Write Your Way Real talk + resources for writers

Happy Spring! 🌼 Let's jump right into the final installment in this critique tip trilogy without much ado.

Tip #3: Be clear, specific, but open-minded with what you are looking for when asking for feedback.

Giving someone a piece of writing — a memoir excerpt, personal essay, chapter of your novel — and just saying “tell me what you think” is NOT the way to get valuable feedback from critique partners or a writers' group. To really maximize what you get in return, be prepared to pinpoint and ask questions about specific aspects you’re struggling with.

So, before you ask others for feedback, ask yourself what you and your book need. Get clarity for yourself first, then focus your request on that.

If you’re questioning how your dialogue sounds, or how a plot element lands, ask your writing group or critique partners to pay special attention there. If you’re not sure whether your book’s main themes emerge clearly enough, ask readers to consider and tell you the themes and threads they pick up on.

Do you want early draft readers to look at your work on the macro level (aka: big picture) or pay deep attention to the micro (line, sentence, paragraph, scene construction, etc.)? Be clear about it.

Unsure if a character is necessary or superfluous? Ask your critique readers to train their eye on that character's role in the story.

If you’re looking for suggestions about phrasing, paragraph length, word choice, and other small-and-close aspects, make sure you mention that. And feel free to mention what you are not asking them to spend time on, so that their attention and energy can go toward your top concerns.

But, also, don’t be so narrow and rigid that you discourage suggestions or feedback on anything else a reader might pick up on. Stay open to the possibilities and opportunities you may have missed in your last revision. Welcome all feedback with gratitude, even if you don't end up implementing it all.

In other words...

Tip #4: Stay open to everything; be choosy about what you incorporate

Even if you’re asking the clearest questions of the right people, you can still end up with some distracting and unhelpful advice. Or suggestions that don’t truly serve your WIP.

When all’s said and done, you have to be satisfied with how your work turns out. You have to believe in it, because you’re the one doing most of the hard work to make it ready for the world. You have to be able to be proud of it, because you're the one taking the risks. It's your job as the author to decide what to take and what to leave.

Hold on! This doesn’t mean rejecting all hard-to-take feedback, or the kind that asks you to do more work than you’ve prepared for.

It means being open, but discerning.

Consider all the feedback you get, put some of it to use to see how (or if) it improves your work. Approach it with curiosity, and give it a chance.

But don’t be afraid to stand in what you know to be true, or what emerges through revisions. Don’t make a change you don’t believe in just because someone else suggested it.

Distinguish between that generative, constructive feedback I mentioned earlier, and the petty nitpicking feedback that serves to make the critic feel good about themselves, instead of being in service of improving the writing. Be especially aware of strong personal preference masquerading as generally accepted "wisdom".

I was once in a writing class with a man who routinely returned nothing but surface-level noise whenever it was his turn to share his thoughts on other writers' submissions. In one session, he went on a rant about how much he hated the proliferation of swearing these days, and how he "just couldn’t get past" the one or two cuss words in someone’s chapter long enough to provide any real critique. That pointless diatribe was the entirety of his feedback on the 10 pages he’d been asked to comment on. Luckily, the critiqued writer recognized this blowhard hadn’t actually done the work of true critique, laughed off and discarded the drivel.

Tip #5: Feedback tells you what, you decide how

Critique partners and beta readers often want to tell you both what's "wrong" AND how to fix it. Treat their advice as suggestions, not directives. Diagnoses, not prescriptions.

Just because someone identified a problem or place for edits doesn't mean you automatically have to adopt their preferred solution, if that is not the solution that would make the most sense for your particular book or vision. Again, you are writing this thing, putting your name on it, querying it, suffering all the slings and arrows of publishing fortune on its behalf.

When a character doesn't pull their weight in a story, the answer may be to excise them completely, or fold them into another character, or give them a subplot. Or something else.

When you have a gaping plot hole, the solution might be strengthening the plot thread or removing it altogether. You may need to add more scenes to shore it up, or remove some scenes that add needless complication without attention-holding complexity. Or something else.

So, once you've determined which feedback points to real problems, you get to choose which way you want to solve them. Because you're the one writing the book.

By the way, this tip advice goes for critique groups and partners, as well as coaches (and sometimes editors). I feel so strongly about this that it's one of the pillars of my coaching.

If you and I work together, and I make a suggestion, I don't push or expect you to adopt and apply it whole cloth. The real magic is when a suggestion, question, idea, "what-if" sparks an even better solution within you, the writer. My job isn't to tell you what to do, it's to help you generate your own very best ideas and way forward and to support you as you strive, as you struggle, as you pivot, and as you ultimately succeed.

Tip #6: Don't seek critique on unfinished first drafts.

Stephen King champions this method in On Writing — the subject of both my January writers' book clubs — when he talks about writing his first drafts with "the door closed" (ie: not exposing it to anyone else's eyes or judgment) and revising or writing updated drafts "with the door open" (requesting and implementing feedback).

I'm a huge proponent of this personally and professionally.

See, I tried to workshop early parts of a novel that I hadn't finished writing in hopes that it would help me get unstuck and move me forward by virtue of the accountability, support, commiseration, and maybe sparks of inspiration from talking it through with other writers.

The opposite happened. I got stymied. Instead of moving forward, I couldn't fight the urge to keep going back to "fix" what I had already gotten feedback on. The feedback was good, but the timing was wrong, and the result was circuitous and counterproductive.

My focus should've been completing the story (in whatever way I had access to at that time), then workshopping my draft only once I was no longer fuzzy on how it was going to end and how I was going to get it there. It was hard, but I realized that an entirely redone novel beats the awkward dance of one foot in "revising the first fifty pages to perfection" and the other foot in "figuring out what the fuck happens after page 150".

Eventually, I decided to stop submitting my unfinished novel to my critique group and put my energy to getting to the end of the first version.

In case you're wondering whether I left the critique group, I didn't. I submitted finished first drafts of short stories I was neglecting because they didn't feel as urgent as my novel. I could get feedback on and revise short stories, while still advancing the unfinished novel.

Though it resulted in more concurrent creative work, it was actually easier to accomplish each because I had the other going as well. Because I was flexing my revision muscle and my creation muscles at different times, learning from both, improving in both.

As a writing coach, I've seen clients fall into this trap, too. They get frustrated because they're not moving forward on their manuscript, which crushes them a little and is hard to witness. But the reason they're not moving forward is because they're literally looking backward. Looking to fix what's already there instead of putting it all down and then fixing holistically.

So I've gotten careful about giving feedback when clients ask for it on unfinished first drafts. I ask questions and make suggestions that move them toward finishing their manuscripts, not looping back endlessly. I encourage them to do more of what's already proving out in the chapters they've written as they write more. I help them envision and plot out the future of these characters we're following not harp on minor discrepancies I know they can fix in revision. When they're stuck on where to go next and the outline isn't doing the trick, we talk about going forward not back the drawing board.

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This wraps my current series of tips on taking writing critique like a pro, so you can bring the most polished version of your book to the forefront. I'd love to know which one(s) you're finding most helpful and if you have any questions. What's coming up for you? Maybe I'm 0 for 6 and you won't be implementing any of what I've recommended (remember, that's OK too!).

Let me know.

Memoir Writers' Book Club meets next week

There's still time to join us as we consider and learn from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas's punch-packing Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.

🗓 March 27th, 7:00pm EDT, Zoom. Save your spot.

Cornelia ✍🏼