Episode Thirty-One: Got bad feedback on your book? Here’s what to do next.
As a fiction writer, you know that feedback is essential. But you probably also know that even the smartest critique partners can end up giving you feedback that just doesn’t resonate. But what are you supposed to do next? Ignore the feedback completely? Grit your teeth and make the change because you respect the person giving it?
How about a more a strategic approach?
In this podcast episode, I’m going to give you a 5-step framework for strategically reviewing feedback you disagree with.
Here are the steps:
Take a break to process.
Consider the source.
Evaluate the feedback’s validity.
Separate the diagnosis from the cure.
Accept & implement OR reject and move on.
Listen to the full episode for all the details and examples of my own experiences with less-than-stellar feedback.
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia (00:00)
As a fiction writer, I am sure that at some point in your life you were told feedback is a gift. And as an editor, I largely agree with that statement. I've heard it a million times, both in teaching and writing, and generally speaking, it is true. However, let's be real, sometimes that feedback feels more like coal in your stocking than something that you want to unwrap and celebrate. And today I'm going to talk about what to do when you get that kind of feedback.
Feedback that just does not resonate with you for whatever reason. Whether you disagree with it or it's just something you feel like you are not sure you want to implement, We don't want to throw it out right away, but we also don't have to just take it and run with it either. So let's talk about how to navigate that situation and what you as a writer can do.
Welcome to episode 31 of the Better Writer Podcast. Today I'm talking about what to do with feedback that you just don't agree with.
And I want to start this off by saying that you as the writer have the final say. And that is always true no matter who you are getting feedback from. I think sometimes, especially when you have paid for feedback or when you are getting feedback from someone who is an industry professional, I think that can happen a lot if you are getting feedback from an agent, for example, or maybe you have gotten feedback from someone who works in-house at a for a publisher.
And when we get feedback from those types of people, or even, you know, if you've hired a freelance editor, someone who feels like an expert or they are an expert and they have feedback that you just don't want to use for whatever reason, it can be really hard to navigate that situation because you might doubt yourself, you might doubt your own taste, you might have some feelings of anger toward that person, especially if you have paid them for feedback and it's not what you wanted or what you expected. It's a really tricky situation.
And today I want to give you tools that you can use when you find yourself in that place. For myself as an editor, I know that fiction is subjective. I am very exclusive and very choosy about the genres that I work with because I want to make sure that I am even qualified to be giving feedback. I always do sample edits. They are always free, both so that the client can vet me, but also so that I can make sure that the client is actually someone that I want to work with.
There are very few instances in which I've had someone reach out who I do not want to work with, and you know, generally it is because they are rude, not because of their writing at all, but I am very choosy about who I work with for a reason. I want to make sure that you are going to get the feedback that is most helpful to you. But even in those situations, sometimes I am suggesting a change that doesn't resonate, or I am suggesting a bigger change than was expected. So I know as an editor that I am not always going to make someone happy, at least not happy, you know, when they first open the editorial letter. so I think it's important to have tools that you can use to then unpack that advice. So, first off, I think it is important to say that feedback is not a mandate, even if it feels like it at first, you as the author are the one who has agency to either make that change or not. And you have agency to make that change partially or to make a different change that addresses the same problem or whatever it is.
You are the one who has agency. And I don't think it's always said enough. We talk about how important feedback is and it is so important, but you are ultimately the one who has agency to implement it. That is a little bit trickier when someone is offering you a book deal. You might be in a situation as a writer where someone has said, I love your work, but you need to change XYZ. Otherwise, we are not interested in publishing it. In that scenario, you still have agency, you can negotiate, you can have a conversation, or you can walk away. You may ultimately decide that you are willing to sacrifice that thing or make that change in order to secure the contract, but it is still up to you.
If the book deal is contingent upon you making a change, for me that would probably change the calculus. For you maybe it doesn't. So you know, you don't always have the same level of agency, there may be consequences to exercising that agency. But I'm a freelance editor, so you can do whatever you want with my feedback. You can ignore it all. You can take it all. You can do whatever you want. I am paid either way. Maybe that feels crass to say but it is the truth. I, you know, you are paying me for feedback. I will give it. I will be honest. I will give you my expertise, but then you are free to do what you want with that on the back end because I am not a publisher. I'm not telling you to change XYZ so that I will publish your book. That's not how it works with a freelancer.
