When Writing Feedback Ruins Your Story

Getting writing feedback is a little like cooking a meal in the middle of town.

Imagine Emma, a kind middle-aged woman, standing in the middle of Central Square one day making soup for the people she loves. She’s happily stirring in vegetables and meat and her favorite spices when suddenly an old man wanders by, peers into the pot, and says, “Well, now, that needs a lot more salt,” and throws in a whole handful before she can stop him.

A few minutes later, a young woman in boots comes striding through, pulls a hot sauce bottle out of her bag, and says, “Honey, everything needs heat,” and squirts a big stream right into the soup.

Now Emma is standing there in horror, trying to rescue her dinner, when one more person comes along with peanut sauce and says, “This is what will make this really special,” and dumps it in.

Emma shrieks because one of the people she’s cooking for has a serious peanut allergy, so now the whole pot has to be thrown out.

And that’s a lot like what can happen to a book when too many people start throwing in their opinions.

The answer isn’t to avoid all feedback and criticism. It’s to understand who is actually helping, what belongs in the pot, and what needs to be discarded before it ruins the whole meal.

Most People Are Bad At Giving Writing Feedback

The first thing I would say here is that most people are not very good at giving feedback.

I’m going to say that again because it’s very important for you to hear: Most people are not good at giving feedback on a story.

That’s really important to understand because a lot of writers assume that if somebody reads the work and has thoughts, then those thoughts must be useful in some way.

But reading something and knowing how to help a writer with it are two very different things. And the latter takes a lot of skill and a lot of experience in working with writers.

Some people will just tell you what they like, which probably has very little to do with your book. They could be reacting to one little thing that bothered them, so they try to steer the whole story in a different direction.

Some can feel that something is off, but they don’t know what they’re picking up on. So they latch on to the first explanation that comes into their head and hand that to you like it’s the answer, when it may just throw you off course.

And then there are people who simply enjoy having opinions.

They may mean well, and they may even sound confident, but they really have no idea what your book needs. They’re just happy to tell you what they think.

So this is where a lot of writers, including me early on, get tangled up.

Writing Feedback is Not One Thing

We ask for feedback as if feedback is one clean, reliable thing.

And it just isn’t.

It comes through human beings, and human beings bring all kinds of baggage with them—their tastes, blind spots, favorite kinds of stories, and pet peeves.

Sometimes they’re reacting to your actual work, but a lot of times they’re reacting to the book they wish you had written instead, especially if they like giving opinions.

That doesn’t make them bad people. It just means that you, as the writer, have to be wiser than that.

I try to tell writers that a strong reaction is not always the same thing as a useful piece of feedback.

A person can be very sincere and still not really be helpful. They can really care about you and still give advice that sends your whole project sideways. They can even notice that something is wrong and still be completely off in how they suggest you fix it.

And if you don’t understand that from the beginning, it gets really easy to panic every time somebody says something to you.

That’s why you have to be careful who you ask and how you ask.

Find The Right Readers For Writing Feedback

Step number two: you have to find the right readers.

And I think this is where a lot of writers get far too casual.

They pour months or years of their life and their heart into a story and then just hand it over to whomever happens to be nearby.

Or they throw it up on some random website full of strangers and hope for the best.

This scares me to death for these writers because that’s a wonderful way to get your soup ruined and to totally discourage yourself from ever doing anything more with this book or getting more feedback.

So please, please, please be careful with this step.

Finding a Good Book Editor or Coach

I always recommend starting with a book editor or a good coach. Do your research and check their qualifications.

Do they have respect for the author’s work and know how to strengthen a book without trying to bulldoze it into their own vision? Do they have any real experience, or are they just very confident and very present online and easy to find?

And while you’re doing that research, don’t just glance at their website and call it good. Look a little bit deeper.

Look at what kinds of books they’ve actually worked on. Pay attention to whether they talk about helping writers develop their vision or whether everything starts sounding like the editor is the star of the process.

If they’ve posted advice online, notice whether it feels thoughtful and grounded or rigid and one-size-fits-all.

And even after doing all that, I would still be cautious.

I would ask for a sample edit or a small piece of feedback first. Let them touch just one chapter or even a few pages and see what happens.

Do they help you see the work more clearly? Do you come away feeling like your story is becoming more fully itself because of their help, or like someone just started turning your stew into their favorite casserole?

That small test can tell you a lot before you hand them the whole pot.

Helpful Writing Feedback Can Come From Readers Too

Feedback doesn’t have to come from an editor or coach.

You absolutely can get a lot of good data from a helpful reader. These are not necessarily professionals, but they do need to be regular readers of your genre.

If they don’t usually read at all, or they read different types of books than yours, they’re unlikely to be able to give you helpful feedback.

