Welcome to the Writing with Coach McCoach Podcast. A podcast for busy writers who want to cut through the fluff with exact strategies for launching their author career. I'm Katie McCoach, your book coach, guide, unqualified therapist, and cheerleader. Since 2012, I've helped hundreds of writers become authors, gain confidence, and grow their best stories yet. Let's do the same for you. This is the Writing with Coach McCoach Podcast.
Welcome to another episode of Writing with Coach McCoach. This is episode 20. How the F do you apply feedback you receive? How do you sort through the feedback? How do you know what to keep, what to ignore, what to go forward with? Today that's what we're going to talk about.
This is part of our What the F is constructive criticism and how do you deal with it series. Our first episode in the series, which is episode 18 of the podcast, we're talking about what constructive criticism is and who you're bound to receive it from and how to be prepared for that, essentially.
Our next episode in the series, that was episode 19, which was just last week's, that is about how do you not lose your shit when you get feedback?
How do you handle it? Because it can be very triggering and personal and a lot of writers, I don't know about you, but tend to internalize things.
I definitely know that feeling well. And so that episode, I give you 10 rules for how to handle getting feedback, no matter what type of feedback it is or no matter where you get it from.
But today I want to talk about how do you even use the feedback that you get? So okay, great. You're used to getting feedback. You understand the importance of it. You understand the value of it. And now you're ready to use it to grow your writing, to become the best writer you can be. But how do you even do that? Because if you have ever experienced getting feedback, especially in, let's say like a critique group setting, it can be really difficult to make sense of because you'll have so many voices and it's hard to know what to listen to, what not to listen to and how to move
forward. And then how do you even start putting it into your book in the first place? So we're going to first talk about different ways to make the decision on what feedback is even worth keeping and considering applying to your work. And then we'll talk about how you can begin to apply the feedback.
So first of all, here are my tips for when you receive feedback. Last episode, if you listen to it, you will have heard that sometimes in critique groups, the experience is that you kind of have to just like sit silently while people give a bunch of feedback and you can't defend it and you can't say anything. This is a practice in patience and also practice in really taking yourself out of the equation so you can see what people are saying about what's on the page versus what you think you put on the page. And almost every writer at some point will have thought they put certain things in the book and they'll find out that the readers are not picking that up. A lot of times writers are like, I put that in there like or I thought it was obvious, you know, that's how the character is. And your readers come back and say, I would have never guessed that. A lot of times we just tend to think that we have written things in there, but they're just not hitting the reader in the same way we think they are. They're not coming across to the reader in the same way. And that can be a general thing that happens no matter who your reader is. Of course there are times, and I talked about this last episode of when your readers have certain biases or preferences and stuff. So sometimes you can't avoid what someone picks up from a book, but you can do your best if especially a lot of people are saying, I didn't understand this, then there's something to consider.
So here is what I suggest as you get feedback. The first time, you know, as you're listening to feedback, just listen and take it in. This is really important because you have to be able to hear what people are saying. You have to be able to understand what they're getting out of the story versus what you think you're giving them. I think that this can be really difficult because we want to defend or explain right away, but it's a good practice if you're forced to not be able to do that so that you can really try to see not only where someone is coming up with something, you're like, oh, I can't believe you got that, but also as you listen to their reasoning or what pieces of the story triggered that thought, you can start to unravel how they got there, even if it's not clear right away. So that's my first thing. I really want to make sure that you accept that you're getting feedback and you listen to it.
