A Follow up on Critiques
I had a question from a subscriber, and I ended up going so long on the answer, I thought I'd post it here, too, as other folks may have a similar question.
Question: What’s your strategy for filtering feedback, do you have a mental checklist to separate useful critiques from noise?
Answer: Part of it comes over time and experience. Part of it is that opinions are like heads, everyone has one!
So, if you are going to do writing into the dark (WITD) (my preference in writing style), you have to trust yourself more than you trust anyone else. Not that you might not make mistakes with grammar or punctuation (brain is going faster than fingers, it happens!), but trust that you are a good storyteller. How do you tell that?
If you relate/relay something that happened in your day, something you saw, a story you overheard, something that was on the news....do people enjoy listening to it? Do you keep their attention? Or do they change the subject and/or go wandering off?
If you get engagement from the people, if they listen, if they ask questions, they laugh or they tear up or they get annoyed or angry (in other words, they feel the emotion that you are trying to get across with what you are telling them), then you are a good natural storyteller. If you are a natural storyteller, then you can trust yourself on that part of the writing.
Secondly, do you have experience in life? The more experience you have in life, the more you study, talk to, and try to understand why people might do something in a particular way the more experience you can gain vicariously. If you can put yourself in their shoes, and while you many not agree with their decisions, you can understand why they made that decision, then you will enrich your storytelling. Because then you will have the tool set to see why your characters may make various decisions based on their circumstances in your story, as well. And it will make sense to the reader as the story progresses and they will be drawn in to your fiction, just as they were drawn in to your related stories previously.
So, again, you are telling the story, and you are getting the reader's engagement and you are bringing them along for the ride!
So, what does this have to do with critiques/feedback?
Everyone has their own experiences that color how they perceive other people, including other people that only exist in stories. So, when you ask someone to critique your story, you are letting their perceptions into your world. If you aren't secure that you are a good storyteller, their perceptions can derail your story and make it their story. At which point all the critiques are bad. (i.e. are noise).
If you are secure in your storytelling (not that you think you are perfect, or that you have a MFA in writing or your brain is a dictionary - just the storytelling that we talked about above), then you can have someone (trusted) critique the story and look for those places where you know you have a weakness. Not the best at grammar? Cool, check it out, verify it, but also remember that fiction is not the same as essays or non-fiction scientific screeds, it is a reflection of everyday people's speech and mannerisms (that is why you study the people around you!) So it may not be grammatically correct for parts of it (dialog especially).
Maybe you know that you tend to race to the end of the story. Having someone point out that they didn't understand how the character got from A to Q, it may be a great question and very useful feedback! You can then go back and fill in the missing information. Questions as critique are very helpful. That lets YOU think about what the answer might be (or if it even needs to be answered) and continue with YOUR story.
Critiques that come with demands, or are made as statements with no recourse, then it's THEIR story that they are trying to get you to tell FOR THEM. That is noise.
There is never a reason for a demand in a critique/feedback (not that people/readers won't try!) (It’s like the old, “I have an idea for a story and you can write it and we’ll split the profits” that you will run into at some point if you are a good storyteller.)
It is the character's story/journey/adventure, it's your story that you are relaying to the reader/listener. And just like when you are telling the news story, or what you saw during your day, it's YOUR opinion, your retelling, and while they may not have seen it the same way, or heard it, or even believe what you said, it's still yours, and they don't get to gaslight you and say "no, that's not the way that I want you to tell it". (Okay, unless it's a theater coach or your boss at the magazine or newspaper!) They can say it's the most ridiculous story they ever heard (But the more they try to cut you down (and not ask questions about the story they just didn't understand) the more you know that they are jealous of you and angry at themselves). A critique should never be a personal attack on you and how you are doing something and what you may or may not believe, if it is, it's noise, tune it out.
Finding someone who can give good feedback, pointing out a weakness or a missing paragraph, or where you changed the name or eye color of the character is very valuable to putting out a story to be proud of. Finding someone that can ask good questions in their feedback that help you to think of improvements in your presentation of the story, to make it more clear to the reader, that is gold. But remember, you are the storyteller, and you get to decide the story you are telling.
Now, I didn't talk about people who plot their stories, because that is not my forte. If I try to plot my stories, my characters think I'm burying them in a grave plot, or putting them on a farm plot, and either way, the story is over. (If I plot a story, I will never finish it beyond that, because I already know how it ends, and now I'm bored with it). But, they too, are either storytellers, or not. And so the same applies. They either trust their storytelling skills, or they don't. Then they become ghost writers for other people's stories, as they take in more and more "advice" and "plot development" and change the story, until it isn't theirs anymore. Again, I'm not talking about copy editing - that can be a benefit to anyone's stories!
So to sum up:
1. Trust yourself as a storyteller
2. Listen to the feedback and ask if it is changing your story to their story, or if it is questions that help to clarify your story.
3. Cherish good critiquers
4. Get a good copy-editor (doesn't have to be professional, just someone who notices details!)
5. Enjoy and Repeat! On to the next story!
I will add something else to this good advice.
I joined a critique group about 16 months ago. In that time I have done 470 critiques and have had about that same number of critiques done on my chapters. I learned a lot about doing critiques as well as about my numerous critique partners.
When it comes to experience, like you say, each person has something different to give - and will give a different critique response and nearly everyone of them will be 'correct'. Get multiple critique partners and each will look at your work from a different angle, giving a very in-depth look at your writing.
Some of these writers are much better than me, but my unique way of looking at things will often find issues that they miss. (Though they will find a lot more issues in my writing.) Since we go in with the idea of helping each other, we look forward to both getting and giving critiques.
True... Your answer was far too long