So where do you find readers like that?

One place that I’ve had surprisingly good luck is Fiverr.com. You can look for beta readers in your genre there, which matters a lot because a fantasy reader is going to notice different things than a romance reader, and neither one may help you much if you’re writing literary suspense or memoir.

You can read profiles, see what kinds of books they usually work with, look through reviews, and get a feel for whether they seem thoughtful and experienced with the kind of story you’re telling.

You can also almost always get samples from those folks on Fiverr. Ask them to look at a page or two or a half chapter and give you their thoughts on that, and that can tell you a lot about whether that person is a good fit for your book.

And yes, you do have to pay a little bit for it, but the prices that they have on Fiverr are super reasonable.

And I would much rather have somebody I’m paying a little bit of money to pay attention to my story than to just throw it on a website where people are likely to tear it apart or to give it to my friend who really doesn’t have time to read it anyway.

Ask For Writing Feedback In A Way That Helps You

Step three: once you’ve found the right people, set up your request for feedback in a way that actually produces useful information.

Because if you just hand somebody your story and say, “Well, tell me what you think,” you’re going to get a big messy pile of reactions and preferences and random opinions and half-formed impressions.

And now you’re standing there once again with everybody tossing ingredients into the soup.

You want better data than that.

Before you ask for feedback, get clear on what stage the book is in and what kind of help you really need.

Are you trying to find out whether the overall story is working? Whether the pacing drags in the middle? Whether the main character feels believable? Whether readers might be confused by the plot? Whether the ending satisfies?

Those are all very different questions.

And if you don’t know what you’re asking for, people will usually just default to whatever jumps out at them.

That’s why I think the key is to give your readers a form to fill out. It should have a few specific questions instead of just opening the floodgates and hoping something useful comes back to you. (You can find a sample form for free here.)

What I do is send people a list of questions to answer. This makes it a lot easier for them because now they know exactly what you’re looking for.

Be Considerate of Your Reader

We have to be considerate of our reader here too. It’s a big deal when you ask somebody to read your book and give you feedback.

You have to understand how they’re feeling.

I mean, imagine somebody giving you a story and asking for your feedback. You don’t want to hurt their feelings. You want to give them good feedback, and you’re probably a little nervous about it.

Most people who are not editors or coaches or beta readers on Fiverr—people who actually make some of their living that way—are going to feel some of that nervousness.

So we can help them and get better data back when we give them a form to fill out.

Now they know exactly what they need to do. There’s less nervousness involved. They don’t have to make the decision. They just answer the questions.

And for you, it gives you the actual data that you need from this read without giving you a bunch of extra stuff that’s just going to confuse you and lead you down the wrong road.

Better Questions Bring Better Writing Feedback

So what kind of questions can you ask?

In the free sample form I mentioned, some of the questions are things like:

Were there any areas where you felt confused? Where and why? And you ask them to point that out in the manuscript.
Were there places where you got bored? Where was that?
Did the characters seem real to you, or did any seem fake or flat? And you ask them to name those.
Where did you find yourself quickly turning pages to see what happened next, if anywhere? That’ll show you where your pacing is good.
Did you feel anything while reading this story? And if so, what and where did you feel that?
Were there any scenes you found yourself wanting to skip ahead? That means those scenes were probably boring and could be cut.
Did the ending feel satisfying to you?
Please share your thoughts and emotions after you finish the book. That’ll help you know whether it created the feeling you hoped it would create.

You can come up with more questions of your own based on the kind of feedback that you’re looking for.

But the point is that you’re giving your thoughtful reader clear directions to follow, and that helps both of you.

Focus on What the Reader Experienced

And I would also say this: try to ask questions that help you see what the reader experienced, instead of questions that invite them to rewrite the book for you.

“What did you feel?” “Where were you confused?” “Where did you lose interest?”

Those are all very different from “What should I do with this?”

Don’t ask those questions because it’s your job to figure out how to fix the issue, unless you’re talking to an editor or a coach.

If you are talking to an editor or coach, you can ask their opinion on your options.

But realize that the final decision is always up to you as the writer.

When Writing Feedback Actually Helps Your Book

Step four: once the feedback starts coming in, this is where things can get tricky because not all feedback is doing the same thing.

Some feedback really is going to help you make the book better. Some is going to try to turn it into a different book. And some of it is just bad feedback.

So first, there’s the feedback that can really help make the book better.

I love when this happens.

I’ve had some amazing editors and coaches in my life, and it’s really satisfying to see them get the book and help me figure out where it needs to be tightened, where things need to be explained a little bit more, where things could be cut, and that sort of thing.

This is the kind of feedback that helps you see something more clearly.