If this is feedback, you're like, I did not ask for it, then I'm going to tell you if you did not ask for feedback and you received it anyway, and you did not expect it in any way, you didn't want it in any way, and it was still given to you, and the best example is getting a reader review. Your book's already published and someone gives a review. That's not necessarily for you at this point. Yes, there are times when you can learn from it if you wish, but it's very valid, I think, at times to say, no, I didn't ask for it at this time. What I asked for was feedback before the book got published, but if you're in a position where you're given feedback you didn't ask for, I'm going to give you some permission to not have to listen to it. If you didn't ask for it, do you need to listen to it? I don't think so. You didn't put yourself in a position to say, I want to know what's going on here, help me. If you're getting especially negative feedback that you did not ask for, not that you asked for negative feedback, but if you're getting negative feedback that is unprompted, the only way I can think of why this could be valid is if you did something in your book that offends certain readers and didn't do the proper work ahead of time to make sure you avoided that, that would be something where that's valid to have people say and to bring your awareness of. However, if it's just feedback on the writing and the story and you did not put yourself in a position to get that feedback, then do you need it? The question is, are you going to gain something from listening to it? And if you feel that you are and you want to approach it, you want to listen to it, then sure, go for it.
That's just one thing I just wanted to preface that with saying, let's talk about the feedback when you ask for it. Let's talk about the feedback when you have put yourself in the position to get it in the first place. So there are so many forms where this could be the case. You could be in a critique group and you could be asking your critique group for feedback. Some critique groups will have it where you read your work out loud and people will go around the circle and give feedback. Maybe it's something where you sent them pages ahead of time, now we show up and do a review where they give feedback verbal and then written. That's what it was like when I was in writing courses in college, getting my creative writing degree. It was that experience where people would read the work, you would email it to everyone, they would read it, they'd print it out, and then they would show up and they would start talking about it. And you would sit there quietly while everyone started talking. And they would ask questions and you couldn't answer, you had to just wait. And then you were usually given a couple minutes to touch on things. And then you would receive some written things too, if everyone would basically hand you their packets of your work with any notes they added to it too.
There are times where you might submit your work into a contest. And this is great for unpublished manuscripts. Contests can be a great way to get general feedback. So there's a lot of beauty and pain in getting anonymous feedback from judges. Judges are usually other readers, other writers. You don't know who's judging and they kind of already have a rubric, like they'll give you a scoring, maybe a rating scale. Sometimes they'll add some comments, which are helpful. So this can be kind of harder to receive at times because with that anonymous factor, sometimes people don't sugarcoat things. They just kind of straight up will say what they think. They might even just have opinions and not feedback where they're really trying to help. They might just be like, I didn't like this. So sometimes it can be really unuseful. But there are other times where it can be really helpful because if you have five judges and these anonymous judges all gave the same rating on the chemistry between the characters and they all said it was like a three, you're like, okay, well, there's clearly something that's not working here that I need to work on. You know, so that can be where it can be really nice to get some anonymous feedback, especially when it's kind of maybe more in a rubric. So you can say, am I hitting these points?
What's the general consensus?
You will get feedback from an editor when you're hiring an editor and they give you feedback. I mean, you asked for it, right? And the great thing about editors almost all the time, unless you end up with someone crappy and hopefully you can try to figure that out ahead of time. For the most part, editors, they gain nothing out of crapping on you. So what is the point if I just am like, I mean, this sucks and you should start over. That doesn't help you and also that gives me nothing out of it. As an editor, the reason I do this is because I want to see these stories just freaking sing. I want to see how amazing they can be. I know the potential. I'll see a story, I'll read an early draft, I can see the vision and the potential and I am so excited when I get that final draft and I'm like, oh my gosh, this author killed it. So I don't get anything out of crapping on your work.
That doesn't really help me. My whole, the whole existence of me as a developmental editor, as a book coach is to help you write the best possible story. And not only that, but I'm here to help you write the story that's your vision, not what I wish I was, if I were to write it, it would be.
No, I take myself out of the equation. This is about you. I'm in your corner. So I say that because when you get editorial feedback, you know, professional level editing feedback that is some of the best feedback to get because the editor is there for you. That's what they're doing.
They're trying to make you succeed and they're giving you everything they can to help with that. So if you get feedback that you really question with an editor, I encourage you to really think it through. I'm going to get into some steps, but I encourage you to consider what about their feedback
you don't like, because remember, like I said, they're really trying to help you write the best version of this story and be the best writer you can be.
