Critique = Afraid

So for anyone who writes a book and gets it critiqued know's what to expect. I want to get my book critiqued by the chapter but after I see all the mistakes, notes, and so on and so fourth I feel highly discouraged.

How do I prevent myself from feeling discouraged from the critiques.

 

All you have to be is better than yesterday.

 

Has this actually happened to you, or are you afraid of it happening?

Everybody comes into this writing lark with a certain degree of expertise, ranging from near zero to damn good. While actual perfection isn't a goal you'll ever reach, you'll be aiming for it. So anything that other people can say to help you is a good thing. Negative feedback just means you need to go back to your work and correct the mistakes—if you agree that they ARE mistakes. People who give feedback aren't perfect either.

I know that when betas pointed out flaws in my story, I got really excited. Hey! Why didn't I see that? Of course, they're right ...now let me see. How do I fix this? They'd caught stuff that I'd missed. After dealing with their feedback, I knew my story was better than it had been before. And then I got more betas, and discovered more flaws, and kept chipping away at them.

I also had readers who simply didn't get into my story at all. That wasn't so much discouraging as enlightening. They didn't point out flaws so much as let on the story didn't work for them. That would have been discouraging if it was the only response I got, but it wasn't. The trick is to improve in every way you can, but also realise that no matter what you do, some people won't like it.

When it comes to receiving feedback, it's a good idea to lock your ego in a cupboard. Try to look at your story as if somebody else had written it. Your goal is to fix mistakes. If you have to go away to learn more, in order to do that, then fair enough.

If your grammar, punctuation and spelling is on the bad side, then break the task down into small bits and learn how to correct the mistakes you've been making. Don't try to do too much at one time. Tackle the problems one by one. Learn how to use a comma, and when not to—then go through your story and correct the times people pointed out the mistakes. If you tend to sprinkle apostrophes into every word ending in 's,' you need to learn why this is not correct. It's not hard, if you take the time out to correct the mistakes you're habitually making—one at a time.

Learn how to punctuate dialogue and set it up so people can follow it—go through your MS and correct all the dialogue. Learn about head-hopping, and how to avoid it if you need to—and go through the MS and deal with the instances where you jumped POV. Learn about adjectives and adverbs, and become aware of the pitfalls of using too many at one time. Take some time to learn new vocabulary as well ...just a few words at a time. Pick a few new words from the dictionary and practice using them in sentences, so they become familiar tools. And etc.

It's like cleaning out a messy room. You can be discouraged by the scale of the mess, but the way to tackle it is to start somewhere, and just keep putting things away in their proper places, throwing away the trash, etc. And then, when everything is neat again, you take out the duster, or if the mess has been filthy as well as untidy, you get out the cleaning fluids, rags, etc. And once the surfaces are clean, you get out the hoover and clear the floor.

We all start somewhere, don't we? The biggest mistake and source of disappointment that you can create for yourself is assuming (or hoping) that your writing is perfect, right out of the gate. Then when somebody criticises it, you feel very upset. Just be ready to deal with imperfect writing, and you'll feel energised by criticism, not deflated by it.

 

Remind yourself that every writer gets negative reviews, it's part of the business Go to Amazon and read the one-star reviews for bestsellers. People would find fault with anything. Then try to see the negative criticism in good light - after all, those critics are simply finding the mistakes you overlooked. And that saves time when you revise . Its no different than when MS Word underlines your typos. And just the same, you have the right to agree with your critics or ignore them, just like you should do with your text editing software.

 

This happened to me as well, more often than I like to admit. Two thoughts:

1. As others have said: Remind yourself that they tell you what they think because they want to help you
2. Skim the review, lock onto the positives, and skim the negatives (even if there's loads of stuff), and go back after a day when you've had a chance to digest the skimmed negative. By then you'll have settled, and reconciled it with bullet point 1

 

Take a good hard look at books by top authors. They make many mistakes also. Your best hope is to reduce the frequency and severity of mistakes to be on the same par as these exalted writers.

Sharpen your own eyes to recognize the flaws that others ferret out, and your writing will improve vastly.

Some of the most valuable critiques I've received were ones with a hostile intent. Try to read the comments dispassionately, and to evaluate whether there is a legitimate point behind each. If misinterpretation of your meaning is possible, you can often write the offending passage more clearly.

 

Some people honestly aren't great at critique. I'm reminded of a twitter thread I saw recently -- I can't seem to scare it up at the moment, but the gist is that the point of critique is to help the other person improve, and if all you do is make them feel bad about themself and their writing, then you've failed. So on the one hand, know that if a critique makes you feel discouraged, it could be bullshit. On the other hand, it's also really, really easy to have your ego hurt by even a very well-meaning, gentle crit, especially if you're not used to receiving them at all. An outside perspective can be useful -- you can ask a friend, "Hey, is it just me, or is this person's wording rude/confrontational in this context?" (Important: make it a friend who's going to be honest with you and not just take your side to be supportive )

But I think that 'tough love' is for people that you love -- not people you barely know who've made themselves vulnerable to you. It's easy to be oversensitive when it comes to this stuff, but it's also not that hard to phrase our crits in a way that's kind and encouraging. If someone makes you feel like writing isn't worth it because it's too complicated and too hard with their crits, I think that burden is on them, not you.

