks her, “do you take…?” She smiles and says, “We do.”
Consensus of opinion is that ending with the wedding is weak and cliched. In two years I haven’t come up with an ending that anyone’s liked any better.
Lately what I find difficult about getting feedback is that it means I have more work to do! It can be painful to give up the idea that I was almost finished.
Another hard part is the thought, “If I’d known [x] before I started writing, I could have saved myself a lot of work.”
It’s not that I don’t enjoy or believe in working hard on my writing. But my writing time feels so limited or hard-won at the moment, that when I get feedback I think, “When am I going to find the time to fix this?” or “Were all those stolen writing sessions wasted?”
How could an editor make this easier for me? Maybe this is stuff a coach would do, rather than an editor, but … help me evaluate my expectations of how long it will take to finish something. Affirm that it takes as many drafts as it takes, and there are no shortcuts (i.e. no way of knowing [x] ahead of time). Help me make a plan for doing the revisions.
I’ve found I’ve learned more by giving critique than receiving. Sometimes I wonder if that’s because I’m resistant to integrating others’ ideas or if I’m denying my failings. I really do have a fabulous critique group, but it’s taken me years to sort their biases from the “truth” of what they’re saying. So at this point, I have to edit their edits, if that makes sense. This is not to say that they aren’t helpful – they are! I’ve just had to learn to weigh their comments against my own personal doubts, preferences, and what I’m trying to achieve.
It’s a constant battle.
Having been an editor, as well as a writer, I think one important thing is not to be fickle. In a past job, I had to develop stories and story concepts and pitch them to my boss; one of the most frustrating aspects of the job is that he would love an idea one day, and then a while later turn on it, sometimes to the point of becoming angry that I was working on it! Sometimes, opinions do change, especially if something is a work in progress. If it does, it’s critical for the editor to admit it and coherently explain why, even if that means admitting that you were wrong. A while ago, I critiqued the short film script of a former coworker. Throughout the scriptwriting process, I kept warning her that a crucial piece of dialogue in the final scene was not going to work, but she stubbornly resisted. When she shot the film, she found an exceptional young actor for that role, and his delivery of that line (and the way she chose to direct him) was just heartbreaking. I went up to her after the first screening and said, “I owe you an apology. I kept telling you that line wasn’t going to work, but you pulled it off beautifully.”
In terms of receiving criticism, what’s very important for me is to break down criticisms into mechanical issues, even if they’re about problems of theme, story, or characterization. If a reviewer says something broad, like “Your antagonist is really weak,” it throws me into a panic. If they say instead, “Your antagonist keeps getting thwarted by supporting characters. Because your hero easily overcomes those same supporting characters, it seems like the antagonist isn’t ever that much of a threat to her,” then it becomes a problem I can engage with. It puts it more on the psychological level of mechanical problems like unclear antecedents or incorrect dialogue attribution — pointing out those issues may be embarrassing, but it’s not emotionally charged in the way that saying, “Your character sucks and your story is stupid” is.
It’s also important to understand the distinction between a review and a critique. Just saying you don’t like a character or a particular plot point is useless. Just saying you like a character or a plot point is flattering, but just as useless. Again, it needs to be broken down into cause and effect, which is a level where the writer can respond to it constructively. For example, “Your protagonist is unlikeable” is not helpful, but saying, “Your protagonist has four angry arguments in the first 50 pages, which made me think she’s a bad-tempered jerk, and I didn’t feel any sympathy for her when her girlfriend dumped her later” might make me think about how the character is presented.
Being able to take constructive feedback is essential to improving a manuscript. I want my books to be the best books they can be. Being challenged by rewrites is one of the things that makes me a better writer. I want to grow. I want feed-back. In the next few days I’ll be receiving some feedback from my agent on a manuscript. I can’t wait. I’m excited to keep moving forward. As a writer it’s my decision what I do with that feedback. And for me that’s been a lot of the fun of rewriting.
Receiving critique, and the self-doubt that it might initially create, is something I wrote about on my blog, Northwriter, on my most recent post. Check it out by clicking on my name at the top of this comment.
Happy writing!
http://paulgreci.wordpress.com/
@Dianne Cameron, it’s true — seeing what’s wrong and being able to make constructive suggestions for repair/improvement are two different skills.
