Creative Writing and Criticism: Getting Critiques
Can you handle critiques of your creative writing?
If you want to be a better writer, you have to be able to handle criticism, even if it’s not constructive. There will be times when less-than-tactful or totally useless feedback falls into your lap, and you can either become defensive or you can read between the insults and find glittering gems of advice.
Everybody has an ego, and writers often find themselves in an usual position to receive reams of criticism. When your mom says she loves your short story, you feel special. When a literary agent tells you it’s garbage, you stifle a sob. When some bloke tells you you’re a hack, what you’d like to do is whip out your hacksaw. But should you use it on your critic or on your own writing?
The sad truth is that nine times out of ten, the negative feedback you receive will be far more accurate and beneficial than the positive.
The Scenario: Getting Feedback on Creative Writing
You post a poem on a creative writing forum and hope for the best. Then, you sit there refreshing the window every thirty seconds as you wait for someone to come by and give you some valuable input — something you can use; something that makes you feel hopeful. Over the course of a week, you receive the following four comments:
- Wow. Great rhymes. This poem is amazing!!!
- This poem uses alliteration well. The rhymes could be more sophisticated.
- You’re a terrible poet. Don’t quit your day job.
- The alliteration distracts the reader from the fact that this poem is suffering from adjective addiction. Less description, more action. You tell and poets must show. Plus, the subject matter is trite and trendy.
The first three commentators didn’t give you a whole lot. Number one stroked your ego. Number two was in a hurry, and number three was a flame-thrower. Number four took the time to read your piece but was somewhat nasty, haughty, and left you feeling defensive and offended. You work hard at alliteration, and you love adjectives. And what does everyone mean by show don’t tell?
Five Types of Critics
Let’s look five different types of critics to find out who can help you the most and who won’t offer anything useful. We’ll look at friends and family, fly-by reviewers, flamers, tactless critics, and experts.
The Five F’s: Friends & Family Find Few Faults
There are some people, and most of them are your friends and family, who will never find fault with your work. Maybe it’s because they love you. Maybe it’s because they don’t have the backbone to tell you your story sucks. Or, maybe they know you’ve got a gnarly ego and might lash out at them if they honestly criticize your work. If you need a spiritual lift, go ahead and ask mom, but if you want to become a better writer, you’ll have to go outside of your inner circle.
You can get a writing critique in an online forum, in a writing workshop, or you can hire a professional to do a critique of your work. If you’re lucky, you might receive helpful feedback from an editor to whom you’ve submitted a piece of writing. But don’t count on loved ones for objective criticism because they are ill-equipped to be truly objective.
Avoid Fly-Bys
Some folks are just too busy. Sure, I’ll review your poem. Here, let me have a look. Great, good job, work on your rhymes. Have a nice day. You need a critic who’s going to tell you exactly what’s wrong with your writing. Otherwise, how are you going to fix it? Find someone who will take the time to work with you and elaborate on what you need to work on.
Ignore the Idiots
You know the type – never has anything nice to say about anyone or anything. The punk-ass who could use a few courses in anger management. These flamers abound in online forums and message boards because they can spew their venom behind anonymity and disguise it as a creative writing critique. They’re not going to offer much other than you suck and so does your poem. Even if this is true, the feedback is useless because there’s nothing in it that you can use to make improvements, and therefore you cannot grow as an artist. Don’t get caught up in the drama! Ignore and move on.
Tolerating the Tactless
The tactless critic has valuable feedback but overlooks the positive aspects of your work. This individual will give you a thorough writing critique complete with grammar and punctuation advice. The drawback is that these people lack sensitivity and cannot see the good in others. They probably suffer from a severe case of insecurity coupled with a sense of entitlement or intellectual elitism. The good news is that they’re great at pinpointing problems in others, which is why you need to harness your ego, reign in your emotions, and accept what they say with tight lips and a thank you.
Embrace the Experts
Experts will take the time to really read your work. Their feedback will be a healthy mixture explaining both the good and bad qualities of your writing, and they’ll never criticize you – just your work, and that’s important. Adore them, bake them cookies, and buy them lots of gifts. Keep them close and write down everything they say. Then, incorporate their feedback into your writing. That’s when you’ll truly start to understand the value of constructive criticism.
Be Receptive to Critiques – Not Defensive
Ultimately, your job during the critique process is to listen and be receptive. If mom says it’s great, smile and say thank you. Don’t go trying to get her to find the flaws. Don’t even bother with the fly-bys, since they have better things to do anyway. Whatever you do, never get sucked into any type of flame war that involves personal insults. Better to ignore meanies and walk away with your head held high and the knowledge that they are total neanderthals.
Look instead to the people who actually have something negative but helpful to say. In other words, look for people who are constructive. These might be rude people who can’t find anything redeeming about your creative writing or they might be considerate individuals who know the glass is both half full and half empty. It is, however, the negative feedback that will help you hone your craft and give you the tools you need to target troubled areas of your writing, which are the areas that you should focus on improving.
Have you ever given or received helpful writing critiques? Do you have any special techniques or strategies that you use when you receive harsh feedback (or when you have to give it)? Who do you turn to when you need to get your creative writing critiqued? Share your thoughts, insights, and experiences in the comments.
Melissa Donovan is a website designer and copywriter. She writes fiction and poetry and is the founder and editor of Writing Forward, a blog packed with creative writing tips and ideas.
Wow, Melissa, this post is filled with awesome tips and advice!
