I’m a big fan of workshopping, and I’ve talked a few times in the past about how important it is for writers (especially fairly young or new writers) to get outside eyes and opinions on their work. I also find the other side of that equation—providing creative feedback to other people—to be a valuable exercise, giving you a chance to identify what you find works and doesn’t in other people’s writing so you can apply those lessons to your own writing.

That said, I also know that both giving and receiving creative feedback can be an intimidating prospect for those who haven’t done so before. So I thought it would be helpful to share some tips, based on my 10+ years of participating in workshop groups.

Giving creative feedback

Giving effective feedback starts before you get to the workshop meeting with how you read the work presented for critique. Reading something for workshopping is different than when you’re reading for enjoyment, and is even different than reading as an editor. The best path, in my experience, is partway in between these two.

In part, you do want to try and picture the story or poem the way a reader would, paying attention to things like how well the piece holds your attention, the meaning you get out of it, and how the language, narrative, and other aspects of the piece come together to form a cohesive work.

But you also want to activate your editor brain at some points. For me, I start off looking at the piece as a reader until something snags my attention as a potential issue. For example, if I’m reading a short story to workshop and I’m cruising along through the opening, then have a moment of confusion when it shifts into the second scene. Once I feel that hiccup, I switch modes and re-read the section.

In a reader mindset, you might go back and re-read that section for comprehension, but in editor mode that re-read is more targeted. I don’t just note that it’s not working properly but go deeper, asking questions like:

• Why isn’t this passage functioning effectively in its current form?
• What is missing from this section that could help to ground or guide the reader?
• Is there any extra information in this section that’s bogging it down and confusing the reader?
• If this were my piece, what changes would I make to improve that section?

After I’ve finished reading the piece, I’ll also take a step back and broaden my focus to the entire work. Again, this can start with a reader mindset. Was the conclusion of the piece effective? Did it feel like a cohesive piece from start to finish? Were you surprised by the work at any points as a reader? From there, you can zoom in on the specific aspects of the piece’s overall arc, pacing, flow, or structure that could be changed to improve it.

Once you know what aspects of the piece you want to critique, then you can frame that feedback for the actual meeting. Here are some “do”s and “don’t”s for providing this type of feedback:

When giving creative feedback, do…

• Start with what is working. Feedback isn’t going to be as effective if the person receiving it is in defensive mode. Granted, you can’t completely control how the other person takes your comments. But you can make it more likely they’ll be receptive by leading with praise then following with critique. Knowing what’s working is helpful, too, especially in early drafts of stories and poems where the writer is still feeling out the work in a big-picture, conceptual sense.
• Be as specific as possible. When something isn’t working for you in a piece, try to identify the root problem. If you find a passage confusing, for example, is it because there aren’t enough details about what’s going on? Is it the writing itself that’s causing the problem—that it’s overwritten, perhaps, or uses terminology or words that you don’t understand? Aim to point out not just the “what” of the problem, but the “why.”
• Focus on craft over taste. There’s a certain amount of subjectivity involved in reading any creative work. As a workshopper, though, you want to try and limit that as much as is possible and separate your own personal preferences from the quality and effectiveness of the piece. Framing your comments from a craft standpoint helps to do this. For example, it’s not necessarily a problem if a character acts in ways you don’t approve of, but it is a potential issue if the character’s actions seem inconsistent with their motivation, or if their reasoning for acting the way they do isn’t clear.

But what you don’t want to do is…

• Don’t give broad, subjective opinions. Saying “I like this” or “I don’t like that” isn’t particularly helpful. It’s not completely useless—knowing what parts of a story people do and don’t like can help you refine it—but it can also be a personal thing. Maybe someone doesn’t like a passage because it’s poorly written, or maybe they don’t like it because it includes a spider and they’re arachnophobic. Getting into specifics helps the writer know how to take your feedback and what to do with it to improve the work.
• Don’t try to impose your own style. This is where things can sometimes get tricky. I said earlier you can think about your comments in the lens of “what would I change if this were my piece?” That said, though, you also need to remember that it’s not your piece. It’s something written by a different author, with their own distinctive style and voice. The goal of feedback is to help that piece become the best form of itself, not to change it into something it’s not.

Receiving creative feedback

The tricky part about getting feedback is that, while it is a helpful thing to receive overall, that doesn’t mean that every single comment you get will be useful for you. Deciding which feedback to take and which to ignore can sometimes be very challenging, especially when you’re relatively new to the writing and editing process.

