Storytellersunplugged

Last time out, I discussed the ins and outs of taking criticism and doing something with it besides letting it amp your blood pressure to the point where blood jets out of your eyes. It only seems fair and sensible, then, to flip the conversation over this month and talk about critiquing, and ways to do (or not to do) so as to avoid giving the critique victim a grand mal seizure at the sight of the first comment in the margins.

Agreeing to look over someone’s stuff is not something that should be taken lightly. After all, if someone is handing their admittedly unfinished prose off to you in hopes of earnest commentary, they’re opening themselves up for a ruthless, microscopic examination of something that is almost certainly unready for prime time. They are counting on you to be fair but honest, and to give it your best effort. After all, a half-assed assessment isn’t going to help them improve, and may actually be damaging. An offhand, “Oh, it’s fine,” when a story actually has a plot hole big enough for Godzilla to stomp through without brushing the sides is enough to actively damage someone’s writing. Yes, they should be able to spot that sort of issue for themselves, but hey, we all miss the obvious on occasion; that’s why we ask other people to look at it.

All of which means that if you’re going to do it, you should do it right. And by right, I mean that you should provide feedback that is useful, helpful, and designed to make the subject matter better. That doesn’t mean that you should just blow kisses and wave pom-poms, but rather that you should remember that the purpose of the critique is not to benefit the critiquer, or their ego. It’s to help the writer, and more importantly, the writing.

In my admittedly jaundiced opinion, the most important thing in providing feedback is to remember who is actually writing the story. By that, I don’t mean the narrator. I mean the author. One of the most aggravating mistakes a “friendly” reader can make is to confuse what the story needs with what they would have done with the story instead. Their comments become a rewrite, simultaneously managing to irritate what Shakespeare might have called the native and true challenger while missing the point of the damn thing entirely.

In other words, if I send a story to someone to look over, I don’t want to know what they would have done with it instead. If I did, I would have sent an email saying “Here’s an idea, and I’d love to see what you can do with it” instead. (Mind you, the appropriate response to an email like that is generally “Thhhbbbtt”; nobody will tell you this, but the ideas are the easy part. It’s the writing that’s hard.) No, I want to know what I did wrong, and what my reader thinks I can do to fix it.

So, the key is to remember that it’s the author’s story, not yours, and that any feedback you give should be couched in those terms. “Were you trying to say X here?” goes over a lot better than a deleted phrase and a replacement in the margins; “I’m not sure about this guy’s motivation for beating someone to death with a grotesquely large rutabaga – could you clarify it for me?” does a lot more good than “No way, man – he should totally use the sweet potato instead.” It’s not what you would do if you were writing it, it’s about what the writer could do to make it better, and questions are better for helping someone find their own path than demands or overwrites. That’s not to say that you can’t suggest alternatives, but doing so respectfully, and with the assumption that the choices the writer made to this point were in fact made for a reason, makes them a lot easier to swallow.

Tying directly into that is another point that may be equally important: It’s about the writing, not about the writer. Feedback should not be a direct assault on the writer’s self-worth, talent, or ancestry. Even if you hate the piece, odds are that the person who wrote it is a reasonably worthwhile human being and not deserving of vituperation over something their verbs did when they weren’t looking. Any sentence of feedback that starts with the word “You” should be carefully scrutinized for lurking ad hominems, for the simple reason that if you attack the author, they’re not going to be in the mood to read anything you said about their writing. That, of course, means that you’ve wasted your time as well as theirs, and nobody wants that.

Besides, it’s just not nice.

What is nice, however, is occasionally taking the time to point out good stuff. Hopefully it’s in there, and if it is, it should get called out. There are good reasons to applaud an especially deft bit of characterization, nice turn of phrase, or clever plot twist beyond the urge to be neighborly. For one thing, it helps the author get through what would otherwise be an unending slog of negatives – fix this, change that, what the hell were you doing over there? – by providing encouragement and support. It’s useful technically, too – point out what they did right, and you’re providing examples so they can do more of it.

I might add that calling out the good stuff helps the critiquer as well. If you’re just pointing out the bad stuff, it can become white noise. Boring. Frustrating, even, which can lead to cranky or bad or worst of all, inaccurate commenting. Allowing yourself to look for the positive is worthwhile, if for no other reason than to provide a way to keep you on your twinkly editorial toes.

From there, it’s just a short jump to what should be common sense, but so often isn’t: Don’t be a jackass. Reading over someone’s stuff is not a contest. You don’t win if you provide the most cutting bon mot, the sharpest critique, or the nastiest putdown. There’s no group of judges sitting there in a box, holding up numbered cards as they go through each reader’s responses and awarding degree of difficulty points for the best Dorothy Parker impersonation. The competition is not with any other readers, and the competition is not with the author. That’s because there is no competition.

In theory, at least, everyone is working towards the same goal – making the piece better. Nobody is looking to see how clever the editorial remarks are, nor will they ever be. Turning a request for feedback into a power game demeans everyone involved, and doesn’t help the writing. Instead, it makes you look like a jerk and irritates the guy on the receiving end. He wasn’t asking for a psych profile when he asked you to look over his 3000 word short story, and getting a nasty one isn’t going to help his disposition.

And before you ask, no, I’m not saying that feedback can’t or shouldn’t be forceful when it’s appropriate. At times, it needs to be. There’s some stuff that’s just plain old bad writing, and if you’re wimpy about pointing that out, then you’re not doing anybody any favors. That doesn’t mean you should use the editorial firehouse when it’s not called for, not needed, and not helpful.

Last, at least for the purposes of this essay, is knowing when to stop. Not everything needs to be nitpicked in the minutest of details. Not every instance of a repeated error needs to be called out. Marking it once and moving on serves everyone better – the editor who doesn’t have to say the same thing over and over and get burned out, and the writer who doesn’t have to read it and feel persecuted, nay, hounded as a result. At a certain point, enough has been said and anything else is just piling on or padding the comment stats. That’s when it’s time to let it go, send it back, and hope that what’s been said makes a little sense.

And once the critique is done, it’s done. Kaput. Finis. Over. It’s moved on, and following up, beyond a polite “I hope that was helpful” starts crowding the border of counterproductive. The writer needs time to digest, to see if what’s been said is appropriate or useful or warranted. If they then ask for follow-up or clarification, great. That’s an open invitation to contribute more. But otherwise, you’ve done all that you need do, and there’s probably no need or call to do any more. What has been asked for, has been given, and in the immortal words of Stan Lee, ‘nuff said.

In the end, there are no hard and fast rules for providing feedback; just suggestions, guidelines, and the fruits of hard-won experience. Every rule has its exceptions, and there are folks out there for whom any given technique might be utterly useless. Regardless of the specifics, though, anyone who looks at another’s work owes something to them: an honest and respectful effort, and a genuine wish to help them make that piece of writing better.

But when it comes to the rutabagas, they’re on their own.