Although I get many more notes from many more people on my screenplay (relative to the number of people I get feedback from on my prose), so many of the notes are wildly unhelpful. I’m discovering that a lot of readers my producer uses don’t seem to understand that making a change in one place will almost certainly ripple both backward and forward through the script, if the script is to remain coherent. I’ve spent two years training my producer in the realities of “how changes flow through.” It’s true in prose too, of course, but for whatever reason it’s something that the broad spectrum of prose critiquers seem to have internalized already.
@Alison — I know (rueful grin). Me too. The last 10% of the work can be the most grueling for this reason (and because it can feel so picky), but it makes more than a 10% difference in the quality of the finished work.
No writing experience is ever wasted unless the writer refuses to learn from it. Writing is a long-term art, the various young prodigies in the world notwithstanding. I spend a lot of teaching/coaching/mentoring time telling people, “It’s not a race” and “Impatience is not the writer’s friend.” It really does take as long as it takes, and I think knowing this goes hand-in-hand with integrating that instinct that “something’s not right” about the work. In other words — the better we learn to assess our own work, the more quickly we recognize when we’ve taken a wrong turn or aren’t working up to standard. And that’s part of what shortens the overall writing curve. But the only way I know to learn that is to write a lot, for a long time.
I once had to throw away 15,000 words, which was a year’s work for me at the time, because I finally figured out it was wrong, wrong, wrong. I really resonated to Junot Diaz’s story…
@Betsy Dornbusch — Yes, we all have to learn to weigh criticism in the balance. It’s one of the interesting and sometimes tricky parts of editing. I try to make my biases clear when I give comments, and to make clear that I will do my best to help the writer write the book she wants to write, not the one I would have written. It’s hard sometimes to separate personal preference from those things that can be said to be better/worse no matter what.
I’m guessing you have the internal voice that tells you when you are just being resistant or defensive. I certainly do :)
@Aaron, great point about the way that opinions can change as the work deepens. For me, what you’re saying is that editing is a relationship between writer/editor, and between the editor and the work. Being able to say I was wrong and I’m sorry are essential to any good relationship.
I agree that broad criticism just isn’t helpful, any more than broad praise. And hearing specifically what is working really well for readers is just as helpful to me as hearing specifically what isn’t working. But the explanation is important in both cases. If I don’t know what the underlying principles are, and what techniques work better or worse to address them, then how can I ever learn to apply them to other work? And perhaps this is one fundamental characteristic of good feedback: that it helps make one’s writing better, not just this particular piece of text.
I love your examples. I can get this kind of feedback on my prose — I have expert resources for that. But as I was saying in a previous comment, I don’t generally get notes this constructive on my script. “Oh, you’re the writer, just go fix it” seems to be the attitude. Fair enough — I am the writer — but I yearn for this kind of specificity. It would help me learn so much more quickly, and it would save me having to read everyone’s mind all the time.
@Paul Greci, I hope the feedback you get is useful and inspiring! Thanks for the link — I like the image of “the wild dogs of self-doubt.”
I like being critiqued by good writers because it always improves my work.
When I first started writing, I could not bear being told something negative when it took all I had just to complete a story. The first time my novel draft was critiqued by a professional, she told me “You should be ashamed to give me something like this. Throw this in the trash, that’s all it’s worth. You should be shot and not even given a sick bucket.” After her prestigious critique, I didn’t write for seven months.
What works for me is:
•The editor tells me what they like about what I’ve written before they go into what is wrong – or as I prefer, ‘what could make the story better.’
• The most important one: I love when an editor gives me examples. I learn by seeing examples. Don’t just say the novel needs more tension – because I have already tried my best to drip what I could into the novel and cannot add more. Give me examples of how you think the tension could be expanded. Tell me to slow down the character’s walk across the room, explain how making the character fall down before he reaches the door builds tension better than having my character just walk through the door. I will use your examples, see the difference and learn something by hearing, seeing and doing.
•I love it when an editor gets the type character that I’m trying to build and the story I want to tell. I don’t like it when they are turning the character into someone I don’t recognize because this is who they think the character should be. If the editor says ‘use more profanity’ and I say, ‘but she does not curse except in extreme circumstances, please hear me and help me achieve a character who may do something else that shows stress or arrogance – but does not curse like a garbage mouth.
•Understand that I am learning to improve my craft. In the process of writing for editors I tend to over correct and end up killing the fire in a story because I’m too focused on correcting grammar that isn’t native to the story or the character. ermmm…that is actually work for me, not for the editor. Ignore this one. :-)
•I never want to hear again that my work belongs in the trash and I should be shot. If the critique leaves me thinking I shouldn’t bother putting pen to paper, it was the wrong type of critique for me.