All right. Now onto the actual framework. There are five steps that I encourage you to go through if you are in a situation where you get feedback that you do not agree with. And this is going to take you all the way from that initial gut reaction all the way to making a decision about how you're going to move forward. Step number one, I want you to take a break. Step back, step away from the computer. Do not respond to the person giving you feedback right away. Take a moment. And while you are taking that break, just allow yourself to process. Think about it, reflect on it, sleep on it for a night. And you might have a completely different perspective just from having taken that break. And overall, you're just gonna use that time to let the advice marinate. And I don't want you to go to the extent that you are avoiding the follow-up conversation or you know, ignoring that person completely, but just take a moment, take a day, take a night, whatever it is.
And the rule of thumb for knowing that you've taken enough time to process is when you can get past that initial emotional reaction of this is wrong, I hate this feedback, how dare they? Get past that and then try to formulate a specific question about what actually isn't resonating with that feedback. How can you ask them a follow-up question that elicits more understanding? So once you are able to articulate your questions, your concerns, why that feedback didn't resonate, that is when you can then reach out to the person and ask any clarifying questions if that is appropriate. You might be in a situation where you understand their feedback completely, you just don't agree with it. Once you are at the point where you can articulate why you disagree, that's when you're ready to move on to step number two.
All right.Step number two is for you to consider the source of that feedback. I do want to be careful here because I don't want you to ever ignore someone's feedback just because of a demographic marker like their age or their gender or anything like that. However, you do need to consider how well the person who gave you feedback matches up to your target audience. Do they actually read your genre? Do they like your genre?
That I think especially comes into play if you've taken a class that is very general. If that class's instructor hates your genre, never reads your genre, knows nothing about your genre, they might be the best fiction teacher in the world, they might be the best writer in the world, but if they know nothing about your genre or hate it, they're not qualified to give you feedback. And if you get to this step and realize, okay, this person actually does not understand my genre, you can safely ignore what they have to say or modify what they have to say through the lens of your genre, which we'll talk about in the next steps. But I want you to consider: Is this person the right fit for your genre for your story?
And the example that I always like to give is that my work in progress, Daughter of Mist, starts with the main character, Amaya, manipulating a man into marrying her. So that whole first scene is basically a conversation that she has engineered in order to achieve a certain outcome. As I was taking writing classes for that story, and I took many, because that book was all part of my pivot to becoming an editor instead of a writer, but as I was taking writing classes with that story and workshopping it with various people, I often got the feedback from male critique partners that she lacked agency. That she wasn't doing anything. But women who read that first scene said, no, what she's doing is manipulating him. And what I realized was that there was just a gender divide in what was considered active. if you're not watching YouTube, that was in air quotes. male readers did not see manipulation as an action, as agency, female readers did.
And that is not to say that my first scene was perfect. But that particular feedback about her lacking agency, I realized just didn't apply because those readers were bringing in a different set of assumptions. And I knew that my target audience, which is mostly women, men are welcome to read the book as well. But that, you know, particular point of view character I think is especially geared toward women. They are not going to see her as inactive. And that's what matters most. So I can ignore that feedback that she did not have agency in that first scene because it was a particular lens on agency that was falling short and that's where that feedback was coming from. And again, that is not to say that those male reviewers did not have other helpful feedback, that they were not able to, you know, provide other insights that were very helpful, very relevant. It just had to do with their particular lens. And I think the way that they had been socialized to think of agency, that just did not apply to my target audience and the character that I was trying to create.
So that is just one example again, I did not then throw out the rest of their comments, I considered each of their comments on their own merit, but I just noticed a trend that certain reviewers were not equipped to analyze that scene effectively because of how they had been socialized. And that's just reality. And you need to be aware of those things that you might get feedback that just is not coming from the right cultural lens. And once we know that, we can then act accordingly.
All right, the next step is to assess the validity of the feedback.
