A Writer's Online Life (Julie)

As you know, we live in the age of technology now where we pretty much do everything online. As writers, this has opened up a whole new world for us to gain resources, make connections, and marketing. I've been a bit behind on the whole internet as my biggest writing resource, and am now trying to play catch up.

I first joined American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and enjoyed their critique groups. In fact, it was the crit group that showed me, in a good way, that I knew nothing about writing. And through a small crit group, I've grown so much!

But other than that, I haven't done anything because I've been so focused on writing my novel. Until recently. Now I'm starting to wade into the depths of the online writing world. My awesome and much more knowledgeable sister has introduced me to some Facebook groups like Realm Makers and Fellowship of Fantasy.

I've really enjoyed being a part of these groups because I've been introduced to many new books and authors of similar interests.  It's a great community where we all have a story to tell (or multiple) and know the struggles other are facing because we have faced them as well. But that's not all! Having a writing community provides encouragement and motivation and accountability for all of us writers and aspiring writers!

What kind of online blogs, sites, and groups are indispensable to you in your writing journey that you would like to share?
 

How to Evaluate Feedback, Part 2: Evaluating Its Resonance (Lizzie)

In my last On Writing post, we talked about evaluating feedback by first evaluating the evaluator, how it's necessary to consider the evaluator's experience and preferred genre and your own attitude toward the evaluator. That gives you context for the feedback. Today, we're going to talk about evaluating the feedback based on your feelings. That's right. Today, we're getting in touch with our feelings. Mostly so we can then ignore them. But sometimes that feeling is an educated instinct you'd been ignoring, or a righteous indignation. So let's get started evaluating feedback based on its resonance, or how we feel about it.

Evaluating Its Resonance

The Theft 

Feedback almost always elicits an emotional response. Someone corrects a typo or marks out one of those words you use way too much and you're both embarrassed at having made such an error and grateful it's been caught. You recognize your embarrassment and move on. Then you get a critique where the evaluator marked out your perfectly good words and replaced them with synonyms for no apparent reason and did other things that stole your personal touch from the writing. You're angry, and a bit guilty at being angry. 

But it's okay to be angry (for a short time) if someone is changing things to fit their own taste rather than to fix errors. It's a healthy anger because the evaluator has crossed a boundary line. In short, they are rewriting your grammatically correct work to suit their own style and preferences or genre expectations. In essence, they are making your work theirs. That's stealing. Good feedback leaves your voice unchanged. 

I usually only skim these "theft" critiques, change the few glaring errors pointed out, and then put the critiques away. Later, I will look back at them and decide if any of the changes are valuable. If so, I will likely take the idea, but not the actual wording, and rework the original sentence so that it incorporates some of the changes but retains my voice.

Before you toss a critique as "stealing your voice," however, double-check that that is what it's doing and that it's not trying to smooth out underdeveloped writing. Read your work aloud and then read the changes. How do they sound? The same or is one better? 

One issue I've seen that might warrant rewriting someone's sentences is grammatically correct but bland writing. Are all your sentences structured the same, or is there variation to make paragraphs flow better? 

For example: "The doorbell rang. Sandra stepped away from the desk. A window shattered. Sandra ducked. Sandra hit the floor. Sandra rolled to the left." Notice how they are all the same structure and nearly the same length? And all but two start with Sandra?

Not all sentences need to be compound and have clauses at the beginning or end, but neither should they all be straight subject-verb-predicate like these. Conjunctions and clauses are your friends.

"The doorbell rang and Sandra stepped away from her desk. The window behind her shattered, and she ducked. With a cry, she hit the floor and rolled to the left." These aren't the deep POV sentences some insist on, but at least they are not all the same structure and don't read like a monotone lecture. 

Was your critique partner trying to add needed variety to your sentence structure?

Listen also to how the words sound. Do you  have too many repeated words or sounds (like Sandra in the example above)? Or would repeating a particular sound--alliteration--make it read better? "Double, double, toil and trouble" wouldn't be memorable without the alliteration.

