203: How to Give Feedback to Other Writers

 

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How to Give Feedback to Other Writers

 

Hi friends, welcome to Your Big Creative Life podcast. I wanted to do this episode to talk about giving feedback because I just did a workshop for some writers on how to give feedback in like a critique group, critique partner setting where you are critiquing the work of another author and giving them notes and feedback to help them improve the story. And I thought there were some good takeaways that we could like from that training that would be helpful for y'all as well about how to give feedback. Before we get into it, I want to talk about where this advice and the content for this episode is going to apply. So, I recognize that I'm coming at this from the perspective of a paid book editor, right? People hire me. So, my feedback, my notes, my process is going to look a little bit different than if you're just like beta reading or you're critiquing a work for your writing group. I fully recognize that. So, I'm not going to talk about my experience as a book editor and my exact process. I'm going to talk more about like big picture, how to do this, how to approach this, what I think is helpful and not helpful, etc. So this will apply if you're beta reading. It'll apply if you are in a writing group, whatever scenario.

Now, the terms might be different. Some writers make a distinction between beta readers and critique partners. Some people feel that beta readers are like early readers of a book, and they want, the author wants their beta readers to give them their personal reader reactions to things. And then some people think that critique partners are more like other writers you're sharing your work with other writers hoping to improve the content of the story, to improve the writing, the plot, characters, conflict, et cetera. And of course there's overlap between those two things because reader reactions and responses will help you improve the story if you kind of get a check on those things. So for purposes of this podcast episode, though, I'm just going to use the word critique and critique partners, recognizing that if you beta read for someone, it might be slightly different and you might be working with an author who really just wants to hear your personal feedback. And that's fine and that's great. But in this episode, I want to talk about giving feedback to other writers as writers. So that's what we're focusing on here. And I wanted to say too, even though yes, I'm a book editor now, I also started getting experience with giving people feedback through beta reading, through a writing group that I was part of for several years, before I started doing any paid editing work.

So, I've done this myself. Okay, so I just wanted to put that out there. We're talking on like critique, critiquing a work of another author. Okay. And if you're like, what? I'm not really sure what this means. I'm not even sure what beta reading really is. I think I have an older episode that's like on the basics of beta reading, which you can go check out if you want like some basic info on what that means. And I think there's tips in there on where to find beta readers, I believe. Okay, so when we're giving feedback to other writers, when we are critiquing something, Number one, you want to try to avoid giving tons of personal feedback or imposing your personal preferences onto the writer. This is where the distinction that if people do, not all writers do this, some people talk about beta readers and critique partners interchangeably, but for the people who separate those things, beta readers, they're what the author is often looking for are the personal reactions and responses and things. But I just don't think it's helpful in a critique setting to really just focus on like, lol, loved this. Oh my gosh, he's so cute. I hope she ends up with him. Like, I just don't think it's really that helpful. I would say you can definitely sprinkle in the, like 5 to 10% of your comments can absolutely be those reactions.

And I will even do that occasionally when I'm editing a client manuscript. Like, I will let them know, like, lol, I'm literally laughing out loud because the dialogue in the scene is so funny. That's like a more personal reaction, but I'm just telling them like, yeah. So I think it's fine to sprinkle those in. It's good. It can help the author understand how future readers might respond to their work. But why they're asking you to look at their book or short story, novella, whatever it is, they want to improve it. And you just giving them personal notes about like your personal reactions to it isn't totally helpful for those purposes. Which leads me to my next point, which is back up your suggestions with evidence from the story. This helps the author see that it's not just like, okay, I don't want you to change this thing in chapter 3 because I just personally don't like it. I want you to change, I'm suggesting, like asking, have you considered changing this thing in chapter 3 because of X, Y, Z, because there's an inconsistency in how this character is responding. bonding, because in chapter one you set the magic up to be this way, but then the magic is used differently in chapter three and it doesn't make sense. You see the difference here?

That's what I do when I'm editing, by the way, is I will back things up with evidence from the story so the reader knows I'm not just, or the client, the author knows I'm not just like, well, I personally really like stories where this happens, so therefore I think you should do that in this book. You have to critique the work that the author has written, not try to shape it into something that you personally would enjoy as a reader. So yeah, back up your suggestions with evidence of where you're spotting those issues, why you think they're issues, et cetera. And as far as like how to kind of come up with these notes or suggestions or this feedback, pay attention to your initial reactions as you're reading. So, when I'm reading something, and this is true of me currently as an editor, but then also in the past when I was in a writing group, I would often just scan through something and like form initial impressions of it before I left comments. Or I would leave comments that were just like little notes to myself that I would go back and change later so that the author never sees them. There might be questions on my first read through of a manuscript. I might leave comments that are like, wait, what? Check this. Repetitive? Question mark. I might have little comments like that because I'm just forming initial thoughts.