And to try to do so as objectively as possible, which is not easy, but there are some steps you can take. The first thing that I recommend to assess the validity is to talk about it with a third person, ideally someone who knows your book. So for example, whenever I would get feedback on that manuscript, I could talk about it with my now fiancé because he has read the story, he knows the story, he had given me feedback on the story. And so if I got feedback that I wasn't quite sure about, then I could talk about it with him, bounce ideas off of him. And he's not a writer, so he wasn't necessarily weighing in as an expert, but he was weighing in as someone knowledgeable about my story, my goals, and just me as a person. And he was just there to be a sounding board, which is invaluable. So even if your family and friends are not equipped to give you feedback, they can be your emotional support, which is just as important. The second thing that you can do to assess validity is to play devil's advocate for yourself. And the question that I love to use in this scenario is just to explore what would it mean if they were right? Sit down and really brainstorm what would my story look like if they were correct about this problem, if I took their suggestion and really fully implemented it. What would happen to this book? Would it be better? Would it be worse?
And the real value of that question is that it might help you realize that even if you don't agree with exactly what they said, there might be some merit there. Maybe they have accurately identified a problem. They just misdiagnosed the cause. So maybe they said like you don't have enough conflict. But really you realize that what they're pointing out is that the conflict just wasn't coming across in the right way. It needed higher stakes, it needed more interiority to really be developed, or whatever it is. So when you sit down and think about what it would look like if they were right, you might figure out that you're misinterpreting their feedback, or maybe there is just a different lens that is correct or makes that feedback useful. So really think about it. Try to be as objective as possible because you might surprise yourself when you start thinking about the version of your book that would come from implementing their feedback without questioning it.
And then finally, I also recommend looking for trends across feedback. So if you've gotten feedback from multiple people, even if you disagree with it, if five people have told you the same exact thing, that is probably a sign that they are right, even if you don't want to face it. Again, it might be a misdiagnosis. They might be saying there's no conflict. You realize there is conflict, you just didn't actually communicate it, or you did not communicate the stakes, or you did not do XYZ. So I would be really careful to look for trends. I think this way it's also helpful to get feedback from multiple people so that you can look for those trends. That doesn't need to mean five paid editors. that could mean a beta reader, meaning someone having someone in your family read it and then also having an editor, and you can take all that together and figure out, okay, what's going on. Not necessarily all at the same time, but I do think it is helpful to have at least a couple of perspectives along the way.
So, overall, your goal here is to assess: is this feedback valid? And the answer to that question might be no. You might sit down with someone else and they say, no, that person is bonkers. We can throw that feedback out. Or you might ask that question of yourself, playing devil's advocate, and realize actually that version of my story would be horrible. That's okay. The goal is not to say, like, you have to take that feedback. My goal with these five steps is not to get you to accept that feedback in some fashion.
At any point in this process, you might realize that feedback is totally invalid. And another example that I like to use is for the same project I submitted to a literary agent. It was an opportunity through a course that I took to submit to a literary agent for feedback. And she essentially gave me feedback about you know, what if your characters were all dead and they weren't just traveling through a portal? It's like really they were going into the afterlife. first off, I think that feedback was just inappropriate.
I don't think that any editor or agent should suggest changes that will fundamentally change the premise of the story. In this case, my characters are traveling through a wall that has dead spirits living in it, but there is no implication that they are, you know, not alive when they pass through that portal. Obviously there's a lot more to the world building here. but I think first off, I do want to say that that was just an inappropriate suggestion. I am not going to tell you the name of that agent or anything else about them. You know everything else aside, I I you know, they are a professional, they have clients who are very, very happy and successful. So I am not going to dig on that. But in that particular situation, I don't know where that suggestion came from. maybe they just got too excited and the idea popped into their head. I don't know. But I I do think that generally speaking, we as professionals who give feedback to writers should try to honor the premise of the story, especially because this was like a 30-minute phone call and she had only read my first 10 pages in query letters. So like I don't know where that suggestion came from. It was inappropriate. And I just disregarded it completely because there was no version of my story where the main characters were going to be dead and traveling into the afterlife. That just was not the premise of my story at all. To make it the premise, I would have to completely rewrite everything, fundamentally change the nature of my world, and it just didn't make sense for what I was trying to do.
Again, I don't know what was going on with that particular agent in that particular situation. Whether or not they even read my materials carefully is a whole other situation. But if you get a suggestion like that, just ignore it. Ignore it. This is your permission, just ignore it and don't even worry about ignoring it. I just in that story, I laughed, I showed it to my fiance, and I moved on with my life. And that was the end of it. And now I pull that story out to tell writers that you have agency and you get to ignore suggestions that don't fit. All right. That was a bit of a tangent. Okay. On to step four.