That said:

Having people critically read your writing can feel really vulnerable and getting defensive is a natural reaction. I started posting writing online for people to read at like thirteen, so you can imagine the emotional stability involved for me, there But even as an adult, it takes time and exposure to build up the thick skin that's required to do this stuff a lot. You could try step into it slowly by having people who are invested in you as a person read things (friends, family), because they're more likely to consider your feelings -- possibly to the point of it being useless as a critique. You definitely want to seek out readers who are already interested in your genre. I write a lot of horror and science fiction, for instance, and while my brother is a sf guy and I'll occasionally offer to send him some of that, he doesn't care about horror, so I'm not going to open myself up to the inevitable "meh" reaction (or give him an uninteresting reading experience that he feels pressured to complete and be nice about just because I'm his sibling!).

Personally, though -- and this is keeping in mind the whole poorly-socialized 13 y/o experience -- I think it's best to just jump in. Start building up that thick skin. A lot of the posters on here are lovely folks and, keep in mind, are also all writers who presumably follow the golden rule. We all know this shit can be nerve-wracking. Know that no one on here is critiquing in bad faith. No one is trying to be nasty. Take a step back and remind yourself of that when things trend discouraging: everyone is trying to help. That's the point of the exercise -- it's a communal effort to improve. No one wants to see you fail.

 

It may take years.

It did for me, especially when the critics were heartless b******s. Some people evidently feel that harsh criticism is more effective than simple advice. I don't, even years after it was used on me and others I knew. I still believe in the power of cool logic.

 

As with anything, the more you do it the easier it becomes.

The things I post here for critique (so far, anyway) are things I've come up with on the spur of the moment. I put my best effort in, but they aren't the projects that are near and dear to my heart. That makes it easier to take criticism. Hopefully by the time I do get around to posting something I really care about, I'll have developed the skill of taking criticism enough that the heightened emotional stakes don't interfere.

Or you could just work on something for so long that you get completely sick and tired of it, and you don't care what anybody says about it one way or the other. That seems to be the strategy I'm slowly backing into...

 

I recently critiqued someone's story in a shared Google doc where I could see other critiquers' comments. They were ALL positive, and I started feeling uneasy than my criticisms would come as a shock. I spoke to the author about it, and she told me she deals with all the negative comments (corrections etc), deletes those comments from the doc, and leaves the positives for when she needs a pick-me-up. I thought that was quite a good idea.

A good critiquer will be pointing out positives as well as negatives. I don't think I've ever read a manuscript, no matter how much I disliked it, where I couldn't say ANYTHING truthfully positive. I agree with Izzy here:

I think there's a thread on this forum somewhere from me, a couple of years ago, also terrified of putting up my work for critique for the first time. I was all shaky and sweaty when I posted it, and terrified of reading the first reply. These days, I'm disappointed when I only get praise, and I tend to skip over the nice things critiquers say: not because I'm ungrateful, but because the criticism is so much more helpful for me as a writer. I think most of us reach that stage.

 

I haven't posted anything for critique yet, but I've had negative reviews from outside of here and what I do is look at it like a job: the criticisms can help me grow. However, if someone's highly rude and overly nitpicky then I ignore them. Just because you have access to a keyboard doesn't mean you have to be rude.

 

Not just shilling for the site's rules, but go out and give some critiques yourself. Tell people what you didn't like about their work, tell them where you think they made mistakes. Now look at how hard it can be to tell someone that their work isn't doing it for you without sounding rude or dismissive, then remember that anyone who pops onto your story thread is going through the same thing. Sometimes it may sound harsh, but real hardcore assholes don't tend to last long around here. Everyone who has taken the time to read your work then more time to tell you what they did or didn't like about it did it with the motivation to help make your story better.

 

^^^
This. You don't want indifference, or praise. Indifference means someone doesn't care about it. Praise doesn't help you improve.

You can tell when people genuinely want to help you make your work better, and 90-95% of the people here fall under that category.

 

Yeah, it's soul-destroying to receive negative feedback, but I think if you want to be a writer, it's just one more thing to get used to because once your novel is out there, it's out there. Instead of private comments in your doc file or a few replies in the Workshop, whatever opinions your readers have appear on the Amazon page for everyone to see, and they can say mean, asshole-ish things, and you just have to deal. In this light, the negative comments I get from betas don't feel quite so daunting cos at least I can still make changes and improve the book (well, I can after self-publishing but it feels a bit wrong).