So you'll get feedback from editors, you'll get feedback from beta readers. So these are people who you'll send your work to. They're not critique groups or critique partners. A critique group and partner is going to be other writers. These are people who are also writing. And a lot of times you'll exchange your work for free, exchange the feedback. So it's a really good practice and also you learning how to give feedback. And that's another episode I'll talk about all these great tools for how to make sure you can give really strong feedback. And I think it's super valuable in your career to be able to give feedback because it helps you in the end, because then you start to see the other side when you get it. It helps you as you get feedback. You're like, oh yeah, like I know what they mean or I understand how they're trying to phrase that because I've been there.
I've tried to phrase that too. Or you see something and someone else's work and you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even notice that I do that too.
And I will say one side note. The really cool thing about critique groups where you read your work out loud is you will always find something that you're like, oh, I didn't like that. So it'll be for your own work. So when you are the one who you're reading your work, I used to always have this happen where I'm like, this is a great chapter. I'm so happy. And then I would read it out loud to the group and I find myself like, oh, I'm bored.
Can we move on? Like, I'm bored as I'm reading stuff out loud. And I just want to get to the good part. And even that act alone would alert me to something to consider and be like, okay, I was bored myself reading this. I don't want to read this. What can I do? How do I make it better? So anyway, the act of reading your work out loud is very great. And it's great to do in front of people who are listening to because you can find out
what's engaging, what's not. And you get immediate feedback.
So beta readers are going to be readers, people who read widely. They might also be writers. But really, they're going to be people who really know the genre, the tropes, expectations. And you want beta readers who are really familiar with your genre. You want them to be kind of basically your target audience. Those are going to be the best beta readers because you're going to get them the most useful advice. And then you also could hire a sensitivity reader, those folks you pay. And they are usually someone who shares an identity, typically a marginalized identity with someone in your story. And the person, the reader is there to say if you're doing things that are offensive or incorrect in your story, so that you're aware and you know how to change it. Again, I'm going to talk about that stuff more later. But those are some of the different types of feedback.
So when you're asking for feedback, you're saying, like, help me write better. And most people are going to, in good faith, do that. Not everyone will. And I know that many people have been in critique groups and it's turned them off of them forever. And so I gave you tips, right, on how to not lose your shit last week. But today I want to talk about how to go through that feedback and how to know when you're okay to ignore it and not. So what I want you to do is first, when you get some feedback, after you've listened to it and you've soaked it in, you've considered it, I had you write questions, anything that pops in your mind. That's going to be one thing I want you to do. I want you to pop any question that comes to your mind as you hear or read any feedback. Write down your question and just make a list of all your questions and just have them kind of sit there. And because if you ever feel like I need clarity on this, I don't relate to this, I don't understand, or it makes you think of something, write down anything that comes to your mind, even things that you're like, I'm just going to ignore that. I want you to write that down and write down your initial feelings and feedback without making decisions yet. I just want you to write down anything that comes to mind, inspiration, anything without
you actually deciding what you're doing with the feedback. First, just let your brain go through all of those initial responses and put them down
on paper. That way you have more room for what's to come next.
What I want you to do next is I want you to make two lists. You're going to hate me for this probably. One list is your yes list. I totally relate to this. This is the stuff that you heard and you're like, oh, duh. Like oh yes, why didn't I think of that? Of course, that's exactly what I meant to do. That's your list. So if you are, you have the feedback in front of you, you know, literally in a document, you can copy and paste, put it in the yes list. Or if you have stuff that you heard and you're jotting it down, just put that all right, everything in the yes list that you immediately said yes to or you agreed with and it felt very natural. You're like, duh, that's your yes list.