Was your critique partner trying to make it sound better? 


These kinds of critiques remind me to be more thoughtful in my own evaluations, weighing whether a change is my preference or something that improves the writing and keeps the author's voice. If I decide to make the suggestion, I try to make sure that I write the suggested change in a comment box, with an explanation, rather than changing the text itself. That way it feels like less of an overstep.

The Revelation

Some criticisms come out of the blue. I don't expect them, but after consideration, I either agree or disagree with them and move on. But some criticisms address issues I "had a feeling" about. A strange word, phrase, or scene I thought was clever, but deep down knew wasn't quite right but that I refused to rewrite. After one or two, or (embarrassingly) every critiquer circles it in red, I change it. Unfortunately, sometimes the "feeling" is about the plot as a whole, a character, or the writing itself.

An important question to ask is does the advice resonate with you? Sometimes almost everyone may say they love your work but you still have a feeling something's not right. Perhaps the work doesn't feel like your voice anymore (you may have let too many "thieves" or people in other genres influence you), or the story isn't fun any more. 

Let me share with you two embarrassing, but ultimately freeing, critiques to illustrate.

The first is from a contest. Contest judges are notorious for their opinionated, conflicting scoring. You know those judges who mark that you did everything correctly but still give you a low score because they just don't like your story? Well, that's not what happened here. The initial judges loved the entry and sent it to the final round. Here's what the final judge (a respected literary agent) had to say:

"Disjointed and jerky. Also something in the tone gives too much of a feminine flare for the  male characters. Writes well and opening elements have promise but it doesn’t hold. The story structure may add to deterioration of the story..."

He said this and it was a finalist entry! And the earlier judges loved it! Did I start to seethe and accuse him of being another subjective judge? No. I was embarrassed and pained, but I listened to what he said. For one, because he's well respected in the industry and, more importantly, because his comments resonated with what I had been feeling. Something wasn't right about the story but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. His tough words were exactly what I needed. The story's still not finished but it is oh so much better now due to his comments.

Later, on another story, an agent (the same one) made these comments:

There is a tendency to overwrite. This usually means unnecessary description and trying too hard to "write." [The agent] found a recent blog that could be helpful in one area: http://thewritepractice.com/mark-twain-dialogue-tags/

The protagonist, in first person, has some a feminine tinge to the narrative. In fact, one review said they had to double check to make sure it was a man and not a woman protagonist.

The story idea is fine. It is the execution of the chapters that sends it back for further seasoning.

Again, I was disappointed, but I felt an agreement. I wasn't satisfied with my writing. I had thoughtlessly accepted others' comments and influence even though it wasn't my preferred style nor my voice. I'd worked hard on plot (and the plot in that story needed a lot of work), but my writing had suffered. But I took this advice and feel the story is better for it.


To sum up evaluating feedback, you have to know the principles of good writing for yourself in order to decide which comments to accept and which to reject. You must know the principles, not simply the rules. Sometimes the best thing to do is walk away for a time and then come back. Possibly bringing with you the Chicago Manual of Style, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors, and recent releases from your favorite publisher. Critiques from fellow writers are invaluable, but, ultimately, it's your story and you are responsible for making it the best it can be.

How to Evaluate Feedback, Part 1: Evaluating the Evaluator (Lizzie)

As a writer, my world is often aglow, either with the joyful colors of sunrise or with the fiery reds of a burning city, depending on whether I get compliments on or criticisms of my writing.

Feedback is tough to take, but how an author handles feedback often determines the quality of his or her writing, because others' comments can make a book sing like a nightingale or burn like a turkey at Thanksgiving. Not all advice is created equal, so how do you decide which suggestions to keep and which to ignore?

Over my next few On Writing posts I'll share some of what I've learned over my seven years of getting and giving feedback as a writer and what I've learned as I've studied editing as a professional. (I recently earned a certificate in copyediting and joined The Christian PEN to learn more from active editors.)