I love it when I receive rejection letters and the editor has pinpointed WHY my query/article was rejected. Only once out of the times I’ve submitted my poetry have I received any feedback to actually help. The editor critiqued my poem! She told me what was wrong with it, what I could do to improve it, and specifically where I had failed in creating a successful poem. Now, THAT made my day!
@Michele, I was lucky to get a lot of great feedback in school. There are also some forums online but I found you have to shop around to find really good ones. My experience is that most of them are more aimed toward compliments than improvements.
Finding someone objective really helps. People who either support or destroy your work without any basis for it are probably folks to stay away from when seeking some review of your work. Love thos post. You really touched on a good many, very important issues when it comes to crtiticism. The anger management part is very true. Thanks for the good work. It shows a strong basis for what to look for and what to avoid when finding someone to review a writer’s work. Surely someone needing anger managment can destroy an aspiring writer’s confidence and someone who goes to easy can intill them with false confidence. None of us need that in thise competitive business.
That’s a good point, John. If a new or young writer gets feedback from the wrong sort of reader, it could do some long-term damage. A writer has to learn how to filter the feedback and separate the useful from the useless. For example, it can difficult to discern whether a particular bit of feedback is just one person’s opinion (i.e. “I don’t like this character, she’s boring”) or if it is going be the general consensus (“20 pages of description is way too much”).
Thanks for such an awesome post.
I love giving feedback. My only concern is how the writer will take it. I was recently asked by a cyberbuddy to critique her manuscript. I explained that I could provide her with three kinds of critiques. 1)Overall content: my thoughts and feelings upon reading the story, flow of the piece. 2)Copy edit: grammar, typo’s, excess words, general structure. 3)Combine the two.
Sometimes we forget that there are different types of critiques and each one is valuable in its own right. Also, we need to determine the expectations of the critiqued before we plunge in with something they don’t really want to hear.
I always preface a critique like this by stating they should weigh my comments against what they know about writing and what they know about their manuscript. I also tell them that hearing negative feedback can be hard, but not to take it personally and that I am but one of many perspectives. Then I use the three prong approach: positives, areas that need work, then another kudos with a few words of encouragement sprinkled on top.
Most people are appreciative. I’ve only had one person get upset. He took his ms, threw a few jaded remarks my way and disappeared. I guess some people really don’t want to know…
I also love getting feedback. Any kind. Every single comment is valuable to me, even if they are from literary crab apples.
.-= Cat Woods´s last blog ..Pacing =-.
I’m always concerned with how writers will handle feedback, which is why I’ve basically stopped doing critiques for anyone who is not a paying client. It seems like people who pay for critiques are serious about finding the flaws in their own writing and working to improve their work. In college, my fellow students were gracious recipients of critiques as well, but those days are long gone. I do find that when people want critiques “as a favor,” they tend to accept the feedback begrudgingly, even if they’ve sworn and promised they can handle the negative along with the positive. It’s a shame too, because most fledgling writers could make great strides if they’d just heed feedback and kick it up a few notches. Ah well, that’s the way of the world, I suppose. Most people just want compliments. For those who welcome critiques, such as you and I, the world is our oyster
Great articles about critiques. I’d add that hard as it is to endure criticism, I’ve always found in workshops that the better the particular piece of writing was, the more I had to say about it both good and this-could-be-better-if. I also asked more questions about those stories than about the ones that were just so…um…innocent that what the writers really needed was just encouragement to keep writing until they reached a point where they could begin to see themselves more objectively.
I also learned from my mother (through rigorous experience) that the people who respect you will give you more of the this-could-be-better responses. I’m a little suspicious of people who just say, “This is wonderful and perfect.” My *mother* would *never* disrespect me that way. lol
I find several types who tend to say “This is wonderful and perfect.” They are people who don’t want to hurt your feelings, are afraid there will be backlash, who don’t want to take the time to read closely and put together thoughtful feedback, and who aren’t astute enough to provide an insightful critique. I’ve been lucky and have mostly gotten great feedback in workshops and elsewhere, but I’ve definitely seen these types around
I do think that giving critiques takes a lot of practice. I was fortunate to have a creative writing instructor who offered rigorous training on the critiquing process. What I learned in that class was priceless!
I love your style of writing. Very readable and relevant.
I find criticism sometimes very hard to take on the initial offering but when I get over my ‘inner child’ screaming , I am getting better at accepting advise / criticism. recently I sent a piece to a friend from my writing group and she didn’t ‘get’ the ending………………I was shocked at first and put it away . Later when I had massaged me wee fragile ego I read the piece and found I had forgot to put in the ending………………. in future I will still my self- criticism and learn to believe in myself and then maybe I will grow and use critiques constructively.
Thanks so much Michelle! Remember, it’s not a critique of you, but the work itself. I take critiques pretty well simply because I don’t take them personally. I don’t even beat myself up over typos anymore! Keep at it!
Good post, thanks. I would add another category to be wary of – the Pet Peeves Person. “You’ve started a sentence with ‘And’.” “You’ve split an infinitive.” And so on.
I don’t mind the pet peeves person. I’ve actually learned a few grammar rules because people with pet peeves have expressed their thoughts. And in some cases, when I looked up whatever they were criticizing, I found it wasn’t a rule at all (ha ha).
Simply put, English teachers are some of the best people to go to.
I agree, but I had a couple of English teachers who weren’t much help so it’s still important to choose your critique partners carefully.