And then everything else is the other list. You can call it your maybe list. You can call it your what the fuck list. You can call it whatever. Just anything else that wasn't 100% a yes. And here's why you hate me. I'm not letting you make a no list at this time. At this point, you either have yes and maybes or yes and what the fucks. But there is no no. There is no list of immediate no's at this point because I'm going to help you get through to work on that and create those lists. The reason I say there's no no is because sometimes the feedback we want to fight the most is actually the stuff we need to hear the most. What we hate, what we want the least is what we need the most of. And we don't normally want to admit that. And so that's why I'm kind of forcing you to let your brain not tell it no immediately because there might be something in there that is super essential for you to listen to that you don't want to. Your defense mechanisms, everything's coming up and you're like, I don't relate to that. I don't understand that comment. No. Like, just your gut is just like, no. Like, fuck what that person said. I don't want it. There's probably something there. The more angered you are by a comment, more likely there's some nugget that is really useful for you. Now I'm not saying it means you actually have to use that advice. I'm not saying that advice is right. What I'm saying is there's probably a nugget of something you need to learn that that advice is giving you. So anything you have a no for, I really need you to not say no right away. So those are your three things so far. You need to create a couple lists. A yes list, that's your totally, you love it, it relates. Then you have your what the fuck list or your maybe list. And then, so I guess you have two lists, right? And you're basically, your rule is no no's.
And then your other rule that I'm going to tell you now before I dive into a little more is you are not allowed to yes at all. Do not say yes to everything. This is what I've seen happen before and I've freaking done it myself. Sometimes you have to do this at some point in your career.
I feel like as a writer, you'll do this and then you'll be like, oh, that, I'm never going there again. But at some point you probably will yes everything that you hear. You'll do something like, oh my God, well, this person said this, I, okay, I gotta do that. Someone else said this, I gotta do that. Someone else, you just keep being like, I gotta take all advice. Everyone has great advice. I gotta use all of it. You might even say that with an editor. The editor, like I said earlier, is going to have probably some of your best advice, but it doesn't mean that it's always the perfect advice. It just might be something you need to hear. But what people do is say, oh, well, this person knows more than me. I have to do what they said.
Oh, that person pointed something out. They're right. I have to do that. And so people will yes everything and they will change their story to be what everyone else said it should be. And they'll accept all of the advice They'll try to work everything in. This is going to be detrimental to you.
Sorry, this is going to break your story.
So I did this once upon a time. So in college, I had this story that was not fully fleshed out. And so it was hitting the marks, but it was not quite there. And so it was one that was harder. And I think sometimes this is what happens more is when you have a story that you kind of know what you're doing with it, but not totally. Sometimes getting feedback actually can help you see what you're trying to do. And you're like, oh, yes, that's what I meant to do. Or nope, I really hate that. So that's totally not what I was trying to do. So it can be really good to get feedback when you are in kind of a I'm not totally sure about the story. However, it can also be dangerous because if you don't have a super strong vision to start with, it's easier to have your vision turn into what everyone else says it should be versus what you believe it should be. So this happened to me. I was in college class and I submitted this story. And the feedback was there was a lot of similar feedback, but it was kind of all over the place because everyone pulled something different from the story, because, like I said, the story sort of lacked a clear vision. And so the rule of the class is basically you take your work home, you revise and bring it back. So I revised, I brought it back next time. And I sat there listening and I was just like, I don't I don't want to fucking hear anything anyone says. Like, I was definitely closed off. But the reason I'm not like, oh, but like never be closed up in the case here. The problem was, I didn't even like the story I wrote. The moment I started hearing people talk, I was just like, why I even submit this. I didn't even like this version. This is not what I was trying to do. Now it's someone else's what everyone else was thinking it should be. Now the device is getting further and further off. And so I hated being there that day. I was just like, I hate everything because of hearing this, because you're giving me all this advice that sure could be great. But that's not what my story was trying to do in the first place.
But I had taken everyone's advice and I tailored it to what they all said. And I tried to fit it all in that I'd lost sight of what the story was.
And I didn't even like it anymore. It was no longer the story I wanted to tell.
Luckily, I learned from that situation and it was only a short story. It wasn't a whole freaking book. And I scratched that completely. I think I just like just cut. I just might have deleted the file. I don't even know. But I got rid of that because it was nowhere near what I want to do. And I went back to my original story and I pulled out the original comments. And then I started going through them. And I was like, okay, this person sees what I'm trying to do. This one actually meets the vision. Now I've gone so far on one side, I have a better idea of what I want the story to do. So I know what not to do now. So although that practice was frustrating, at least I had a very clear like, well, I know now what I don't want to do.