The fourth step for evaluating feedback that you are not sure about is to separate the diagnosis and the cure. So if someone has presented a problem to you, and that's what a lot of feedback is, is pointing out something that is not yet quite that is not yet working, those people are often going to give you a suggested solution. And that is oftentimes where feedback goes wrong, especially when we're talking about people who are not professional editors, who are not professionals at giving feedback to writers. They might have a suggestion that makes total sense in their head but just does not fit what is in your head. And I would say this happens for professional editors as well. You know, especially with you know smaller aspects or things like that. Or if you're planning a series, we might not know exactly where you're planning to take a certain element. So even for editorial work, I always try to give multiple suggestions and talk about the different ramifications of each. But ultimately, and I say this in every single one of my editorial letters, my feedback is a starting point. It is meant to kickstart new ideas and get you brainstorming, but you do not have to implement any specific solution that I have proposed. Again, it's a starting point. I generally think that I am correct about the diagnosis I'm making, but the cure is up to you, and the cure is where your creativity comes back in.
So let's say someone has said your pacing is slow, you should add another subplot. Totally random example. I'm not saying that adding a subplot is the cure to pacing issues, but let's say that that was their suggestion. There are different ways that you can fix pacing. You do not have to just add a subplot. That is not your only option. There are other things you could do. You could take one conflict and make it more intense. You could add a scene where something related to that one conflict goes wrong. You could just make the conflict more meaningful by adding another layer to the stakes. Or maybe you take two conflicts that were completely separate in the beginning and you actually connect them so that they are feeding off each other, amplifying each other, and making things worse.
That is all going to contribute to the sense of pacing. And then there are other things you can do. You make your scenes shorter. You could take out a subplot. That could help your pacing. It really depends on your unique situation. And anytime someone is giving feedback, they do not know your story as well as you do. So you might have a completely different idea for addressing that feedback. You're going to get at the same problem just in a different way. So we can pull those two things apart. You have the problem that this person has diagnosed, you have the cure that they have suggested. You can swap in a different fix.
There are often infinite options. Obviously some of them are going to fit better or worse depending on what you're trying to do, what type of story you're writing. But just because someone has accurately diagnosed a problem in your story does not mean they have given you the right fix or suggested the right fix. And oftentimes they won't. But as a writer, don’t let that inappropriate or not quite perfect solution deter you from taking their feedback on the problem itself. Because again, they are very likely right that there is a problem. They were just wrong about how to fix it. So do not ignore the problem or just say, like, well, I don't like their suggestion. So clearly there's nothing wrong with my story, because that was probably not the case. There probably is something there that needs to be addressed.
Again, we want to go through those other steps and make sure that we are assessing all aspects of the feedback. But just because you don't like this suggestion doesn't mean that they are not right. another example from the same story, Daughter of Mist. Daughter of Mist got workshopped so many times with feedback from so many different people because I've worked on the story for a long time. is still a work in progress because obviously I've been focused on helping other writers really primarily for the last four years now that I've been in business. So way back in gosh, was this 2021? So almost five years ago, which is wild to think about, I got feedback from the late David Farland in the last writing class that he taught before he passed away. And when I got feedback from him, he said that my main character lacked a specific goal. And that was making that first scene less tense than it could have been. And essentially, like I said earlier, the main character at the beginning of the story is trying to manipulate a man into marrying her. But in the original version of that story there was no man. She was just trying to get someone to marry her. And specifically in that first scene, she was praying to her ancestors, asking them to intervene and essentially send her a man. it's more complicated than that, it makes sense in the context of the world, but it was very intangible. And he basically said, you know, she needs to be trying to marry a specific person so that readers have a tangible goal to latch onto at the beginning of the story.
And my initial reaction was anger. I was like, there is no way that I'm going to put a man into the story. Because in my mind, that wasn't the point. Marrying was a means to an end. It was not about love. It was not about being with a specific person. And I wanted that to be reflected in the story. And so my initial reaction was like, there's no way. Then I took a step back and I thought about it and I realized that he had diagnosed the problem accurately. Her goal needed to be tangible. We needed a specific person to make that scene feel more active and engaging and to actually let readers know that there is a specific goal she's going after. However, that didn't mean that she needed to be marrying that man for love. And I think that's so clear in the version I created later that she's manipulating him. She doesn't really care about marrying this specific person. She wants what marriage is going to give her in the context of the world and the conflict in that story. So again, the problem diagnosed was absolutely correct. But I didn't need to turn it into a love story. I didn't need to have her, you know, want to marry this person for any other reason than the ones that are appropriate to the story that I'm trying to tell. So it became a scene of manipulation where she is manipulating one specific man into marrying her rather than just praying to the ancestors to give her someone. So again, oftentimes the problem diagnosis is correct.
