Constructive Criticism

Even the most magnanimous writers can sometimes, secretly, find constructive criticism a bit tricky to handle.

So… here are my thoughts on that!

Video script:

Hi, I’m Jess, a writer and careers advisor, and this is careers advice for writers. This video is about constructive criticism... 

...and specifically, how do you know criticism is constructive? 

Recognising constructive feedback (as opposed to sycophantic praise or pure ruthlessness for the sake of it) can be tough, especially if you’re not used to it. I have had years of practice, first from my Creative Writing degrees, both of which involved lots of “workshopping”, which is essentially a training ground for giving and receiving criticism, and then from doing things like entering competitions that offered feedback, and of course working with publishing professionals directly to get my book out. Based on all of that, personally, I think constructive criticism is three things: 

Friendly: that is, it’s given in the spirit of support and isn’t aimed at just decimating your ego. With that in mind, it should be balanced by indications of things the reader did also enjoy about your work. Avoid getting feedback from people who say things like “I can be brutally honest”, because I don’t think most of us really want brutality in this context.  

Actionable: by which I mean, you should be able to improve your work based on the feedback. The feedback therefore needs to be specific enough that you can see the issues – instead of “Oh I just didn’t like that character at all”, a constructive approach might be “you know, I couldn’t understand why she makes those choices – I wish I understood her motivations more clearly.” That’s something the writer can actually consider changing, in a practical way.  

 Not overly directive: this is often something that happens when a non-writer, who doesn’t understand what writing a story takes, tries to give feedback. Instead of trying to see your vision, they default to “well, if I was writing this I would do X” - and the thing is, that might be a great idea, but they are NOT writing the story. You are. Instead, a constructive version of this might be “I can see that you’re trying to achieve X here, and I wonder if switching the chapter to another POV might make that more effective”.  

So that’s what constructive criticism looks like – but it can still be tough to accept any criticism at all, so how do you deal with it? I’ll cover that in the next video. 

Video script:

Hi, I’m Jess, a writer and a careers advisor and this is careers advice for writers. This video is about constructive criticism, and specifically – how do you graciously accept criticism so you can use it effectively? 

Look, not to make sweeping generalisations, but most of us writers are the sensitive sort – at least about our writing, if nothing else. I am usually a fairly even-keeled person I think, but I am currently refusing to log into Goodreads to check the reviews of my book, because I already know that I won’t believe the nice things people say and I will take the negatives to heart. I probably wouldn’t do that in any other area of my life, but there’s something about showing your creative work to another person that feels a lot like plucking out your still-beating heart and presenting it to the masses for their approval.  

Now, reviews are one thing, and obviously I’ve made the choice not to look at those, but what about when you actually want to see the feedback you’re given?  

Step one: recognise the spirit in which it’s offered. As I mentioned in my last video, constructive feedback should be offered in a friendly manner. It is designed to help you make your story better, and it’s given by someone who cares about you enough to want that for you. Remember that when you see fifty-thousand comment boxes on your Word document; this is supposed to be helpful! 

Step two: return the favour. Learning how to give great feedback can really help you take great feedback in turn, because you are more easily able to understand the mindset of the person giving it. Also, every writer has their own strengths and preferences – for example, I like to think I’m good at developing characters with strong internality and motivations, so I can often see where I think more internality is needed in the work of others. On the flip side, the middle sections of my plots tend to drag and need heightened stakes to be worth reading, and I have writer friends who are excellent and finding those areas of weakness in my work. Because I know I can offer useful feedback to those friends, I don’t mind receiving their feedback – I know my strengths, so it’s not such a total slap to my ego. 

Step three: take a step back if you need to. Sometimes feedback will just be hard to bear. I’m currently working on a novel with two strong POV characters, and I got some feedback about Character A that essentially boiled down to: “she’s a bit of a wet lettuce, I’m bored by her”. That was tough for a couple of reasons – one, I identified quite strongly with her so it felt like a comment on my personality even though it very clearly wasn’t, and two, she had the stronger character arc, or so I thought. Ultimately, the feedback was incredibly useful, I but I took a couple of days away from it all before I could see that. Don’t feel you have to rush into making those changes. 

Bonus step: only take what serves you. Not all criticism is equal, and not all of it is necessary to your story.  But I’ll talk about that next time.

Video script:

Hi, I’m Jess, a writer and careers advisor, and this is careers advice for writers. This video is about constructive criticism... 

And specifically, when should you ignore criticism from a reader or editor? 

This one’s tricky, right, because I’ve definitely come across writers who reject all criticism they don’t like, even if it’s valid and helpful and would ultimately make their work stronger – but on the other hand, not all criticism is... helpful. Even well-meaning criticism might not work, sometimes. So here are three times you might safely decide to ignore criticism: 

One: it’s not constructive. I don’t take feedback from “tough love” readers. If you can’t be kind to me, I don’t believe you’ve got my best interests at heart. I think people who say they offer brutal honesty are mostly revelling in the brutality over the honesty – and that’s not constructive. Equally, I don’t accept advice that is vague or is based on personal preferences of the person giving the feedback. Even if they end up being right, I’d rather get that information from someone I can trust to be constructive. 

Two: it conflicts with other feedback you’ve had. Look, none of us should be writing by committee – you don’t have to immediately jump to fix everything someone suggests, and sometimes it would be impossible to do that anyway, because let’s say one reader loves my romance subplot but one person thinks it’s a mess, who am I supposed to believe? You can take both points of view into account, but perhaps ask some follow up questions to figure out which perspective makes most sense to you. 

Three: it conflicts with what you’re trying to achieve... this one’s a grey area though. Like, last year I tried to pitch a YA horror to my agent. I’d written 25,000 words, I had the rest of it all plotted out, and what I wanted to write was a story about a family of cousins and generational trauma, exploring what makes a person monstrous. It was kind of a riff on The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and... the fact is, my agent didn’t think it was marketable in the current landscape. She was constructive (my agent is great, she’s always constructive), but I had to decide what to do with that information. If I chose to keep writing that story, the suggestions she made would have taken away the generational trauma aspect of it, so I had to decide if that was the most important thing or not.  

In this instance, it mattered that the feedback came from her, because she needs to be on board with what I write in order to try and sell it – ultimately, I’m fortunate to have enough ideas that I can put that one on hold until I decide what to do with it, and honestly there is nothing stopping me writing it as I initially planned to, if I decide to write it just for me. But there’s the balance with that last point: are you writing just for you, or are you writing for publication? If it’s the latter, you need to also decide who is at the top of the feedback hierarchy. You are always at the very top, but it’s not always helpful to be so stubborn you end up with something you can’t sell.