It’s like the fog parts.

Maybe the middle is dragging a little bit and your pacing needs to step up. Maybe a character’s reaction doesn’t feel believable in a scene, oe a scene that was supposed to hit emotionally is sitting flat on the page.

That kind of feedback can be incredibly helpful.

Questions to Ask About Feedback

So one of the things I would ask here is, “Does this note help me see a real weakness in the story more clearly?”

Another question is, “Does this make the book more fully itself or more effective at what it was already trying to do?”

And usually, I find the most important question is this one:

“Had I already sensed this at least a little bit before they said anything?”

Because very often, good feedback names something that was already bothering you in the back of your mind. It just hadn’t come forward yet, and you hadn’t seen it clearly.

Feedback can bring it to the forefront, and you can say, yes, I knew something was wrong there, but I didn’t quite know what it was.

That doesn’t mean every good piece of feedback is going to feel easy to you.

Sometimes helpful feedback stings a little. Sometimes it shows you that you’ve got a lot more work to do, and that can feel discouraging in the moment.

But if you feel that peaceful sense underneath it, that sense of yes, I know this needs to happen, that’s good feedback.

You can then take that feedback and do something good with it and make the book much better.

When Writing Feedback Pulls Your Story Sideways

Then there’s feedback that isn’t exactly bad, but it’s trying to turn your book into a different book.

And I think this is where a lot of writers get confused because this kind of feedback can sound smart. It can even sound exciting, and it can come from somebody who means well.

The problem is that it won’t really help your story become more itself. It pulls the story toward that person’s tastes, preferences, or ideas about what they would rather be reading.

Early in my writing career, one of the things I loved to do to get feedback was submit my story to novel-in-progress contests.

The Pacific Northwest Writers Association has one of these, and several other writing organizations around the country have these too. They’ll take novels in progress for writing competitions, and usually in these writing competitions, you’ll get feedback.

Getting Feedback from a Contest

There was one contest, I believe it took place in Arizona, where I got maybe two or three pieces of feedback on a novel in progress that I submitted.

This is one thing you learn from doing this. Some people will tell you that the dialogue needs work. Some people will tell you the dialogue is great.

So if you can get two or three pieces of feedback like that on a single story, you can find out what’s subjective feedback, which means what people are just saying because that’s what they like, and what’s really a problem in the story.

Because the feedback that is the same between the two or three or four people, however many you get, that’s what you want to pay attention to. It means every reader stumbled in that area.

But if one person says the dialogue was great and the other person says it wasn’t, or one person says the setting and descriptions were awesome and the other person says they weren’t, then you can take those with more of a grain of salt because that might be revealing somebody’s preferences.

My Experience with Feedback from One Contest

One time in an Arizona contest, I got two or three pieces of feedback. I was going through them all, trying to discern which was good feedback and which I needed to act upon for my story.

I discovered that one of the judges had proceeded to rewrite the beginning of my story as he would have liked it!

I remember thinking, why is this judge doing this? It was definitely bad form. It’s not what you do as a judge.

But he had totally rewritten the beginning. And as I was reading his beginning, I realized there was nothing wrong with it. It was actually good writing.

But that wasn’t the point.

It wasn’t setting up the kind of story that I was writing. I was writing an adult story, and the way he wrote it would have been a young adult story.

So this is what I’m trying to say here. Sometimes the feedback you get is going to look good to you.

You might think, well, that’s actually good writing. Yeah, I can see how that would work.

But you have to ask yourself: “Does this fit for my story? Does this fit for what I’m trying to do here?”

Is This the Right Feedback for Your Story?

This is where somebody who wants your quieter novel to be faster and more dramatic might not fit for you.

Or they want more romance or less romance or more plot twists or less introspection or a different tone or a different ending or a different kind of story entirely.

And again, some of those ideas might be perfectly fine ideas. This happens in writer groups a lot. But they’re good ideas for a different book.

And that’s the problem.

So this is where I think you have to ask, “Is this helping me write the book better, or is it asking me to write somebody else’s favorite book instead?”

That question is often appropriate because readers will often hand you preferences as if they are universal truths. Tune in to your gut and check the feedback against the heart of your story. See if it enhances it or muddies it up.

That’ll help you determine what to do with that feedback, whether you use it to change the story or just discard it.

When Writing Feedback Is Just Bad Feedback

Then there’s the bad feedback. This is the peanut sauce.

This is the note that is careless, badly matched, unfair, shallow, ego-driven, even mean, or just plain wrong for the kind of story you’re writing.

Sometimes it comes from somebody who has no business commenting on your story in the first place. That’s why I say be careful who you show your story to.

Sometimes it comes from somebody who just doesn’t understand story structure, but they speak with enormous confidence.