I try to approach the comments rationally, with the sole purpose of writing the best novel I can as my goal. Put the book before my emotions and precious ego, so to speak. At the same time, I do want to have fun while writing, so if the comments get me super super down, I take a break and remind myself that I'm not being criticized of my ability to perform brain surgery - something where no fuck-ups are allowed - so it's not the end of the world if that bit kinda sucked or the beta didn't (imo) "get" something I wrote.

It's also easier to deal with critique if you also critique other people's works. For one, you'll see you're not the only one whose metaphors are a mixed bag, whose plot drags on like a two-legged hippo, whose similes are as worn and repetitive as a broken record etc. etc. because most of us have those moments when we go "ah fuck it, can't think of anything clever, I'll just put this here and move on" or we've watched too much anime and suddenly all our characters speak so unnaturally it makes your reader wonder if the big twist of the story is that every character turns out to be a human-impersonating robot built by aliens.

Over the course of my little journey to learn to write fiction, I've felt scared, embarrassed, angry, frustrated, and depressed more times than I can count because of critique - and I think that's normal. I've also learned to stow those emotions away, grow a hard shell, and nurse my wounds with low-sugar ice cream, so I guess what I'm saying is that it will get easier to deal with critique, trust me.

Anyway, off to read a new batch of undoubtedly scathing feedback...

 

If someone critiques your work, that means they think it's worth working to improve. Obviously, no one can know what their book is like reading it for the first time. So if anyone reads it and thinks, "This is a good start, and it's worth putting time into improving it," that's a GREAT thing.

Specific critiques are insight into your readers' minds. What they tell you to change doesn't mean that what you wrote is bad, it means that it's not coming across the way you thought it would. Everyone who reads it in the future will understand it better and enjoy it more because you took the time to understand how people read it.

That doesn't mean it will be easy, of course. Just keep reminding yourself that you're halfway through the process, and your book is so worth it. Every great writer has survived the critique process, and so will you!

 

You've got to separate when it's just a bad scene, and you being a bad writer. I think I'm a pretty good writer, but I still get scathing remarks, moments when my reader didn't get what I wrote or why I did it, awkward sentences. In fact, I keep a file of bad writing from my MS and I regularly share things from it with my friends and laugh about it together I'm actually pretty talented when it comes to accidental innuendos lol. Being confident and believing you write well doesn't mean you make no mistakes or not taking critique - but it takes a confident and, I'd argue, a good writer to take critique. Because the writer who never takes critique is doomed before they've ever started.

What I've learnt about critique is that you need to be kind to yourself. Just because this scene sucked doesn't mean the whole story sucks. Just because the skill to write is hasn't quite got there doesn't mean the story idea itself sucks. Just because you suck now doesn't mean you're gonna suck forever. As long as you're improving, that's all that matters. The goal is to improve. Not to be perfect, not even to write well per se. Just improve. I say I'm a good writer but you think that was always the case? I actually have a snippet I wrote back when I was 14 that I like to read to any who would listen because every time I look at it, I burst out laughing, it's that bad, but it was written with all seriousness. Point is, it's ok if you're not great yet - the key word being: yet. Just keep going.

Another way of being kind to yourself - choose your critics wisely. While it is true that every reader can have something valuable to contribute and even the most scathing criticism likely holds some truth that is worth considering - while all this is true, I don't subscribe to the mindset of: So I have to listen to them all and pay attention to them all and hold everyone's comments to equal regard.

If someone isn't respectful, if someone isn't sensitive to your book, I see no reason why you have to endure their negativity. It doesn't make their comments untrue - it just means there are gentler ways to say something and I don't see why I shouldn't choose someone with a better approach. Critique is only helpful for as long as it builds you up. If it starts becoming soul-crushing, then I think the critic is probably taking the wrong approach, or sometimes chemistry just isn't right. It's best to get someone who can see what you're trying to achieve and who will help you achieve that vision - rather than impose their vision on your writing. They can go write their own book if that's the case! You need to be smart about who you go to. You need to be discerning as to when a critic is trying to force their vision on you and when it's sound advice.

 

I agree it can be very discouraging. For me, it just comes down to taking it line by line and sorting through what I agree with and what I don't agree with. There are times when I get feedback that is discouraging because it seems my story was taken far out of context or just simply misunderstood. This takes me longer to unravel since I have to figure out if I wrote the story in a confusing way, or if the person giving the critique just came at it from a very different viewpoint (which is also helpful to know since this is bound to happen with readers at large!). If I flat out disagree with feedback, I just ignore it, or I come back to it later when I have a more open mind about the story. It's always your story, no matter what feedback you get, so you have to feel comfortable with the end product!