The Rites of Feedback

It doesn’t matter where you are in the publication pathway, feedback is something we all deal with in one form or another.

Critique Partners and Groups

This is the essential first step when it comes to feedback. Most often, it takes place with the exchange of material between critique partners or within a group. Often the writer will send a chapter or several chapters to her partner for detailed feedback (including line edits). Some writers attend monthly meetings and read their chapter to the group. The firing squad individuals will then provide constructive criticism. Your goals, writing level (both yours and those providing the feedback), time frame in which you want to finish the story, and how you respond to feedback will determine which method is best for you. Some people thrive on face-to-face feedback. Other people would rather have their teeth extracted without sedation. For them, online feedback is the ideal choice.

When you receive feedback, it’s best that you zip your mouth shut before you say something you’ll regret. You need time to digest the information. You might not agree with the person now, but 24 hours later you might decide they’re the most intelligent person to walk this planet, because they pointed out something you missed. Now, if you didn’t keep your mouth shut and you ranted on about how the individuals are idiots, you might not be invited back to the group. Or worst yet, your poor behavior will become common knowledge.

Contests

Some contests provide feedback via blogs. Other writers, and possibly an agent or editor, do drive-by critiques. Sometimes the agent or editor will request partials and fulls. The feedback can be as simple as ‘Loved this!’ which does nothing to help you improve the piece if it’s lacking. Or it can be more helpful, by pointing out what you excelled at and what left the reader confused. Sometimes it can be misguided in an attempt to make your entry look weak so the judge will select another one—most likely the one belonging to the person who cut yours to pieces. This usually doesn’t have the effect the individual was looking for, but it doesn’t help you, either, if you’re looking for constructive feedback. The other issue that can happen is similar to the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ scenario. One person finds fault with something (that might not even be a real problem), and everyone jumps on it and echoes the same sentiment. This is often the result of lazy critiquing. The writers involved in the contest have to critique five to ten other entries, and this is the easiest way to do it with minimum effort.

The best thing to do with contests is say nothing when you get feedback. And please don’t waste your time justifying why you did something or waste time answering questions left by an individual (which were most likely rhetorical anyway). You will only come off as defensive. Take what you need from the feedback and ignore everything else. Do, though, pay attention to what the industry expert says. I’ve seen agents love an excerpt that everyone tore apart. Trust what the expert has to say.

Querying

Yes, querying, the word so many writers dread—and for good reason. Unfortunately, there are a lot of writers who believe querying is a fancy word for feedback. But alas, this is not so. These days you’re lucky if you even get a form rejection. The benefit of this is you now know your  query or requested material wasn’t lost in cyberspace. Sometimes an agent or editor will reject your material, but with a kindly worded explanation as to why the story or writing didn’t work for them. Remember, it is subjective. Just because one agent didn’t connect with your characters, it doesn’t mean you need to rewrite the book. However, if your query or requested material continues to be rejected because agents and editors didn’t connect with your characters, that is a warning you need to do some serious rethinking about your characters, your story, and possibly your writing.

No matter how the agent or editor responds to your query, DO NOT email back and tell her that she is a moron for not seeing how brilliant your book is and how you will be the next JK Rowling. I can guarantee that won’t change her mind. And if you keep harassing her with your tirades, news will get around to other agents and editors. I don’t think I need to spell out what that potentially means to your career.

Reviews

After all the feedback and rejections you’ve dealt with along the way, your skin might be a little thicker, but the ultimate test comes now, once your book is published. Your baby has been released into the world, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to love it. There will be people who dislike your book because they don’t like your trope, they don’t like your characters, they don’t like that your heroine’s favorite color is indigo. But that’s okay because you haven’t love every book you’ve read, right? Now, there will be people who thrive on cutting books down and thrive on calling authors names that should never be spoken in public. No one knows why these people are bullies, and it doesn’t matter the reason. The main thing is you IGNORE THEM. Never feed the trolls. And while you’re at it, don’t let your friends and family feed them, either. The trolls could retaliate, and you’ll be the victim not them.

And it’s not just the trolls you need to ignore. It’s best for everyone concern that you don’t respond to reviews, especially when you don’t agree with them. Remember, reviews aren’t for the author; they’re for the reader. Let readers do their thing, and you do yours—writing the next book.

Where are you on the ‘rites of feedback’ pathway?