The exact solution might not be, or you know, in that case, really I was taking his suggestion just in a slightly modified way than what he might have been thinking about. but usually there is going to be some validity to the problem identified, even if the way you go about solving it is creative and unique to you and your story. All right, and that brings us to the final step.
Step five of dealing with feedback that you do not agree with is to make a decision.
And this is where you are going to either accept that feedback in some form, even if it's modified, even if you don't take their suggested fix, you are going to take that feedback and accept it and use it, implement it in your story, or you are going to reject it and you are going to move on. If you decide to accept it, just remember you can always revert back if you need to. Make copies of your drafts. Do not make big revisions without saving a copy of the original. you know, however you would like to organize that in word in dabble in whatever you're using.
Make a copy, make the change, move on with your life. and then you know, if it doesn't make the story stronger, you can revert back. Then if you are going to reject the feedback, just do that. Do it confidently, do it without apology, and then move on. And I will also say, you don't need to tell the person that you rejected their feedback. For example, that agent who told me that my character should be dead, which made no sense, I did not tell her that. I smiled and nodded and I moved on with my life, and I quietly, again, you know, did not take that feedback but I did not tell her that. I have never publicly said who that was. I never will, because that would be unprofessional and it would be unkind. So you do not need to go back to a beta reader or friend and say, your feedback was trash. I am not using any of it. There might be a circumstance in which you need to have a gentle conversation with someone if they are charging for it and their feedback is really wildly off base. But even then, you know, I'm…just be kind about it and also recognize that fiction is subjective. So they could be a hundred percent right and also wrong at the same time because they might be right based on their interpretation of the genre, your goals, etc., and just wrong about how exactly you want to shape your story.
So it’s not to say that the person who gives you feedback you don't agree with is an idiot or unqualified or anything like that. It's just that fiction is subjective. And because it is a creative pursuit, there are usually multiple ways to solve one problem. And just because someone suggested the wrong one doesn't mean that they are not going to be right about other things. So treat someone the way you would want to be treated if you gave someone feedback that did not land, and just go from there.
And I will even say that goes for professional editors. You don't need to tell us if you've taken or rejected our feedback. you can, I suppose, if you want to, you know, give feedback on the process. But again, just be kind. Obviously, as an editor, I try my best to give you feedback that is helpful. I ask questions through surveys at the beginning. If I have questions as we go through the process, I will ask them. But again, I am not trying to be a hundred percent correct about both the diagnosis and the fix. I do want to be correct about the diagnosis. That is kind of the baseline. Then I give you my best suggestions based on your goals, my interpretation of your story, my knowledge of the genre, my expertise on writing.
I will give you multiple suggestions where I can based on different impacts you might want to have or things that you are deciding between. But as I always say, it is a starting point, it is not a mandate. You might have an idea spark based on that feedback, the diagnosis of the problem. And it's an idea that I would never in a million years have come up with. And I have had so many times when a writer has come back for revision evaluation and they said, Well, I didn't take your fix, but I did XYZ instead. And I'm like, amazing. It's perfect. I wouldn't have thought of it and it's brilliant. Because editing feedback, it is always a partnership.
I said this at the beginning: feedback is not a mandate. You as the author have agency, but you as the author also have the creative power to take our feedback, run with it, make it 10 times better with your own imagination because again, you are the expert on your story. You know more than anyone else. And that is going to give you the power to take our feedback and create solutions that we could not have envisioned because this is your book, not ours. As much as we may love your projects and want to see them be successful, ultimately it is your story. And that is special. And that means that you are going to be able to come up with solutions to the problems we that we address that we would not have thought of on our own. So with that
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If it helped you think about what to do with feedback that doesn't resonate, please, please, please share this episode with a friend. Share about it on social media. It is an honor. Anytime I'm tagged in your stories or your posts or anything else, I just love to see this show being shared because I want it to help as many writers as possible. All right. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. Thank you so much for listening and keep writing, keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya!