The first step, though, is to be open to all of the comments that people have to give you. You can sort out the useful things from the not later on, when you’re applying that feedback during your next round of edits. During the workshop, the best thing you can do is actively listen and take notes—even on the comments that your knee-jerk reaction is to disregard or push back against. This means you have to:

• Silence the ego. Creative writing can feel like an extension of yourself. This is true even for speculative and out-there fiction, and more so when it’s memoir, or a story or poem based heavily on your life. Before you start the workshop, though, remember: people are giving feedback on one specific piece, not on you as a writer or a person. Do your best to not take comments personally.
• Resist the urge to defend or justify your decisions. You wrote the piece the way you did for a reason—but that doesn’t mean it’s working the way you intended. If people don’t “get” what you’re doing, that’s still a problem, even if not for the specific reasons they say. It can sometimes be helpful to explain what you were trying to do, as a way to guide the comments in a helpful direction. However, once you start defending your piece, or arguing back against the feedback, you’re going into a closed rather than an open mental mode, and that could prevent you getting the full value out of the experience.
• Ask questions about the comments you don’t understand. While you don’t want to argue, that also doesn’t mean you need to sit there completely passive and silent. If someone gives feedback that you don’t fully understand, or talks about writing or editing concepts you’re not familiar with, don’t just let it pass by. Ask for more details and explanation so you can make it a true learning experience. This is another place you need to quiet the ego a bit. Sometimes, people don’t ask questions because they want to seem like they know what they’re doing. You’re not in a workshop to impress people—you’re there to improve your writing and should ask whatever questions will help you to do that.

Basically, when you’re being workshopped, your job is to be a sponge. Absorb all the feedback that people want to give you, and make sure you’re getting the full value by asking for more info when it’s not clear right away.

Then, once you’ve gathered this feedback, it’s time for step 2: implementing it. And that can sometimes be the trickiest part of all. There’s a quote from Neil Gaiman that I always keep in mind:

When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Now, sometimes, the people who give you feedback will be able to pinpoint the exact fix a passage needs, especially if you’re lucky enough to have experienced editors and workshoppers in your group. The first part of that quote, though, is critical to remember. When someone flags an area of the piece as having an issue, you should always at least look at that aspect of your story, poem, or essay, and ask yourself:

• What am I trying to accomplish here?
• What did the workshoppers think I was trying to accomplish here?
• What part of my intention isn’t coming across clearly, and how can I change it so that it does?

Implementing feedback is often a matter of meeting in the middle. You know what you want to say with your piece, and what you want the story’s form and impact to be. The readers and workshoppers know how the piece is reading through outside eyes. Your goal is to align those two things, and find the middle ground where you can say what you want to say and have it come across effectively to the reader.

Of course, in order to get to that place, there’s one crucial ingredient we haven’t talked about yet: you need to know what you’re trying to do or say with the piece. This isn’t always something you’ll know during the writing, and often I don’t know this when I send the draft to workshop.

The process of implementing feedback can help to clarify this, as well. Pay attention to those comments that you have an initial impulse to reject, because there’s probably a reason. Somehow, that comment is going against what you want to do with the piece. Dig into that and figure out why. Why do you feel that comment is off the mark? What does it seem to you that they’re missing? If you had an instant emotional reaction against a feedback comment, there is something important in the work that you fear would be lost if you implemented it. When you identify what that is, you’ll have a deeper understanding of your piece and your goals for it. You can then build off of that foundation to make edits that bring that aspect out more clearly in the work.

Making the most of feedback

It’s tricky to give advice about receiving feedback because the process is going to be different every time. I’ve had fantastically productive workshop sessions, where the comments got right to the heart of the issues with the story and I took nearly all of them right away to make edits. I’ve also had very frustrating workshops, where it felt like every comment was missing the point and no one understood what I was trying to do with the story.

This is going to happen when you workshop a lot, and the truth is that every workshop experience will be different, even when you’re workshopping with the same consistent group of people. The best thing you can do is stay open to the feedback people are willing to give you, without losing sight of your intent and unique voice when you’re implementing those comments. The more you do it, the easier it will be for you to find that balance.

See similar posts:

#Workshop #Editing #WritingAdvice #Feedback