“It’s so hard to actually disregard advice that doesn’t work for you. The minute you start thinking about it, it’s ingrained in your head.” –Rose
Graphic by Peg Ihinger
I decided I wanted to give a more detailed response to this than I gave in the comments two weeks ago, because taking writing advice is often more complicated issue than it initially seems.
This is because writing advice is given by people, who have opinions and personal tastes, and who vary both in their ability to express what they think is wrong and in their skill at coming up with a recommendation that fits the writer’s style and story. People—including editors—can be very good at telling that there’s some problem, but not good at spotting exactly what the problem is. Or they can be good at explaining the issue, but bad at suggesting an appropriate fix. Or they can object to a “problem” that only bothers them, not anyone else.
Some examples: One of my very early beta-readers had internalized a lot of writing “rules” he’d been taught for writing college essays. Like “never use passive voice.” He flagged proper uses of passive voice (“George, having been beaten up by thugs, barely made it to the hospital”), along with every correct use of the subjunctive (“If I were you, I wouldn’t do that”), and every perfectly fine progressive tense (“Janet was sitting in the library when Carol finally found her.”) [Can you tell that I’m still a bit peeved, even forty years later? I thanked him politely and ignored his advice.]
In another case, a beta-reader insisted that I needed to provide a page of physical description for every character the minute they walked on stage, regardless of how unimportant they might be (“a boy in a bellhop’s uniform” wasn’t enough, even if he appeared, grabbed the luggage, and left the story forever), or whether the viewpoint character could even see them (“someone came through the door behind him” got a ten-minute lecture on how this critic really needed to know what the arriving character looked like. In this case, I added a bit more description sometimes, though nowhere near a page, but I didn’t change descriptions of the bellhop or the guy behind the viewpoint character.)
In a third case, six different critiquers each found a problem with a particular scene—pacing, characterization, style, action, clarity…I don’t remember what they all were, but each person objected to something quite specific and quite different. The author (not me) eventually decided that the real problem was that the scene didn’t belong in the story at all, and cut it.
And a final example is one I call a clock-face problem. The author attempted to convey something very specific—like aiming for the twelve at the top of the clock face. What they hit was the three, halfway down the right side. The critiquer can tell that the author didn’t mean to hit the three, but instead of simply saying “You hit three o’clock here, and I don’t think that’s what you meant,” the critiquer assumes the writer meant to hit six o’clock, and recommends a bunch of changes to get the story “back on track.”
This last is particularly insidious and discouraging if the writer doesn’t recognize the critic’s assumptions. The critic has correctly tagged “There is a problem here,” but totally misread what the problem is. The fact that they’re half right (there is a problem) lends credibility to their incorrect recommendations (how to hit six o’clock instead of the twelve the writer wanted).
There are two things writers can do about these problems. The first is to be proactive: Tell beta-readers and crit groups what kind of comments you are and aren’t looking for. Some writers like getting suggestions, because they have no trouble ignoring ones that don’t fit. Me, I prefer observations (“You have very little physical description of your characters”) and reader reactions (“The character’s reaction bothered me”), so I can figure out whether I want to do anything about it, what to do, and how much of it to do.
The other thing is after-the-fact analysis. When you get comments, start by asking “Is this a description of a problem, or a recommendation for how to fix something?” If it’s a recommendation for how to fix something, or based on following some rule, translate it into an observation if you can. Then decide if it’s something you did on purpose, but it didn’t quite work (and now you have to figure out how to fix it your way), something that maybe needs tweaking, or something that’s a them-problem.
I once had a beta-reader who was very bad at articulating problems. When he said “Have ninjas jump through the window here!” I had to stop and translate it as “I was bored because there’s no action,” and when he said “This guy should punch a wall or start swearing” it actually meant “I want to see this guy’s emotional reaction to whatever just happened.” This particular critic was very good at putting his finger on problem points that nobody else caught, but very, very bad at articulating the underlying issues and at making appropriate suggestions. Once I figured out I just needed to translate his suggestions, he was an extremely useful beta-reader.
Ultimately, it’s your name on the story, so it’s your call. If you find you can’t get “helpful” advice-that-isn’t out of your head, you may need to pull back from getting critique. Or you can back off from asking those particular people for comments. I know several writers who don’t use beta-readers of any kind until the very last stages of the final draft, and at least one who only lets the editor see the work until publication. Or you can look for a positive group that emphasizes support and encouragement, rather than criticism. It is possible to figure it out on your own. It takes longer, but it may work better, depending on the writer.
I’ve found that approach—they’re right something’s wrong, they’re usually wrong how to fix it—makes most feedback super useful for me.
“Tell beta-readers and crit groups what kind of comments you are and aren’t looking for.” Excellent advice.
I gave up on the last crit group I was part of when Covid hit. But I was already getting aggravated, because I wanted to know if a story “worked” for the readers and if the theme came through, and what I got was tons of “I’d change ‘happy’ to ‘glad’ here.”
Too bad I didn’t have the above advice in mind at that time.
I once got a critique from an online group that was dozens of pages directing me to change sentences with occasional bursts of larger vision. Impossible to wade through.
“When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
—Neil Gaiman
You remind me that usually if someone tells me to cut something, I know that means it isn’t written in well enough and set it up better.
I generally need to know what I haven’t made clear (because it was clear *to me*.)
When I was in Critters there was a certain amount of “I don’t like this kind of story, you should have written something else.” One of those still sticks in my craw, all these years later. He wanted me to remove magic from the setting, which struck me as less fixing the story I had written and more throwing it away and writing a whole new one….
I never found a use for these. You could take it as “you aren’t handling the magic in a compelling enough way”–but I’m not sure I would, because I think it’s possible *no* story with magic would work for that reader. (I personally wouldn’t have done the critique. “Don’t critique genres you hate” strikes me as a good general rule.)
But at least they didn’t make me particularly insecure. I saw a different writer (and someone whose work I liked a good deal) get tied into horrific knots by “kill your darlings.” I wanted to bop the person who said that to her, because it got interpreted as “if you like it, it must be bad.” I don’t find it useful either but I’m stubborn enough to just roll my eyes and go on. Maybe the interrogation scene I did recently isn’t good after all; I hope I can figure that out, if so; but I REFUSE to take the fact that I really like it as evidence against it!
If your writing doesn’t please you, it is unlikely to please anyone else.
A friend of mine is working on a story where the plot and character dynamics are full of tropes that I really, really don’t see the appeal of, and whenever she asks me for writing help I have to try so hard not to give the “what if this was a completely different story/written the way I would write it?” type of advice.
Oh, yes. I remember that in Critters. The argument that since my world had manticores and basilisks, it could not possibly have only a few wizards. The suggestion that I plop a prologue of the history of the world with wars and epidemics in front. The claim that I shouldn’t make the world Christian because polytheism offers so many more possibilities — without any concrete claim about what in my story was lacking for the want of those “possibilities.”
I ran into the clock-face problem. Our hostess identified the problem and then provided an extremely helpful evaluation of my story.