Without further ado, here's how to evaluate feedback, part 1.

Evaluating the Evaluator

This is about getting context, not hunting for fodder to reject or accept everything the one giving feedback says. Writers get feedback from different sources--critique partners (fellow writers at varying stages of experience and skill), editors (copyeditors, writing coaches, and so on hired to help polish the manuscript), publishing professionals  (agents and acquisition editors), readers (family, friends, and later, strangers who happen on a copy of the published book), and contest judges (who can fall into any of the previous categories and are notorious for giving extremely varied feedback).

Each group brings its own background, training, and preferences into the critique, and it's essential to take that into account because, unless an evaluator is unusually gifted in being objective, it will color the critique.

When you evaluate your evaluator, ask these questions:

1) What's the evaluator's experience and skill level? This one is obvious. What's his or her training and grasp of the writing craft and publishing industry?

The average reader can tell you whether he liked the book and, hopefully, what he did or did not like about it (though sometimes he may know something is "off" but not know what). That's valuable, but you can't expect most readers to point out show versus tell errors or POV errors.

A critique partner might know some writing rules but not understand the principles and thus insist on exact adherence to "rules" in a way that would ruin your manuscript. For example, some things should be told because they're not important enough to waste space on or because the subject matter is too hard on the emotions to show. A child getting hit by a car might be better told quickly, for instance. 

When someone with professional editing experience (and training) marks an error in grammar or the use of action beats, you should probably change it and look up the rule to imprint it on your mind to prevent further error. When anyone else marks an error, you should look up the rule yourself and then decide whether the feedback agrees with it. It's easy to think we know the rules, when, in fact, we don't truly understand how best to apply them. This leads us to give (and accept) bad advice. Or to apply good advice badly.

For example, a friend consistently changed my usage of commas in a manuscript I later had professionally edited. Because she made consistent changes (implying confidence and knowledge), I thought she must be right and I wrong. I made her recommended changes. However, after the professional edit, I had to reverse the comma usage to my original, correct usage based on the editor's feedback. My friend was well-meaning but wrong, and I was too lazy to verify her suggested changes. Always look it up. Get a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, and Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors. 

2) What's the evaluator's preferred genre? The rules and expectations are different for different genres. A romance writer is likely to insist on the addition of a lot more physical descriptions of characters, the historical on more historical details, and the young adult author on slang and immature reactions from characters. The last thing my "Jane Austen with wands" light fantasy novels need are characters who storm out of the room every time someone disagrees with them, spew slang, minutely describe the fabric and style of all outfits, act according to modern manners and expectations, and go around describing every male as having either a strong jaw and chocolate eyes that draw them in or bad breath (halitosis being the obvious sign of villainy). You must know the rules and expectations for your genre, which you can, happily, learn by reading in your genre. 

Note: Book publishers use the Chicago Manual of Style whereas other purveyors of the written word, such as newspaper publishers, use other style guides. That can lead to differences in particulars (like usage of the Oxford comma), so know which guide your evaluator is likely to be familiar with.

3) What's your attitude toward the evaluator? As a people pleaser, there are times when I want to accept everything an evaluator tells me just because I respect and want to please him or her. Other times I'm irritated with the evaluator and want to reject all comments. Perhaps he's marked too many things in the past, doing so in a way that tries to make the writing his instead of mine. I've had a critique partner like that. I fought the fires of anger and arrogance (Who does he think he is claiming that word is better than mine! They mean the same thing!) every time I got feedback. I was tempted to ignore even the good advice. If I had, I would have missed some important comments. Recognizing your attitude will help you look at the feedback objectively.


Again, evaluating your evaluator isn't about justifying rejecting all comments or lazily accepting them all, it's about getting context and objectively determining which suggestions are valid and which are well-meaning but not useful. We should always be grateful someone took the time and made the effort to read and thoughtfully make comments on our manuscripts.

Are you tempted to accept or reject feedback as a whole instead of considering each piece? Any other suggestions on how to evaluate an evaluator?