So it made it easier to decide what I do want to do. And I revised the story again, I came back, brought it into class. And I remember clearly, the feedback was so much more helpful. And I remember clearly someone saying, this is what you meant to do the first time, isn't it? I was like, yes, this was the story. This was the version of the story. I wish I had told from the start, which of course was not possible. I needed the feedback.
But this was my goal. This was the better version of my original goal. And so then everything was more aligned with me, what I wanted out of it. And the feedback was easier to receive, because it was actually helping the version of the story versus this confused version or what everyone else wanted. And everyone got to see me take the advice that worked and say, fuck the rest. So anyway, that's my experience with that. And I know I've seen it happen many times. And I want you to hopefully not go through that, especially with a whole book. I mean, that was a short story, probably 20 pages. To go through 300 pages of that would be very painful.
So that's why I'm trying to give you this advice now, so you can hopefully avoid some of that pain. And yeah, so that's important. You don't yes everything. It's important that you really listen what works for your story and your vision. Now, if you are lacking some clarity in your vision in the first place, then what I like to do when I like, literally, this is kind of decision making. But when I'm really lacking clarity, why don't you just in your head, this is something I always do is I'll envision that version. So maybe I have feedback that's like, well, if I go this way, it'll look like this. And I'll sort of visualize the whole thing and see how it feels. And if I don't like it, well, then I have a little more clarity.
If I do like it, then maybe that's a potential option for me. So that could be a way that you kind of begin to say, well, what even feels right?
And you can literally ask yourself, does this meet the vision of my story? So you've got your yes list, you've got your maybe slash what the fuck list. Now you're going to go through the maybe list and figure out what you need to listen to. And I want you to ask yourself different questions.
But I think the biggest one of all is constantly to ask yourself, how does this play into my story? Or how will this help my story? And literally underline the word my. How does this help my story? This is the story you want to tell. Is this feedback aligned with your vision? I want you to ask that to yourself constantly every time you read that piece of feedback.
So any feedback that's in this maybe or what the hell pile, ask, does this help my story? Or how does this help my story? As you go through your feedback and you see all these things that you said maybe to. And you're asking, does this help my story? How does this apply to my story? Does it align with my vision? Ask yourself that and then start sorting the feedback based on that. So you're probably going to have times where you can really quickly answer that. Okay, well, this goes against my vision. That's one thing. Or I literally have no idea. Something else. Or you have questions you might need to ask the person specifically if you have the opportunity. Or bring it to an editor. I'll have writers bring questions or things that others have noticed. So they'll bring their beta readers feedback to me and we'll go through it together to make sure that they know what aligns with their story versus what doesn't. And then also, if you have like, you know, even just top of mind, like, what made them think of this?
And that's something you just write down. You can ruminate on it right now if you want, or write it down and just kind of put it to the side because you're going to just, it's like you're going to keep narrowing your list.
So you're going to go through this list of the maybes and you're going to just narrow it down and keep getting smaller and smaller until you have gotten clarity on every piece. So at some point you might get, read something and be like, I literally cannot understand why this person got this.
And what I want you to do is, you can color code, do whatever system works for you, but maybe make note like, IDK, I don't know. I don't understand this piece of advice. Maybe highlight it. All the yellows for things you're just like, really? What the fuck? Maybe red for anything you're just like, yeah, that's bullshit. And you can kind of get to the bullshit when you, I feel like this happens most often based on your reader and what you know about them. So for example, if you're in a critique group and you write romance and one of the readers hates romance or has literally never read romance before, and maybe say you write steamy romance and the other has literally never read steamy romance, and they give you feedback on something related to the romance thing and they're like, oh, maybe this is too much like this, or maybe you should do this. Consider where their feedback's coming from. Are they aware of the expectations of the readers? Are they your ideal reader? If not, sometimes you can say, yeah, screw that.
That is not helpful. You know, there have been times where someone has maybe said, maybe tone it down a little. I'm like, I'm writing steamy romance.
