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Acquiring Feedback
By  Rachel sharon edidin
I believe that feedback and criticism are an essential part of the writing process. I don't care if you're an absolutely brilliant writer with an eye for detail and a penchant for revision--a good reader will still be able to make observations and suggestions which, if nothing else, will provide you with an idea of how other people will see your story.
So how do you get it?
First, know what you need. What kind of feedback you want may depend on how far you are in the writing process. If you've just developed an idea, and you want to know whether it might make a good story, you'll want a very different sort of response than if you've rewritten the piece six times and are about to submit it for publication.
Make sure, too, that your reader knows what you're trying to do. If you're developing a character for a novel, and you already know the basic plot, tell the reader about it first. If you give readers a passage of poetry, let them know if it's part of an epic. If you're about to submit a story to a magazine or journal, make sure your readers are familiar with its basic guidelines: A piece you're sending to The New Yorker might require a completely different set of criteria than one you've got slated for Science Fiction Age. The more context and detail you give, the more helpful the response will be.
This is especially important if you're writing for a specific market (e.g. romance, young adult, Sword-and-Sorcery). Once, in workshop, I commented that a piece sounded cliched--that, in fact, it read like a Harlequin Romance. "Well, yeah," said the author. "It's the first chapter of a romance novel." I had read the piece without knowing that it was written according to very specific conventions; all of the feedback I gave was therefore useless.
Ok: Now that you know what sort of feedback you want, where do you get it?
Different readers may perceive the same piece very differently. Your friend Kyle will get all of the elf jokes and orc puns in your satire; they'll probably be entirely lost on your Aunt Sally, but she'll pick up the grammatical errors Kyle misses. Even within a writing workshop, different readers will give you vastly divergent advice and comments.
So, you have to know who you can go to for what sort of feedback. For example, I like very detailed criticism, so I give stories-in-progress to folks who I know will tell me exactly what they liked and disliked, and why. When I'm brainstorming or coming up with detail, I go to my friend Harrison, because I know he's great at helping me to develop concepts into characters and stories.
And collect teachers! If a friend of yours is a really detailed reader, or a really good editor, or simply brutally honest, ask them if you can bring them your work sometime. Past teachers are also an incredible resource: I still send stories to my freshman writing professor, who has since left my college, and he still gives the best criticism I've ever gotten.
Don't be afraid to accost relative strangers, either. If, for example, you like a guest lecturer or reader's ideas about writing, or you think you could benefit from his feedback, ask him if he'd be willing to read and respond to some of your material. Odds are decent that he'll say yes, and with any luck, you'll develop another good feedback source. (A warning on this one, though: DON'T ABUSE SOMEONE'S WILLINGNESS TO HELP! Don't leave a novel on someone's doorstep and expect a response the next morning. Anyone willing to take time to read and respond to your writing is doing you a BIG favor--be gracious. If you've got a deadline, let your reader know when you ask, so that they will know exactly what they're getting into, and you won't be stuck relying on feedback without knowing whether you'll get it on time.)
Writing workshops are an incredible resource; if you're not in school, or you're not comfortable getting face-to-face criticism of your work yet, check online: many universities and authors offer online workshop groups and forums. My favorite online resource, Uncle Orson's Writing Class, provides network of workshops and writing FAQs by author Orson Scott Card: if you sign up for a workshop, they'll group you with other writers in your genre and even create a listerv for your group. A workshop will give you the opportunity to get a broad range of responses to your work, primarily from other writers.
Sadly, however, many workshops and teachers are unreceptive to sci-fi or fantasy--anything they perceive as "genre writing." I remember one guy who had written a short story set in a standard sword-and-sorcery world (dragons, goblins, elves, etc.) being lambasted by classmates who felt that he had failed to properly define the term "orc" for readers. He argued in vain that the story was aimed towards a specific school of readers. In another creative writing class, a teacher refused to let me write a paper on Bram Stoker's use of multiple unreliable narrators to create one reliable narrative: Dracula, she informed me, was gothic fantasy, and therefore not literature. If you're going into general workshop with plans to submit anything except straight fiction, understand that your work may be brushed off or criticized, regardless of its quality, simply because of the narrow definition some closed-minded folk allow to "literature."
Also, be wary about asking for help from anyone who is likely to be either too harsh or too kind. One extreme will prevent you from revising a piece out of discouragement; the other, a false sense of confidence. Either way, you lose. "It's great" may be nicer to hear, but as feedback, it's no more useful than "It's crap." Show your work to people who will give you detailed, honest criticism: folks who will tell you exactly what does and doesn't work for them, and why.
But wait! What if two readers give you conflicting advice? Or if you disagree with a part but not all of someone's criticism? Who should you listen to?