I imagine every writer is different and the challenge to you will be to adapt to those differences. Some may weep and give up. Others will likely defy you. They may call you morons. Hopefully you’ll get paid!
Having grown up with a too-critical parent, I don’t take criticism well. I rant, gnash teeth, ask myself why I continue to do this. Then, after a week or so, I look at the criticism again. Then I start to nod, okay, this makes sense, I can see where I could do better here. Then something really weird happens. I get excited. I have someplace to go with this. It must be the only thing that keeps me going. That high I get when I believe I have done something well. If only till the next critique!
I don’t like people who rewrite for me. What if that’s what I would have wanted to do? Do I have to give them partial credit? Suggestions are fine, just not too detailed. I can either pick one and go with it or use it as a springbboard for further imagining. No one knows my characters like I do. I like when people point out the parts they like as well as those they don’t. Even if I don’t see those when I first read the critique. I try to do that in my own critiques of others.
Thanks for a great post. One thing I have found really helpful is realizing that the best in the business also go through this angst. That probably should be depressing. It’ll never go away?
I’m guessing you have the internal voice that tells you when you are just being resistant or defensive.
I hope so! But sometimes I fail to listen and get all pouty.
@Betsy Dornbusch — Laughing now. Every writer has a well-worn set of pouty pajamas.
@Elaine — Nope, it never goes away completely, so there’s no point in being depressed about it (grin).
In my experience, the curve gets shorter as the writer integrates more skills. That integration makes it easier to separate the useful criticism from the non-useful, and also makes it easier to see the point of the feedback and pull out the right tool to fix it. One of the interesting things about the editing process from my perspective is that editing others’ work is a much more “conscious” process for me than writing my own: I have to be able to be articulate about skills and concepts that have become hard-wired — unconscious — in me after all these years.
I’m curious to understand better the line for you between rewriting and suggestion. Do you see my responses to others here as crossing that line for you? There’s no “right” answer to this, I’m just curious where people’s lines are.
@Donna Collier — it’s unconscionable that any so-called professional would respond to someone’s work that way. I’m very sorry that happened. People who cannot critique something effectively — even work that they don’t particularly “like” — should not be in the position of damaging newer writers this way. I think it can sometimes be reasonable to tell someone gently that a particular story isn’t worth more work right now, or that they need to work more on basic skills and less on trying to get an agent; but it’s never reasonable in my opinion to tell someone (directly or by implication) they shouldn’t be writing at all.
That ties into your point about the editor “getting” the character and the story. You’re right — advising someone to write the character I would write isn’t the same thing as advising someone how to write their character more effectively.
Elaine –
I hate when someone tells me “you need to do such-and-such,” and doesn’t give an example, so when I critique someone else’s work, I usually offer an example of how I might approach the problem. I never expect them to use my rewrites, but to rewrite using their own style, vocabulary, etc.
Ha, good question–crossing the line between rewriting and suggestion. I’m not sure I’ve been doing this enough to see it clearly. I used to write grants and my boss would hand a draft back to me and say, “Just tweak it,” or “Pump it up.” So not helpful!
As to your comments, the “here’s how I’d do it” would depend on how you then show that. Say you’ve encountered an info dump. If you say, this is an info dump, fix it. I might have trouble figuring out how. I wouldn’t have written an info dump on purpose, so fixing it might be difficult. If you say, “I’d do this in dialogue,” that would be sufficient. I wouldn’t want you to then write out the dialogue.
Elaine –
I don’t consider myself an editor, but I’ve done a lot of critiquing on sites like zoetrope.com, and what I generally do is give a general impression of the scene, what works and what doesn’t, then give a couple specific examples of how I’d rework it.
For example, I might say, “The scene is very cinematic, but the dialog is too on the nose,” then give a couple examples. E.g.:
Instead of
PAUL
I’m Paul Meadows.
He extends his hand.
JULIE
I’m Julie George. It’s very nice
to meet you, Paul.
Try something like,
PAUL
I’m Paul Meadows.
He extends his hand.
JULIE
Julie George. Nice to meet you.
In a “writers’ group” situation, the last thing I want to do is rewrite someone else’s work. Much better if they understand what isn’t working and rewrite it themselves. I find it a bit eerie (and disappointing) when I look at a revised draft of a work and see that they’ve copied my examples verbatim.
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“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. –Barbara Kingsolver ”
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