Like, I'm not toning it down. That's a point. So really question where the feedback's coming from and if that person even has the awareness to be able to give that feedback. Now sometimes it's great to get feedback from people of different genres and who read different things because there might be things that are like, oh God, I hadn't even considered that. That's how it's gonna come out. But sometimes when you get feedback that's more specific, like, well, I think you should do this in the story. It's fair if you say, yeah, no romance reader would want that or no sci-fi reader would
want that. You can know that and especially if you feel in your gut like, I wouldn't want that. And then you know your readers better. You can say, no, unless you are an avid reader of this explicit genre or trope, I'm allowed to say I don't need that advice. So that's where you can really immediately be like, no, that's not gonna work.
Now if there's something you really hate, feedback you don't like, and you can't immediately dismiss it, but you also can't, maybe let's start with you have feedback you hate and you don't want to hear it, but three or more people say the same thing. This is when you have to listen to it. And I know you'll hate that, but if two or more really, but if three or more people say, that's my rule is the rule of three, if three or more people say the same similar sentiment on something, you have to listen to it. It's worth listening to. There's something there that needs to be done. Even when you hate it, figure out what the nugget is. And they might come to different conclusions, but it could be because of something you did at some point in the story that led them to go down that path. You know, if all your characters say, I really hated when this character did this, or all your readers said that, then what's the nugget of connection? So if everyone has this, maybe everyone has really contradictory feedback. This happens too, where you might get feedback, then you're like, wait, one person said they love this, the other person said they hated this. What do I do?
What I encourage you to do is dig into it and figure out what triggered that reaction, and then look at the thing that triggered it and say, is my character or whatever the scene or the line, is it doing what I meant for it to do? Because I'm getting really varying reactions from it.
Maybe I've set it up in a way that leads to such varying reactions versus maybe just something that might just have polarizing views. So those are some things to consider, I guess.
So really ask them questions. If you can't ask the person directly, then get other readers. Ask other readers, editors, coaches, critique partners, and say, I heard this feedback, like, what do you think, does it seem valid? And they might say, oh, I can see that. And if they say that, then dig into it and figure it out. Or if they're like, ah, nah, you know, Joe never reads romance, so I would not listen to that. That's fine, too.
Let's see. So you're going to have your list, and then you're just going to take your maybe list, and you're just going to keep rolling through it until you have figured out what to do. So you're going to just keep sorting it and just making a new maybe, essentially, you're going to filter through your list. No, I can ignore that. I have more questions on this. Or shit, there's a nugget there. I have to figure it out, or I know what it is, and I know what spurred that thought. I got to go make some changes based on that. And again, like I said, always ask the same question of, does this feedback align with my story, and how can it help it? As I said, if you can ask questions of your reviewer directly, that's going to be really
helpful. So for example, say that a reader says your protagonist is unlikable, but they don't give an explanation as to why. If you have the opportunity to ask them more questions and do so, you might find that, oh, it's the motivation of the protagonist that's not really working, or she's unlikable for a reason, and that's kind of the point, or maybe she's missing her save the cat moment. So it'll help you determine how to revise and what to revise. And this is also a good way to brainstorm. You can even try and use them to say, okay, well, if I change this thing, do you think
that would change your perspective? Now another thing that if you are able to do this, this is what I highly encourage, is based on who you're getting feedback from, ask questions ahead of time.
So if you have opportunity to send questions before getting feedback, I would consider it, you could do things like, especially with beta readers, I think it can be really great to say, I'm using beta readers at this stage for this type of feedback. So it might be, I really just want character feedback. Some beta readers like to do grammar and punctuation. I don't necessarily think that's really what they're for, but that's fine. If you use beta readers who you know one of your beta readers you've used for a while and you're like, they're so good at the fine details, but maybe they're not the people you go to for the story arcs, then make sure then set it up and say, okay, I'm really hoping you can help me with this, this and this regarding the grammar or something. And then with your other beta readers, if you have new readers you've never used, then I would say maybe start out with like five questions. So if that's all you get, you were able to get certain things answered that you actually needed answered versus sending out your stuff and getting feedback that you're like, I already knew that. That can be sometimes to me, that's the worst. It's like, I already knew that one. Like energy was just kind of wasted because I already knew that. Like, can you go deeper or can you find the other things?