So, this is where getting in touch with your thoughts and feelings about a work is important because that's going to help you form the basis of things. Now, some of those initial thoughts and reactions might be personal things. You might have I don't know, let's say there's like a particularly violent or gory fight scene and your initial reaction might be like, oh, barf, I hate all this like violence. Okay, you can put that down as a comment to yourself, but then when you're going back, that's a good opportunity to gut check it and be like, well, actually, wait, I think this is more of a personal feedback. This is like a personal preference thing. It's not really a helpful note for the author. So, I'm just, you know, you can just delete that note then. And note, when I'm saying no, by the way, I think what's helpful, you can leave comments in the margins of a manuscript or you can just create a separate document that kind of has bullet points about your thoughts for the author. It depends how y'all have decided to work it out. In my writing group, what we would do is leave comments in the margins of the manuscript and then we'd write like a short paragraph just at the bottom with some overall suggestions or thoughts or whatever. Initial reactions.

Okay, next, focus on plot, characters, pacing, conflict, world building, dialogue, et cetera, and not style or grammar or like voice, unless those things are impacting the reading experience super negatively and you feel like it's really something that the author needs to be aware of. And there are a couple of reasons for this. Number one, you might be reviewing a first draft. from someone. You might be your critique partner, your writing group, whoever it is, might submit a first draft to you. And so for you to go through and make comments about like commas or verb tense or whatever, like it's just not super helpful because the person's probably aware of that. It's a first draft. They're just getting the story out and that's what they want suggestions on. That's what they're trying to work on 1st before they cement the punctuation, the subject verb agreement, et cetera. So it's just, I don't think it's really helpful to spend a lot of time looking at those things in early drafts. But also, with the style and voice thing, there's so much of that is subjective. And I just personally don't feel like it's our role to really try and be heavy-handed and alter the way that people write. If someone hires you to line edit or someone wants you to line edit their books, then of course that's a little bit different.

But just for beta reading or critique, critiquing a work, you know, if you're in a writing group, I just don't think the style is really something or the voice of the author is like something to really touch unless it is scattered and very inconsistent. That could be something that you mentioned. I mean, even with my manuscript evaluation, I don't rewrite anything for the author. I'm only giving them notes and comments and suggestions for improvement on all those different areas, plot, character pacing, world building, et cetera. The only time that I will ever make a comment about like grammar or, I don't know, like voice, is, if it is inconsistent, if it feels like in one chapter the author is writing in a certain way, and then the next chapter it feels like it's a different person entirely, I will of course point that out and give examples. Like look at this, look at these couple of sentences from chapter 3, and then look at these couple of sentences from chapter 4. These feel very different stylistically. So really look at your tone and try to make that consistent. You could definitely say something like that. The other thing I will say is I will mention grammar if the person is doing something that really impacts the readability of it. For example, if almost every sentence is a fragment and it's not a complete sentence, I have a little section on my editorial letter that's called other, and I'll just put extra. feedback for the person under there that doesn't really fall under any of the other areas.

So that's where I might make a note like, hey, once don't worry about this now, but once you get the big picture stuff done, once you have the plot done, characters are settled, you've like figured everything else out, it's really worth going through line by line to make sure that these are complete sentences just so it doesn't impact your readability. That's all I'll say. And I think if you're critiquing, that's fine to say. But again, you have to know if you're dealing with a first draft or not. That's really important because rough drafts are rough for most of us. And so you, again, you spending all this time with grammar and punctuation and whatever, like it just, that's not where your focus should be when you're critiquing something in this kind of context. Okay. Next up, this, You have to remember to strike the right balance, the right tone of being helpful and constructive while not overly flattering the writer or tearing the work apart. This is something that can be tricky. This is something that I maybe found a bit tricky when I first started. beta reading or critiquing or editing, editing for sure. It was difficult. My first like handful of clients, I really wrestled with the tone to strike because you want to be helpful, right? You want to be encouraging, especially if you have a relationship with the person, like with the writer, you know, if it's someone in your writing group and you know them, you want to be careful with how you say things and how you word it because you don't want to just be so rough that they get discouraged and stop writing. You want to cheer them on. You want to be encouraging.

