For years I’ve been participating in, and facilitating, writing workshops. I’ve been doing this as a member of writers’ groups, a student and a teacher of writing. These experiences serve as the basis for this guide, which I hope will help you improve your ability to give unhelpful feedback. Mastering this skill is very useful in promoting your own career by impeding those of your fellow writers. In this guide, I offer a variety of strategies illustrated with examples borrowed from experts in the field. Note that you’re likely to encounter here several types of feedback you’re already well familiar with. Do not doubt their usefulness though. Remember, clichés become clichés for a good reason.
Strategy # 1
Be as nice as possible. Protect the fragile ego of the workshopping writer by praising her work unconditionally. In this way, not only will you not help your colleague to improve, but you’ll also avoid the unpleasantness of saying something uncomfortable. This is what I call a win-win situation.
Strategy # 2
Even if you absolutely cannot see anything wrong with the work, you should still identify weaknesses in it. This strategy works in exactly the opposite way to the previous one, but is no less effective. This tactic may not only prevent a better work than yours from getting published, but can also earn you a reputation as an insightful critic who notices problems that everyone else overlooks. Just be mindful not to employ this tactic in the same setting as the first one. In short, be generous but strategic about how you distribute your unhelpful feedback.
Strategy # 3
Give feedback that is as definitive and opaque as you can about things that in your opinion are not good, so that with any luck the workshopper will give up on writing to pursue a gardening passion: ‘The ending doesn’t work.’ Or even better: ‘Your story doesn’t flow’. Be careful to never support your claims with evidence from the work or with suggestions on how to improve it. Yet – to preserve your image as an insightful critic – justify your observations by referring to feelings: ‘It just doesn’t feel right…’ Such references will only enhance your reputation as a sensitive writer, all of which, of course, count towards your own brilliant literary career.
Strategy # 4
Ensure that you assess works of other writers through the prism of your own interests. An example: ‘Cats are fascinating animals with lots of behavioral quirks. Did you know, for example, that if your cat is near you and its tail is quivering that this is its way to say ‘I love you’? So, I wonder, why in your story does the cat appear in only one sentence? Can you elaborate more on the cat character?’
Strategy # 5
A detailed discussion of punctuation errors that will take up most of the workshopping session’s time can be very effective. To prolong this as much as possible, I suggest accompanying your feedback with citing at-length examples from the work, while also consulting your peers on their own comma-related opinions.
Strategy # 6
Bring the political into the personal. Make sure you vigilantly defend any minority’s rights. For example, if someone mentions that their character is Jewish, accuse them of being racist for defining people according to their ethnic background. Do not let writers get away with swear words either. Also object whenever your male colleagues express any complicated feelings about the other sex, unless their views are what you consider to be ‘correct’. Attack any works you deem to be ‘sexist’. On this last note, I think it is a shame that Milan Kundera and Henry Miller never attended writers’ groups. We could have set them straight, ensuring that such books as The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Tropic of Cancer never happened.
Strategy # 7
Lose no time in curtailing any work that is complex and challenging. Say it is ‘too confusing’, there are ‘too many jumps in time’ and everything needs to be ‘unpacked’. If the writer-in-question submits a short story, you can say: ‘This story is so rich. It really needs to be a novel.’ This strategy has a secondary benefit. It not only prevents your peers from producing something worthwhile, and possibly truly original, but also means that if your advice is taken on board, the next workshopping instalment will take much less mental effort to read.
Strategy # 8
Make it clear that some writing genres are more worthy than others, depending on your own preferences. For example, you can say: ‘Nobody should be writing crime fiction. But if you set your novel during mediaeval times on Venus and turn the killer into a Martian vampire, this may work.’
Strategy # 9
Strongly discourage writers from writing anything based on their personal experiences, particularly if these experiences are something you do not approve of: ‘Did you really need to get depressed and ruin your marriage? Why waste time on such a navel-gazing story when instead you can produce a book about the struggle of Congolese people?’
Strategy # 10
Wave around the well-worn flag of ‘show don’t tell’, allowing no exceptions. In this way you’ll eliminate any budding Gustave Flauberts, Alice Munros or Joan Didions well before they bloom their showing-and-telling blossoms.
Strategy # 11
Do not hesitate to use the workshopped works as springboards for memories dear to your heart: ‘This ship journey to England you described is so evocative. It reminds me of the time when my parents took us to…’, or for airing opinions you enjoy sharing ‘I can definitely appreciate your character’s struggle with unemployment. In my view, our government needs to develop a much better policy on…’
Strategy # 12
Whether you workshop fiction or non-fiction, do not let writers get away with putting in any ‘difficult’ characters, the kind you personally would not want to invite to a dinner party. In your feedback, assess these characters as you would prospective friends: ‘The main character really annoyed me. Why did she have to be so mean to everyone?’ I wonder how Nabokov got away with Humbert Humbert…
A closely related strategy is to generally persuade writers to ‘lighten’ their works. After all, the last thing you’re interested in is to nurture a future Shakespeare in your writing group. An effective way to prevent such a problem is to say in your feedback: ‘Your writing is too dark and depressing. You’d do better to write something uplifting next time.’
