One Way to Write

Handling Feedback

"How-to appropriately handle feedback. Feedback can come in negative and positive forms, it's important you know how to handle each" - MalXuniverse

Typically, when we first share our work with others, we are dying for feedback. And then we get it. Depending on how the feedback sounds, we may toss our laptops in the trash and forever give up writing or plop ourselves in front of the computer and write for the next four hours.

Types of feedback you'll see:

Praising (Positive):

"I love this book."

"Your descriptions are amazing."

"This is so realistic."

Critical (Positive or Negative):

"This sucks."

"The romance is moving way too fast."

"I think this needs improvement, and here's how you could do it."

"I love this intro, but I think it would be more effective at the end of the chapter."

Not Feedback:

"Oh my god, Becky is such a bitch."

"Hahahahaha!"

"Yessss, slay!"

"I don't like the way he's acting towards her."

"Gays go to hell."

What to do with praising feedback:

Lena uses it as band-aids to put over her low self-esteem.

Lena also uses it as motivation to keep writing.

To a lesser extent, Lena uses it to continue doing what she does well (i.e. keep writing relatable characters if that's what I'm praised for).

What to do with critical feedback:

I don't know how others define positive and negative critical feedback, but I define it like this: Positive critical feedback is given with the intention to help you improve. Negative critical feedback is given with the intention to express an opinion or complain. For me, though, critical feedback, whether positive or negative, is handled the same way.

Say you get this feedback: "The romance is moving too fast. It feels unrealistic that they would be making out now when they hated each other last chapter. You should slow things down."

That's pretty straightforward. Not only has this person stated the flaw (romance too fast), they've given a reason and evidence as to why (unrealistic, events last chapter versus now). What do you do? Consider it and possibly edit. I'll get more into that later.

Now, imagine you get this feedback: "Lolol wut? They hated each other last chapter and now they're making out? 🙄"

As authors seeing this feedback, our gut reaction is to shoot out our porcupine spikes and hiss like a vampire burned from the light. But you know what? This feedback communicates the same thing as the first example.

Some people are readers. Some are critics. Some are both.

The people who are just readers feel a certain way about what you've written but may not have the literary knowledge to helpfully point out why. They can often come across as passive aggressive and rude.