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The Dos and Don’ts of Giving and Receiving Constructive Criticism

Some of these should be painfully obvious and yet. They come from experience.


Receiving feedback:

Do

  • Understand that a criticism of a character’s thoughts, actions, morality, and choices are likely not a criticism of you as an author, unless the character is an author insert

  • Understand that they are being paid to critique how successfully you told an entertaining story, not pander to your trauma dumping

  • Understand that critiquing a book’s success as an entertaining story means that how much you yourself connect with or love a character or scene or plotline is irrelevant if it doesn’t make a compelling narrative

  • You might have written your book for yourself. Your editor is a different person with their own human biases and perspectives. If you just want to pay someone to stoke your ego, make that 100% clear up front.

  • Stand up for yourself and clarify where necessary if some details were overlooked or if explaining outside the narrative can better contextualize anything confusing or lacking detail.

  • Stand up for yourself in what feedback you are expecting, and what degree of criticism you’re willing to endure. An editor can let more or less of their own views show depending on what you ask for.

  • Stand up for yourself if your editor delivers inadequate or useless feedback. You’re paying them for a job, and you deserve to have it done properly.

  • Try to separate dislike of a book from dislike of yourself. It’s not easy, but the goal is to fix your book that you’ve already spent a lot of time writing, and they’re only trying to help.

  • Remember that your author insert is subjected to the same level of criticism as any other character, and that you asked for this.

  • Keep an open mind and be prepared for feedback that you don’t like, because you can’t please everyone. Your editor should be able to tell you whether or not a scene or character, or plotline works separate from their own personal tastes.

Don’t

  • Argue with your editor over anything like their own sexuality, religiosity, gender, socioeconomic status and how it may or may not impact their negative interpretation of your book.

  • Argue with your editor while still expecting more work from them as if your aggression will in any way positively impact their perception of your book.

  • Insult your editor’s intelligence for not understanding your jargon and attempts to sound smarter than you are.

  • Get mad when your editor sees right through your BS and calls it like they see it, specifically your self-insert Mary Sue protagonist.

  • Insist that the solution to better understanding your book is for that editor to do extensive homework on your niche topic. If it’s a niche book for niche audiences, hire an editor who’s already knowledgeable about that niche topic.

  • Equate a bad review and opinion of the book with unprofessionalism. These can overlap, but they are not interchangeable.

  • Forget that your book is probably meant for leisure and entertainment, and your audience is under no obligation to read “until it gets good,” when they can go do literally anything else. Your first job is to entertain, if you write fiction.

Giving Feedback:

Do

  • Pay attention to your client’s wants and needs and expectations. If they’re more sensitive to bad feedback, do your best and stay as objective as possible. You can’t please everyone, either.

  • Helpful feedback includes an explanation of why an element needs work and how it can be improved. Saying “I hate this” with nothing else helps no one and just makes the author feel bad with no direction of how to make it better.

  • Communicate beforehand how much of your own personality your author wants from you. Do they like personal opinions and your personal reactions to the text, or do they want it as impersonal as possible and solely focused on the structure of the narrative? This might avoid a mess.

  • Remember to leave notes of where things worked well to balance the criticism. Even a simple “this is good” highlighting a line or a paragraph or two helps keep authors motivated to keep writing. I firmly believe that no book is completely unsalvageable.

  • Make it painfully clear with no room for debate that criticism of a character is not criticism of the author, unless it's an author insert, in which case the author absolutely asked for it.

  • Make it clear that you are just one person and these are all suggestions, not laws.

Don’t

  • Let your own personal opinions cloud your judgment of whether or not someone with different tastes could enjoy the book.

  • Unless given permission, get too personal with the narrative and reach beyond what’s written on the page.

  • Do more than what you’re paid for. You’re an editor, not a therapist for the writer’s trauma dumping.

  • Forget to wrap up all your thoughts in a condensed format that the author can reference, as opposed to endlessly scrolling through the manuscript trying to summarize your points for you.

  • Walk away with absolutely nothing positive to say about the manuscript. Even if it’s awful on every front, the writer still tried and that deserves merit.

This is from my personal experience beta and sensitivity reading, and dealing with other beta and sensitivity readers. We are all human and these jobs are not one-size-fits-all and there aren’t really hardline rules as every author, editor, and manuscript is different with different needs.


Just some things to keep in mind.


But also, for the authors who do write self-insert Mary Sues: You are in for a very rude awakening if you expect anyone other than yourself to adore your book with zero criticism. If you really just want someone to proofread and look for typos, tell them.

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