A concluding remark
If you identify other experts at giving unhelpful feedback in your workshopping group, run for your (writing) life.
Thank you dear Lee for writing this very much needed piece. There are many, in this business to do with writers and publishing, (besides teachers of writing workshops), who are insensitive, ignorant, or envious . If they don’t understand you or your work, cannot pigeon-hole you, or if you’re different–they will be ill-mannered or downright hostile, instead of kind and helpful. Many years ago, when my agent died, I sent a manuscript to one of our so-called prominent literary agents–the manuscript was returned with a note saying she thought the book would work better if I re-wrote it in the first person. I went to a lot of trouble and did so. When I sent it to her, it was returned with a note three months later, saying she thought the book would really work better if it was written in the third person! Another one, returned my m/s with yellow sticky posts all over where she had written: “She’s trying to show off how much she knows”, “I don’t believe her memoir was a best seller” (it had been on The Age best seller list for several weeks). And so on. And then there are the publishers. One wrote to say my writing was flat. Another one wrote it was “over heated” etc. Perhaps these insecure, frustrated people could keep this in mind, from Marcel Proust about writers: “Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They have composed our masterpieces. We enjoy lovely music, beautiful paintings, a thousand delicacies, but we have no idea of their cost, to those who invented them in sleepless nights, spasmodic laughter, rashes, asthma, epilepsies, and the fear of death, which is worse than all the rest.” It’s not easy being a creative person.
Victoria, thank you! And thank you for sharing your stories and how lucky you didn’t listen to anyone and went on publishing 3 great books!
I must have been extra successful at all these techniques, as I haven’t nurtured a single Shakespeare as yet – Peter Carnavas, yes – and others (see the Successes page on website). But Shakespeare, no – not yet anyway!
This is hilarious, Virginia!
Thank you for a wry and insightful view of ‘bad’ feedback. As convenor of a small writers’ group, two of whom have gone on to be published, I definitely relate to these pitfalls, especially Strategy 9 ‘Wave around the well-worn flag of ‘show don’t tell’, allowing no exceptions.’ I write in the omniscient narrator style, and dare to have more than one point of view. This has engendered some interesting feedback, such as ‘but who is seeing the black clouds of impending doom’ ? (a cliche, but you know what I mean). Fortunately I have survived only because most in my group now understand my voice, and have on the whole supported me, so that with their encouragement (and some good feedback as well) I’ve completed my novel, ‘Capriccio’, and hope to be published.
Thank you very much, dear Dina, and your group sounds good – self-reflective. So glad you finished your novel.
Hi Lee,
Thank you very much for this piece. It is very funny, entertaining and insightful.
I’ve recently been asked by a very young writer to critique some of her work. While I’ve had a lot of journalism published I’ve not had any success with fiction as yet. She has read some of my unpublished work and she likes it, feels that I will ‘get’ her work. We certainly do seem to have the same sense of humour and are on the same wavelength in many ways do perhaps she was being smart in approaching me.
Anyway, as I am very fond of her, I reluctantly agreed, unsure that I have the skills to provide her with any meaningful feedback and afraid that I will not be any help at all. I will print out your piece, underline the bits that most resonate and have it sitting beside me as I work through her manuscript 🙂
Thank you again.
Darren, thank you, great to hear my post spoke to you! You sound so humble and this actually makes me think you’ll probably be a very good, sensitive reader of that young writer.
Feedback’s a can of worms! It can be so hard to take, and you need a thick skin. You need to divorce briefly from your work, and not take the criticism personally.
Sifting through feedback for what to keep and what to discard can feel like searching for a lost earring in a vat of mud. I’ve heard horror stories of inappropriate feedback, where new writers have been scared off writing for a long time by unnecessarily cruel feedback. I’ve seen the opposite, too—where a bit of praise for what is good about the work along with some constructive criticism can take someone’s writing from ‘meh’ to ‘wow’!
It boils down to being careful about who you trust with your work. I agree with the first point you made here, too. Many times I hear writers getting annoyed at negative feedback, when if they took some of it on board, their writing would improve!
Louise, thank you for your – always – insightful comments. And yes, I heard (and witnessed, and experienced) many horror stories too. Hence the inspiration for this post 🙂