I mean, the fact that they're putting themselves in the position of giving you their work is brave. It's a brave thing to do to make your work to someone else, to open it up and say, hey, critique partner, I'd love feedback on this. Like that is brave to do. You are putting yourself in a vulnerable position. And I just want you to put yourself in the author's shoes and kind of remember that. Just like when you get feedback, when I get feedback, like it's a vulnerable thing. So, we want to keep that in mind. But also, If someone is submitting something to you, it's because they want your honest feedback. It does no good. And in fact, it's a disservice to them. If you just pat them on the back and say like, LOL, love this. It's amazing. I can't believe you did it. Yay. And you're not honest with them about the big issues that are present or small issues even that are present because you're just so afraid of their reaction. If that is the case and you have that kind of relationship with the person, then maybe they're not someone you need to be critiquing their work. Like maybe, I don't know. Again, I just think it's a disservice to them. And honestly, your relationship too, if you just feel like you cannot be honest at all because you're so worried about hurting their feelings. Yeah, they're asking you to review it because they want feedback. They want to make it better.

So, it doesn't do any good to just like overly flatter the writer, but it also doesn't do any good to tear the manuscript to shreds. I have had both experiences, by the way. I've had the entire spectrum of people giving me feedback on my work. I have had, there was one short story that I brought to a writing group that was so poorly received by that group that I almost started crying. This was early on in my writing. I don't remember if I had started... No, I guess I had written a book. But I was writing a short story. I think I wanted to submit it to some kind of contest. And it was a first draft of a story opening. It was very rough. And I knew it was rough. And I said that to the group, like, hey, I'm just figuring this out. But I was doing something like a... I can't remember if it was... I was doing something speculative with it. And it was just, there was one person who said something kind of mean about it and it just really stuck with me. And look, that happens. I mean, it's just part of, again, I talk about this all the time in the podcast. It's like developing this muscle of resilience, right? If you want to be published, if you want to improve as a writer, this is unfortunately, but also fortunately, part of the process, because that's how you grow. You grow through feedback. You grow through other people pointing things out to you that you just can't see about your own writing. And that story was rough. It was bad. But I was learning. I was figuring it out.

And yeah, I just think there's a way to give people feedback that doesn't tear them down unnecessarily and attack the person We want to keep the focus on the writing, not the person. A couple of other things, like small things that I want to just point out is, especially going back to that whole reason that the person is asking you for feedback on their work, you have to be prepared for a number of different responses from the author. If you send them your notes, if you send them your comments, you have to be prepared for whatever their response is. They might get defensive. They might want to argue with you and tell you why you're wrong. They might think you don't know what you're talking about. They might just shut down and get totally become like just in despair and like, why bother? This book is terrible. Or they might say, okay, great, thank you so much, and then not take a single one of your suggestions, which is fine. You've done your job. You've given them your suggestions, your notes, your comments. That's it. It's not up to you. don't get to decide what the person does with it. And I think that can be challenging, or it was a bit challenging for me when I first started editing, and I saw manuscripts come back where people didn't take my suggestions. And I'm like, I don't understand.

But really, it's just that's how it gets to be. You know, when you're critiquing a work, you don't get to decide how the author makes those changes or edits the book based on the feedback, or even if they take it. Like, they could disagree with every single one of your notes, and that is entirely within their right to do that. Another thing to remember is, it's okay, we're not sensitivity readers, right? We're not here to do sensitivity reads on someone's work. Sensitivity readers are a form of... Basically, it's a form of editing where you hire someone to look at your manuscript. If you're concerned about the content and you're concerned about specific things, maybe you're writing outside of an identity that, writing an identity that's not your own. You're writing queer characters or people of color or just something that, you know, you don't have that lived experience and you're kind of like, I want to make sure I'm doing this in a way that's like sensitive and appropriate, that I'm not having any of my bias creep in or like unknowingly having a ton of stereotypes in here.

So that's what sensitivity readers do. We're not sensitivity readers, we're critique partners, but you can absolutely point out problematic elements in someone's work. That is fine to do, but I would just approach it. When did we have that episode? It was a couple of weeks ago, or maybe like a month ago, an episode came out where we talked, I had a guest on and we talked about writing an identity, not your own. And one of the things she said in the episode is like, if you're in a writing group and someone has written something problematic and you're like, oh boy, we should probably talk about this, approach it as if from a perspective of teamwork, where you're coming to the writer and you're saying like, hey, here's a couple of things I noticed. I just want to bring this to your attention. Maybe we could brainstorm how to tackle this together. So, it's not coming, this is the tone, right? This is where the tone is important. So that it's not coming across like you just shaking your finger. I mean, like, I can't believe you wrote this like racist character. What's wrong with you? You're gonna get canceled, like blah, blah, blah. But it's really about like, hey, this is something I noticed. Just wanted to point it out. Maybe we can talk about this. I think that's totally fine to point out. But also remember that you're not, a sensitivity reader, that is like a different service, different process of editing.