So if you were like, I really just need to know, like, at what point do you stop reading the book? Is the protagonist someone you are rooting for?
Do you relate to their main character? Do you find the plot believable or engaging? How is the story paced? At what point, if at any, would you stop reading?
Try to ask very specific questions and obviously do not ask yes or no questions. That's not helpful, right? Because a lot of times people will not add to that. So try to ask questions that really spark a little more explanation so you can dig into what someone says. The other reason that getting clear on your questions can help and you'd send them ahead of time is because it can actually limit the amount of like that general like dislike personal preference feedback that can really kind of derail you. So when they have these like, oh, I have to actually consider, did this character pull me in or do I find the chemistry between the love interest engaging, hot, steamy, like get specific on even what you want out of it. And people can say, no, here's why. And they'll be able, I mean, I did say don't do yes or no questions, but set it up where you can get that really specific.
Like I did not find it this way because of these three instances. And you're like, oh, okay. I didn't even realize I hadn't even considered. So if you're like, what, what do I even ask of these people, just Google some questions. Obviously I just gave you a few, but I will probably come up with some more in a future episode, but also just like Google, like questions to send to critique readers.
Another great way to find out like what are some good general feedback questions. Look at judge rubrics. Those actually have really good questions ahead of time, especially when it's a genre specific contest. So for romance contests, a lot of times they'll have a question like, did you enjoy the chemistry between the love interest? And they'll maybe have another one like, when was the first time the love interest met? And was it a meet cute? Like they'll ask really specific questions about that in general. So find contest rubrics. I'm sure you can find some online sample ones and use those ahead of time.
All right. So I think I've given you some good ways to sort through feedback. If you're really struggling, you just do the visualize. If you went down that path, what would your story look like? If you took some character out, how would that change the story? How do you feel about it? And if you're really struggling, do a rewrite in certain places. So if it's a short story, you know, you could do a whole rewrite as might not be as bad, but if it's a novel, consider rewriting certain scenes or chapters and just put the old version aside. Don't delete it. Don't get rid of it. Make sure you save a copy and put it aside. Do your new version and see how you feel and send it to the same people if they're able and say, okay, do you think this is hitting it better?
I will just say a quick thing. I want you to not do. I think it's very fine to ask to make revisions to something and have your critique group read it again. I would say cap it at three times. The first time, feedback one more, feedback one more. I would say don't do more than that because what I've seen happen is someone will revise their work over and over and they keep sending it to group and the group's like this, what did you do different? It's the same thing. And they're like, oh, I changed a few sentences. Don't use your critique group for that. Use more of a fine tune editor or a critique partner who is happy to go into those nitty gritty lines. But if all you're doing is just tweaking a few lines here and there, don't have your critique group read again because their feedback is not going to be that much different. So it's really good to get feedback like, hey, am I on the right track now? I made changes. Does this feel more aligned? Or I literally wrote the whole thing. What do you think? If you're really struggling, I know I told you my story about how it kind of sucked to go through that situation, but it was very, very enlightening. I learned so much by doing it. So if you're really struggling, just freaking go down a rabbit hole of something that you don't feel 100% confident and just see how it feels at the end. Get feedback and say, okay, is this what I want to do or not? Because you might not know until you go through it.
Now let's talk about how you can start applying this feedback. I'm going to give you some brief general ways to start making revisions, applying feedback, because I don't want to overwhelm you and everyone has different tools and techniques, but I'll just give you some tips to get you started.
Once you have gone through your feedback, you kind of understand it. You know what you're going to listen to. You know what to ask questions of. If you need to ask other people, I need more information on this. If you need to run it by other people you trust or an editor, someone said this, do
you think it's right? Like, what do we think? Sometimes if you're really unsure, hold off on making the change. Just don't make the change yet and see if other changes solve the original situation.