Sometimes it comes from a person who is projecting their issues all over your work.

And sometimes it comes from somebody who just likes criticizing things. There are people like that out there.

So when you get feedback, you can ask, “Is this note specific and grounded, or is it just reaction tossed into the pot?”

And sometimes, honestly, the question is simply this: “Does this feel like somebody’s trying to help, or does this feel like somebody enjoying the chance to dump something into my soup?”

Because there is bad feedback out there. It happens all the time, especially if you’re throwing your story on the internet. Not every piece of feedback deserves deep reflection. Some deserves a quick glance and a firm, nope, that’s not for this book.

It’s up to you to learn how to be very discerning about what you’re doing with the feedback you’re getting.

What Do You Do with Bad Feedback?

So this is the real work.

When feedback comes in, you’re not just asking, “What do I do with this?”

You’re asking what kind of feedback this is.

Is it helping me strengthen the story?
Is it trying to turn it into something else?
Could it ruin the pot if I let it?

This is the kind of sorting writers have to learn how to do.

And once you start doing that, feedback gets a whole lot less overwhelming.

But this still leaves us with one more problem.

Readers are often much better at sensing that something feels off than they are at telling you what to do about it.

So let’s talk about how to figure out the real issue.

Look Underneath The Writing Feedback

Now we come to step five, and I think this is one of the most helpful things a writer can learn how to do.

Here’s the kicker: Sometimes a reader is wrong about how to fix something, but right that something feels off.

A reader might tell you, for example, to cut a scene, add something exciting, or make a character more likable.

You can prevent some of this by giving your reader a form that asks specific questions, so they’re not telling you how to fix things. They’re just telling you what they experienced.

But some people will still naturally fall into this without realizing how difficult that can be for a writer. They’ll say, “Well, actually, this part was boring. I think you need to cut this.” Or, “I think you need to make this character more such and such.”

If you take that comment at face value, you may end up doing something that’s actually completely wrong for your book.

So what you need to do is slow down and look underneath the suggestion.

Because if you do that, you may realize they were reacting to a real problem. There’s an issue here.

And when you figure out what they really meant, then the fix is different than if you just do the fix that they suggested.

What’s the Real Issue Your Reader is Struggling With?

Maybe when they say, “This character needs to be nicer,” what they really mean is, “I don’t understand this character well enough yet to stay connected to them. I didn’t care about them.”

Or maybe when they say, “You need more action,” what they really mean is, “The tension dropped here, and I wanted to put the book down.”

So that’s the kind of thing you have to look at here. Don’t just ask, “Do I agree with this suggestion?” Because that might lead you to pass up feedback that could actually help you.

Instead, ask, “What experience was the reader having that made them say that?”

If you can talk to the reader, that really helps. I’ve been able to do that before, and that can clear up the real issue. You might ask them, “Why do you think I should cut that scene?” Or, “Why do you think this character needs to be nicer?”

If you can’t talk to them afterward, for whatever reason, then you have to try to imagine it yourself. You have to go back and read that section and see why they suggested what they did.

First ask yourself, what was the reader feeling? Were they confused, bored, frustrated, or emotionally detached?

Then ask where that reaction happened. Can you pinpoint the scene, the chapter, the conversation, the moment where the energy changed for the reader?

A lot of times when readers tell you what to fix, especially if they’re just readers and not coaches, the fix isn’t right because readers aren’t usually writers. Unless you’re dealing with a reader who is also a writer, they may feel the problem but name the wrong solution.

Once you can locate where the real problem is, then you have something real to work with.

Give Your Reader a Printed Version of the Story

That’s why I mentioned, when I was talking about the feedback form, to have them say where they felt what they felt. Then you can go back and check that.

In fact, I would encourage your readers from the beginning to make notes in the manuscript itself when their attention drifts or when they get confused. (Give them a printed form of the story so they can make their comments on the pages.)

Then you can go back to that place and ask what might have caused the reaction they had or the fix they were suggesting.

And one thing I would highly suggest is to get more than one reader to read your story, like I mentioned earlier. Then watch for repeated patterns. Repeated patterns are gold.

If one person says something odd, that may just be their taste. But if three different readers all got bored in the same chapter, or if they all felt confused at a certain section, that’s a big clue that something needs to be fixed.

The Bottom Line on Getting Writing Feedback

The key is to stop asking for vague reactions and start asking for useful reader experiences.

Where were they confused?
Where did they lose interest?
Where did they care more?
Where did the story pull them forward?

That kind of feedback gives you something to work with without handing your book over to every person who happens to wander by with a bottle of hot sauce.

Meanwhile, if you want more help actually moving forward with your story, come join us in Writer’s Brain Studio.

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