A guide you don't have to follow: How to deal with (constructive) criticism

Okay, let's get real for a moment.

We all want everyone to love our story.

Subjectively I mean.

In our very core we all want people to just adore what we write and love our stories, poems or novels and that is very natural.

We love what we write (at least when we overcome our hatred for everything and the world for a bit) and we want others to experience that love too.

But chances are that ain't going to happen all the time. Because people are different. Some like love stories and others get physically sick when reading a cliché kissing scene. Some people love fantasy, magic and dragons and others raise their brows at the fact that none of this is real (that's what they say) and that you should come back to the "real" world. Which is also absolutely okay, if you want to think that way, but doesn't make our lives as writers any easier.

So how do we deal with criticism without losing our mind?

First of all, I need to differentiate between the feedback you get from a proper writer’s group or beta readers and the feedback you get from some person who only quickly skimmed through half your first chapter and decided it is bad. For people of category number two I can only say: They suck, they will always suck and unless everyone and their mother shares their opinion on your story they are probably just trolls who want to make you feel miserable. If you love what you write and are passionate about your project then don’t get discouraged by a half hearted hate comment.

Category number one is what this post will be about. I recently joined a writer’s group and I thought: this will be fun, getting some tips on how to improve my halfway solid, finished (!!) novel would be great for editing. I knew I had mistakes in there and weaknesses, but damn me, the feedback I got was crushing. It was constructive, fact based and every comment I read, I could see where they were coming from and slowly I realised just how little I actually seemed to know about my plot, about writing in general. Don’t get me wrong, the feedback is incredibly helpful and I love this group, but I needed a while to collect my thoughts again, after getting told that after two chapters people were not actually hooked on the story or even really interested in the characters I created.

I still hope it was helpful and that you enjoyed reading this little “writer’s advice”.

I don’t want to say I have the guide to properly work with feedback, but I can show you what I did with the page long comments I received on my novel and how I pulled myself out of the whole that I tumbled in when getting my first real feedback.

First I tried to take a big step back and gave myself a few days to read over the comments and then let my mind process it. If you jump right into editing after politely getting told your chapter sucks, chances are you are too influenced by other people’s opinions and don’t listen to what is good for your story. Just relax and let their opinion sink in, consider if you would say the same and if their comment was based on facts or techniques or if it was a subjective preference on something like topic or style of writing. As I said in the beginning, some people like romance, others don’t, so feedback you get on a kissing scene by someone who doesn’t like romance might be different to the feedback you get from someone who doesn’t read anything else.

Once you took your little break go back in and look at grammatical, technical things like passive voice, adverb use or your guilty words (mine are ‘just’ and ‘that’). If those are pointed out to you, you can get rid of them without thinking too much about your style of writing or your plot. We all have our weaknesses and we all struggle with seeing every single one of our errors. It is normal to miss a spelling mistake or an adverb. Don’t overthink it, just get rid of those errors that distract you from really getting deep into your edits.

Now to the hardest part. The “plot based” comments and the crushing feedback on the world you tried to build or the characters your mind figuratively gave birth to. And here you have to listen to your gut more than to your writer’s group or beta readers. If you do agree with them on plot holes you have or on characters that you just didn’t really create the right way, then go ahead and work on it. But, if you read through the comments, take a break, read through your chapter/novel again and still find that a character’s flaws are there for a reason and it is important that this particular scene doesn’t make sense to the reader, then keep it. Don’t try and fit someone’s specific idea of a novel if you might lose your voice on the way. After all, you write because you love it and although you get overly attached to your novel from time to time (I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t care about their novel) and don’t see the mistakes,  you also need to cherish the ideas you came up with. This is why it is so important to not immediately cut every scene or every sentence that someone didn’t like. If you have a better alternative or you realised that the people giving feedback were right, then you can cut and rewrite however much you want. Just stay true to yourself and your writing. There are different styles of writing out there and there are readers who prefer different styles of writing.

As a last tip for working with feedback and editing I can only say: be ready and prepared for it.

When I first received a critique on a chapter I hadn’t even looked at the chapter myself. It was a raw, first draft and I hadn’t even edited out the spelling mistakes, so of course it got ripped apart by my writing group whose job it was to point out every single error to me. I wasn’t prepared to receive feedback because I hadn’t even checked with myself if this chapter was ready to be shared with anyone. So as a result I got frustrated, angry at myself and I didn’t touch that manuscript for several weeks because I was surprised at just how bad reviews can get. I had to remember that everyone’s first draft probably looked like a mess and that you need to work on several stages of editing and revising before asking a writer’s group for advice. Once you are okay with your draft and you want people’s opinion on the flow of a scene or the dialogue between two characters, then you are ready to receive feedback.

I hope this wasn’t too messy and all over the place. Although I tried to stick to a script I noticed how I drifted off every now and then. Sorry about that.

Take care and write on,

Lena

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