On Critiquing

TLDNR WARNING: This is a longer post. Be careful.

In writing, revising, critiquing, etc. I have my own style. I know other writers who work differently, but I've run into enough circumstances that support my view that I think it might be worthwhile to share.

First, when asking for feedback it's important to know what you're asking for. Here are a few stages I've gone through:

1. "I've got this great idea!" - This is the stage that people are in who don't actually want to write a story. Sometimes when I give an unfinished story to someone I want them to finish the idea, tell me how to end. In short, I want someone else to make my idea great but I still want the credit.
2. "Just tell me it's good." - Sometimes I pass a story along and (no matter how complete it is), I just want them to tell me that it's working. I usually know there are problems, and I've got ideas on how to fix them. You might think this is a weak stage, I'm just fishing for compliments. But that's not quite what it is. I don't need someone to tell me that it's perfect and will make puppies weep in joy at the sound of it. What I want is someone to tell me, "You're not wasting your time. Keep writing." This stage can lead to problems if you don't know what you're asking for, but it's not necessarily a problem in itself. Everyone needs encouragement sometimes.
3. "I have a specific problem, and I need help finding the answer." - Sometimes I have a specific problem area with my story. I turn to someone else to help me solve the problem. Brainstorming is useful here, or just having someone to bounce the idea off of. But be careful how you approach it. If you ask someone for an answer, they'll give you the answer from what they know. If they don't know where you're headed with your story, then you might be in for a frustrating conversation.
4. "Tell me if this works." - This is a working stage for me. I want someone to read and point out big items, but I'm not done writing so I don't need fine details. This is very useful to me, so I'll expand on it below.
5. "Something doesn't work." - In this stage you know something is wrong, but you don't know what. It's useful to have someone else look at what's going on here. Just be careful how you approach it. You might not want your someone else to provide answers. You just need to know where to focus your efforts.
6. "Ignore the ------. I just want to to tell me what you think about -------." - Sometimes I need to see if a specific part of the story is working and I don't need my reader to tell me that I have typos. Feedback is always useful, but unless I give specific instructions I find that my readers usually will hone in on something that I didn't need them to fix.
7. "I need you to fix this." - You need to be careful with this stage. This isn't someone else's project, it's yours. But if you do turn to someone to play doctor with your work, be sure that it's someone you really trust.
8. "I'm ready for the full workup." - I never hit this stage until I've finished my rough draft, or even a few revisions. By this point I've done all that I can to make my story (or other writing project) the best I can.

These are only some of the stages you might go through, and you might do things differently. But the point is that readers don't know what you want back from them unless you tell them.

The next problem - You can't ask someone to read the same thing over and over again. I've heard some writers suggest that a reader is only good for one reading. So be careful of when you're bringing your readers in. I'd suggest keeping it to a minimum. Here's how it's worked for me. (I got this from Orson Scott Card's Characters and Viewpoint, and added something from Mary Robinette Kowal from Writing Excuses.)

I have one or two people reading along as I write (i.e. I give them each chapter as soon as you finish it), and I ask them just to respond as readers. Mark the manuscript when:

1. You don't understand something.
2. You had to re-read a sentence or section.
3. Something knocks you out of the story. (You're reading a long and say "I don't believe that." to yourself.)
4. Something is absolutely wonderful.

They shouldn't be telling me how to fix things, just where they had problems. Then if I need, I can ask probing questions about specific notes. This kind of response isn't natural for most people. You'll probably have to teach one person and hopefully they're willing to keep reading for you on many projects. Inexperienced readers won't mark anything, and experienced readers/writers will pick out details that you would have easily caught yourself when revising. These readers are just here to "Tell me if it works," so I can keep going. They also fill the function of "Just tell me it's good" encouragement because they're not bogging me down with too many details. I can address the major plot issues so that they don't cause me problems later, but I can also keep writing and the response doesn't interrupt my flow. And getting into a flow when writing is extremely important for me.

I call these my alpha readers.

Next I go to my beta Readers. I never move on to beta readers until I've written "The End" on a project. Here's my reason. I have a theory about creating. It goes something like this, "Nobody cares until the whole thing is done." And it was confirmed a bit in this Writing Excuses podcast.

Whenever I hand an unfinished story/project over to a reader, they immediately want to finish it. As readers (well as humans really) our brains are set up to encounter a new ideas, struggle with them, and find answers/resolution. We do it over an over every day of our lives. It's called learning. (Look at Piaget to see how it works.) Stories follow the same pattern. We are introduced to the ideas/characters (exposition), some conflict is introduced, and then it's resolved.

But when that resolution doesn't happen, our brain starts working overtime. Some writers use this effect on purpose to get their audience thinking. (Ever watched the final scene of Inception with the spinning top?) The same thing happens if you give your story to someone when it's not finished. If you ask them to help fix things, then they start fixing problems with no specific end. They have to make up an ending just to come up with a suggestion. It may not be a fully formed ending in their mind, but it's a direction that they're headed whether you wanted that or not. So when they respond to a problem area, their response may not fit with your story. This can be useful feedback in some cases, but more often I've found it frustrating because I'm trying to tell a story and all of a sudden my readers are telling me how to fix a different story. It's like someone interrupting you in the middle of a sentence and finishing the sentence for you...only they get it wrong. After they try to finish the same sentence three or four times, it's just not worth it.

Now I have writing friends (usually English majors) who ask for all this feedback at once, getting criticism for the entire book after every chapter. Steve Bohls is a great example of this type of writer, and I hope you'll be seeing a book out from him soon. But I always find myself stumbling when I hand out my work too early. Who knows, maybe that's fault that I've got to overcome as a writer. I have one reader that I trust that I use for alpha reading, and then when I'm finished I go to my English major friends.

"Nobody cares until the whole thing is done," has become something of a motto for me whenever I'm working on a creative project. It's not that they don't care that I'm working on something, or that they don't care about the idea. It's that a whole story is a single idea. Someone responding to only part of the idea, and their response to that part of the idea, is not going to be the same as their response to the whole idea.

So the bottom line is this: You should know what you're looking for in a response. Do you want someone to do your work for you? Do you want someone just to tell you that you should keep writing? Or do you want someone to give you useful feedback on how to express and refine the ideas that you've already got.

Each question is searching for a different answer. Be aware of which question you're asking.