Sometimes, when you show a piece to multiple people, they will give you advice that conflicts with each other's. Aunt Sally loved your ending, but Professor Teufelsdroech though it was weak. Your friend Amy thought the story was perfect in the first person, but Kyle thought an omniscient third-person perspective might work better. Or maybe both Aunt Sally and Kyle disliked a passage that you think is essential to your poem's meaning. You're going to have to make some choices.
If you've got a lot of time, you can follow ALL the advice: create a few versions of the story (e.g. one in first person, one in third), and see which you like best. It's effective, but it's also time-consuming and tedious.
Another option is to see which advice rings true to you and simply follow that. Don't ignore the rest, but choose what you will use. It is, after all, your story, not theirs. Frequently, you'll find that readers point out the same weak spots that you were concerned about, which is a sure sign that you need to put more work into those portions of your piece.
Finally, don't shy away from negative comments, don't take them too personally, either. It's easy to become discouraged by a story returned with more red ink than text or to ignore altogether anything short of glowing praise. Learn to use criticism as a tool to develop and polish your writing--there exist no better means of perfecting your craft.
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 18 Jun 2005 |  H. Tran aka 'Alyahn Darkelf' | Great comments, although I didn't really learn anything new. It was very informative to people who are new to this sort of thing, though.  ) But: I would NOT accost strangers and let them read my work. What if they stole it? I also would never let a WHOLE novel that I had written fall into the hands of a person I had not known for a long time. | |
| 3 Jul 2005 | Áine | Very interesting article. You really seem to have a bee in your bonet about people rejecting your genre. Luckily where I live (Dublin,Ireland)a lot of people seem to be more into sci fi / historic / genre than mainstream so this hasn't happened too much to me (except with one evil English teacher!). Getting criticism is one of my biggiest problems - thanks for the tips! | |
| 5 Jul 2005 | rachel sharon edidin | Aine,
Less a bee in my bonnet than too much experience wandering into wasps' nests. I went to a college with a huge emphasis on "literary" fiction--once was marked down on a craft annotation because it was on a story the teacher considered "genre" (a.k.a. not real literature).
You're right--Ireland's literary community is far less genre-snobby than the one in the States. I spent a semester at NUIG, and the difference was incredible and incredibly refreshing.
/Rachel | |
| 23 Apr 2006 | The Hyper Crazy Fantasy Person!!! | I liked the article, but it wasn't written like tthe author really cared about it.... but it was okay, I guess. | |
| 24 Apr 2006 |  Rachel sharon edidin | Wow, Hyper Crazy Fantasy Person--sorry to have offended you. I didn't mean to come off as dispassionate--as a writer, I care a lot about getting good feedback. But this article was above all a tutorial, so I wrote it with the goal of conveying information and advice as clearly and effectivley as possible.
Incidentally, HCFP, your comment is a perfect example of ineffective feedback: you attack the style of the piece without specifying either what particular elements you have problems with or what you believe that I should have done differently. I don't know what gave you the impression that I "didn't really care" about this article, and even after re-reading both my article and your comment, I'm not sure. HINT: If you want to see an author make changes, be specific and constructive, not generally dismissive. However, if you just want to bitch, let your friends know not to send you their work... | |
| 17 May 2006 | Sorrowmaster | Wow. I'm sorry, but that was pretty awesome. Both the article and how you turned that guy's response into a perfect example of unimformative criticism. Rock on! | |
| 29 Jun 2006 | RobbieG | I think this is a truly excellent article. It's really informative and well-written, addresses good points, features examples and anecdotes and uses language that is easy to understand and relate to. I wish all these pages were like this!
To "The Hyper Crazy Fantasy Person!!!", what is the problem with it? It didn't come across to me as being at all detached or dispassionate. I think this article is great! | |
| 5 Aug 2006 | Anonymous Griffin | I have just learned that I achieved high popularity on another writing website without doing anything really. I got practically 100% good comments! From now on, I'll ask for honesty. *gulp* My fragile ego...
Thank you for writing this guide to all of us who desperately want to be admired. | |
| 26 Dec 2006 |  Caroline D. Banjo a.k.a The Hyper Crazy Fantasy Person! | Gosh. It's funny for me to look back on all the stupid comments I made just in the past year. How uncanny that my comment actually provided a good example of bad critique. Now that I look at that comment, I'm not really quite sure what it means.... hmmm. Ah well. As you see in my name, I'm rather phsyco at times. I probably was just having one of my moments.  Later, Ya'll! | |
| 23 Feb 2008 |  Jess L Rhapsodos | I like detailed critisism and feedback too. All in all it was a good article, though my question when I clicked on this was how to get feedback from people specifically on Elfwood, like how to get noticed, but there are other places for that and I probably just clicked on the wrong thing. It was really good for the newcomers though. | |
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