Stina Lindenblatt @StinaLL writes Young Adult and New Adult novels. In her spare time, she’s a photographer and can be found at her blog/website.   She is represented by Marisa Corvisiero, and finds it weird talking about herself in third person. Her debut New Adult contemporary romance TELL ME WHEN (Carina Press, HQN) is now available.

 

Feeding And Feedback

"I wanted you to like me, and I thought the best way to do that was with brilliant and insightful critique."  This is how I introduced myself during the first session at a local critique group. "But in order to do that, I'd have to be brilliant. So instead I made cookies."

Not my original idea, to be fair. I ganked that quote from my English 201 TA, who baked for the few students who attended on the day before Thanksgiving too many years ago to count. I recommend his strategy because it works.

For the second month I attended my critique group, I thought about bringing cookies again. I like baking for other people. I also like eating the things I bake, making it a win-win. But the second month, my Patient Husband said, "If you bake for them this month, they'll expect it every month."

I repeated that on Twitter, and someone replied, "Newsflash: they already expect you to do it every month."

The day before the writing group, I did bake some awesome oatmeal-cinnamon chip cookies, but my youngest child stood on a chair to watch and managed to break the sugar bowl on the stove-top. I threw away two dozen unbaked cookies on the grounds that no one would like Glass-Shard Chip Cookies. After that, I wouldn't have had enough, so I didn't bring any.

For the third session, I considered brownies.

Then I realized, I'm getting critiqued. Does that change things?

I liked (and still like) this group a lot. There's insightful critique; it's well-organized and everyone has an equal chance to participate. The group leader runs a tight-but-not-strangulation-tight ship. What worried me was that showing up with cookies (or brownies or pumpkin muffins) might undercut the other members' negative comments about my manuscript because they might not want to hurt the feelings of the baker. 

Above all, I didn't want them to hold back. In my opinion, hitting a manuscript with honest punches only makes it stronger.

It's overthinking, sure, but is it justified? Critique is useless when it's only positive. Saying that a piece's dialogue works well but omitting that the main character is loathsome (for example) doesn't help the writer, who needs to know those things in order to improve.

A friend of mine tweeted a great idea:

But somehow...oh, I don't know.

Over the years, I've found that the best way to induce insightful critique is more of a pre-emptive strategy than a reactive one. That is to say, I look for writers whose opinions I value and whose work I like, and I try to cultivate a critique-for-critique relationship. I'm no longer the jerk who sends a five-page unsolicited letter critiquing/praising/dissecting a 10-page fanfic (although I made one of my best friends that way) but I've found that when you ask someone to swap critiques, and then you spend about twenty minutes per page critiquing their work and compiling a significant edit letter, you get back about what you've given. (Not always, but if you're selective, it pays off often enough to make it worthwhile.)

Cookies are good, in other words, but most writers want something better to feed on. They want your honesty.

Not all writers -- and you do have to be careful. I also earned one lifelong enemy by saying "I find your tone to be uneven" (and immediately heard back that she'd expected such narrow-minded and judgmental responses from the unenlightened who were too stupid to understand her work. I apologized for being dim and never touched her work again, but she still hated me ten years later.) Sometimes a writer says "honest feedback" but means "unrestrained praise," and it's difficult to tell at first who those writers are. 

It's very important to give feedback at the level the writer needs -- and a writer needs first and foremost to be able to hear what you're saying. Sometimes that means not saying "Your main character is loathsome" but rather "I really like the dialogue, but sometimes I couldn't get as close as I wanted to your main character." Sometimes it means just focusing on the things that work until the writer is ready to hear more. 

Is that dishonest? Or is that like my son's karate instructor, a fifth-degree black belt, not punching my child into the back wall of the dojo just because he could?

That's not what I wanted, though. I wanted it brutal and honest. If the manuscript had to bleed, let it bleed cleanly. If my main character was loathsome, I wanted to hear "Your main character is loathsome no matter how snappy her dialogue."

So I stood at my oven, questioning: would sweet snacks and their empty calories lead to sweet commentary with equally empty suggestions? 

The urge to write versus the urge to bake. Who would win? And in the end, I didn't bring anything to that session either. 

PS: Nowadays, now that I can trust them to tell me where I'm failing, and now that they trust me not to go weep in the corner, I don't hesitate to bring any snacks I want. Because I enjoy both the feeding and the feedback.

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Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or baking pumpkin muffins. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.