How to Give Feedback Well
If you’ve spent any time on my website or spoken with me about writing at all, you may have heard me mention the literary circle of life, or “Circle of Write” as I have begun to call it: Every writer needs an editor, every editor needs a reader, and every reader needs a writer. This feedback loop is vital to the writing process, which is why readers, editors, and writers need to learn how to give feedback well. Let’s start with talking about bad feedback.
What bad feedback looks like
Bad feedback comes in many forms, but it tends to have one or more of the following characteristics, which all work to make the feedback unhelpful. Bad feedback…
… is overtly negative.
… offers no solutions.
… criticizes the creator, not the creation.
… frames opinions as fact.
… is not timely
What good feedback does instead
Good feedback will praise strengths and pick at weaknesses. Good feedback doesn’t tear a person down, but equips them to improve in the next draft. Good feedback…
… finds opportunities to point out things the creator has done well. There’s an anecdote that suggests you need three compliments to cancel out an insult. Upon researching for this blog post, the results I found suggest the ratio is skewed even further than that, with the Harvard Business Review suggesting that leaders ought to shoot for almost six praises for each criticism. Obviously, this doesn’t mean we should sugarcoat feedback to avoid making someone uncomfortable, but it does mean that focusing too much on weaknesses is more likely to demotivate a person. Even if you find yourself reviewing a work that you earnestly don’t like, you can still praise the writer for their courage to share work with others, which is a feat of vulnerability in itself.
… suggests ways to improve major problems. You are probably familiar with the kind of brain teaser that requires some kind of lateral thinking. It’s really easy for our brains to get stuck on a particular idea of how something should be done, and being told “that won’t work,” doesn’t usually help us get over that idea—as anyone who’s guessed the same wrong answer multiple times in Charades can attest. When you point out something that isn’t working in a person’s writing, leave some kind of suggestion for what you think would work better. Your idea may not be perfect, but it could provide the push needed to get the brain going in another direction.
… separates the work from the author who made it. This is a complex point that likely requires its own post altogether (maybe I’ll get there someday). I’m treading towards “Death of the Author” territory, which is, ironically, not my intent. What I’m saying here is that your criticism of a work should be done in good faith, dealing with strengths and weaknesses of the work itself, not straying towards ad hominem attacks. The mistakes in a written work are not a reflection of the writer’s value as a person or their potential as a writer. Even if a work feels very weak and ineffective, it could be something experimental the writer is trying out, so avoid assuming a bad work is the result of a bad writer.
… leaves space for creative differences. When participating in something as innately subjective as writing and editing, there’s a spectrum of fact and opinion. Some examples of this might be:
Fact: xylophone isn’t spelled z-i-l-a-f-o-n-e.
Debatable fact: honor isn’t spelled h-o-n-o-u-r.
Opinion: Using em-dashes is clearer than commas when writing asides.
Language has few, if any, hard and fast rules. Depending on whether you are a descriptivist or a prescriptivist, that idea is either super obvious to you or makes you want to throw a punch. Whenever possible, opinions on grammar, usage, and so forth should be decided using organizational style guides. Otherwise, give the writer your thoughts on why a passage or phrase isn’t working, and trust them to make the final call.
… clearly communicates a timeline and expectations for when feedback will come. Everyone is busy, and it takes time to read something and really dig into ways it can improve. If you’re working a side-hustle as a freelancer or just helping a friend in your spare time, it can be hard to find the necessary margin to get feedback to a person quickly. That’s why it’s so important to set expectations at the start. If you know you won’t even be able to look until the first of the month, communicate that. If you get started and quickly realize the project will take longer than you expected, communicate that too. Before accepting any project, make sure you know what your client expects; if it is unreasonable, have that conversation early on.
Conclusion
Remember that the purpose of editing is to make writing better. Every bit of feedback you provide should be helpful above all else. When you work with another writer, you’re a collaborator, not a competitor. The more good writing that makes it into the world, the better off we all are. Stay tuned for the next post: how to receive feedback well.
What about you?
Did any of these tips really speak to you? What’s the worst feedback you’ve ever gotten? Can you think of a person you’ve worked with who consistently gave good feedback? Leave a comment below and let’s chat about it!