Let me see. I think those are all the suggestions that I had for this. I still think, I know in the beginning I was saying like, hey, if you're thinking there's a difference between beta reading and critiquing, like here's this advice is for critique partners and writing groups. But honestly, I still think a lot of this is helpful for beta readers because it's still important if you're just like giving more of your personal reactions to something, it's still important that you strike the right tone, that you're not overly mean to the author or, you know, just like buttering them up and being overly complimentary if the work doesn't warrant it. You know, being honest but kind about your feedback. What else? Yeah. I think just knowing that, you could have a response to something as a reader, but it doesn't mean that every reader is going to have that response. And so recognizing like you might include all kinds of notes or reactions from the author, and they might be like, okay, thanks, and then do nothing with it. So, there's still a lot of the same principles that apply if you're beta reading as well. Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention, it was a question that came up in the workshop is like, what if you truly don't know what you think of the work and you're really struggling to come up with like comments or suggestions for the author? And in this case, there are two things you can do.

Number one, you can reach out to the author and see if they have questions for you. See if there are specific concerns that they have. Because oftentimes authors will suspect something isn't working, but they just kind of need confirmation of it and they need an outside set of eyes to help them spot the issue properly. So that could be something to ask if they have specific concerns or specific things that they want you to look at. Also, just pay attention, go back to that kind of like gut reaction. Go back to the reader part of your brain when you're responding to something. Where were you bored? Where were you excited? Where were you cheering people on? Where were you confused? That's a big one for me, editing. Anything that takes me out of the story where I like my eyes glaze over because I cannot follow what's happening because it's so complicated. I'm like, wait, what is happening? This doesn't make any sense. That's an important thing to consider. Doesn't mean that all readers would feel that way, but I can certainly look at it and say like, okay, my eyes totally glazed over because we just got 6 pages of backstory that does not seem to really matter.

So that's something I can look at and maybe adjust that bit of feedback for the author and back it up with that evidence of why it feels like a lot. But just pay attention. What are your initial like reactions? And a way to practice this is do it with books that you're reading for fun and really try to like tease out, okay, what do I think about this? If I love this book that I just read, why? Imagine that you were like gonna give notes to the author. You're not because the book's already published. But if you were, if this author sat you down and were like, hey, give me some notes, critique this for me, what would your suggestions be? It's even better to do this sometimes with books that you really didn't like or hated and if that were bad. Like why? What about it is not working for you? Okay, I think that's everything in terms of how to give feedback. This is something that you will get more comfortable with and more able to wrap your head around. And you'll also be able to strike that tone more easily the more that you do this. I know now as an editor, I'm not, I would, it's interesting. I would say that the tone of my letters or feedback, obviously it varies because every client's different.

But overall, I would say that my tone is probably even a slight bit harsher than it was when I first started. Because I think when I first started, okay, you know how there's that joke in the corporate world about like how we use so many exclamation points and emojis to kind of soften our tone as women? I think I was doing the equivalent of that with my notes and my editorial letter. I was like you're doing such a great job. This is a great foundation. I really love it. But here are like a couple things to consider. Like I was just trying to include all these caveats and butter the person up so that I didn't hurt their feelings. And then I was a little too soft in my notes. And over time I have gotten and maybe calling it harsher isn't quite the right word, but I've gotten less, I don't know, flowery and kind of like, I feel like I'm more straightforward now. I'm more honest and direct. Not honest, I'm more direct. Let's just say that. I'm more direct than I used to be because I'm like, especially if people are hiring me, it does a disservice to them if I just spend 6 pages of the seven-page letter telling them like, loved this, love this, is working, it's effective, it's great. That's not helping them. That's not going to really help them improve the story. not actionable. So, I would rather focus, take that real estate and focus on what should be improved. But anyway, so that was a bit of a tangent. Okay, so I hope this is helpful. If you are in a writing group, if you're going to be beta reading as well, hopefully this is beneficial for you. And thank you for listening. It's Friday afternoon as I'm recording this, so I'm going to go home. I think I'm going to pick up some dinner. That's usually what we do on Fridays, is I pick up something for dinner on the way home, or we do Uber Eats or something because I just don't want to cook after a long week. And we're usually out of leftovers by that point. So, I get to decide what I want, and then I'll head home. Okay, see y'all next week.

Katie Wolf