That is something else I want you to consider. There are times when if you change all of it, it could change things too much. So you might only make a couple small tweaks, but it could solve an issue that was brought up in another critique that you don't need to say anymore or do anything about anymore because you fixed it in earlier in the story. A lot of things too, if you're really struggling, I would say most problems, the root of the issue starts in the beginning of the book. If you're getting feedback on a lot of weird things, look at the beginning of the book. Look at what you've set up. You might have accidentally set up a contradictory character who you set them up one way and they started going a different way. That doesn't make sense. You could have set up weird plot points, the pacing. So if you're really struggling with where is this, where is this feedback coming from? I don't get it. Look at what you set up in the beginning of the book.
So as you go through and you're trying to make revisions, I would always say address the big picture stuff first. Don't worry about sentence level, grammar, spelling. Don't worry about that because if you end up cutting a whole scene, it doesn't really matter that you tweak those few lines and made them perfect, right? Because you might get rid of all of it. So address the big picture stuff first, especially characters. I'm always going to say start with the characters because your character, they are the story. Their arc is the story. So start there so that when you make changes, the plot aligns with that. If you change the plot before you change the characters, you're going to end up trying to make your character fit the plot. And I think that is just my opinion, the wrong way to go because your character is supposed to really be the one who moves the plot forward and or interacts with it and triggers the next stage. Their reaction is always going to be really specific. And if you are trying to make certain plot points happen, but your character's, it's not authentic, your readers are going to feel it and they're not going to like it. So start with your character and then look at the plot, external stuff, and then start going down into, okay, I have to worry about show-don't-tell. I have to fix these lines.
Go one chapter at a time. That's an option. You might actually, instead of going chronologically, maybe you do it where you, you literally read
through the whole book and it's only, you're only focused on one character. Maybe you have to do a reverse outline. I've heard about this.
It's basically going, making an outline of your book after you wrote the book and then saying, okay, is this doing what I want it to do? Another similar way is like write the synopsis of your book. And if the synopsis felt weird or you're like, oh, why is this here? Like this, as you read it or you have someone else read it, this plot point doesn't really, you're like trying to fit in the synopsis and it's like, this isn't going to match like the pace of the story. There's probably something to it. These are like more tips on how to do revisions. I would say pick a big, prominent address at once. Make a pass that's only focused on that. You could shrink your document to like super tiny font, print the whole thing out and then
lay the physical copies out before you to look at a top down view. This can really help visualize overall manuscript. And then you can do different things like use sticky notes to talk, like one color sticky note is about like one thing and you're like, okay, this, I can tell this whole chapter
is about this and we have to address this. Maybe you use highlights. Maybe you just kind of can see literally what the pacing, what the book looks like laid out before you. You can move chapters around, use post-it notes to move chapters around. Different colors to highlight things, you know, maybe red is to delete, green is things to expand, purple or line items, yellow or character notes. Create a new document, of course, like I said, with revision so you don't replace anything until you're ready. And save all your deleted stuff into an older document.
Hopefully I know that I went quickly, but that's because I don't want you to be bogged down on how to revise. I can talk about that in future episodes. I really want you to understand how to sort through the feedback. So I hope that I've given you enough tools to begin doing that.
If you're really struggling, listen to your gut. You're the writer. You are the one who chooses what goes, what stays, whatever you do. This is your story, not someone else's. You will hear feedback of people who say, if I were to do this, and they might not preface it with that. They might not say, if I were to write the story, it would be like this. But sometimes people are really obvious and they'll say that. But there are times when you'll get feedback you can tell that's what that person would do. That doesn't mean that's what you need to do. And I mentioned this in the last episode, but use their feedback as inspiration. So they might give you advice. They might even say, I would do this. Like, well, I'm not you. I'm going to write my book. But actually, that did make me think maybe this might be a good idea. So use the feedback as inspiration. Don't use it as, this is the only way I have to do what they said. I encourage you to please listen to your inner writer voice, listen to your story. What is your story asking of you? What are your readers saying they need of the story? And how can you bridge it together?
I hope I've left you with enough today, writer. So until next time, keep growing.
