And Breathe…(Or ‘When the Feedback isn’t what you Expected’)

I’m used to getting feedback - heck, I’ve been writing long enough to have received a ton of the stuff! Some of it helps, some of it hurts. None of it is useless.

But I’ve had some feedback recently about my current WIP that has left me in a bit of a tizz.

I always apply the Accept, Amend, Reject ‘rule’ to anything I receive. Accept usually applies to spellings, grammar, the fact that you’ve changed the character’s name/favourite food/eye colour halfway through and suchlike. These need to be changed, no question. Amend usually comes about because there’s a suggestion for something that might work better to express what you’re trying to portray, like a character’s motivation, or a way to add more tension to a scene. The trick with this kind of feedback is to take on board the suggestion if you can see the merit in it for your story, but write the changes yourself rather than immediately accepting the feedbacker’s own words. Reject needs you to have some confidence in your own abilities as a writer, because often feedback will express an opinion rather than a concrete improvement - it’s often what the reader would prefer to read, rather than what you want to write or how you want to write it. Remember that you - as the author - have every right to say ‘no’ to anything that is given in feedback, because it’s your story.

So why, having applied these ‘rules’ to feedback so often in my previous writing, am I suddenly in a tizz now?

Well, I had a particular scene introducing a new character, and I wanted to see how the characterisation went down. You need to know that my current WIP has at its heart a thief, so the world she operates in is not going to be easy or nice, but I had intended the new character to be fairly benevolent and businesslike. The initial feedback I received was that both the scene and the character were far too cosy. I was writing about thieves - their world needed to be gritty and rough and there needed to be more tension between the characters, to make them really push and pull against each other in their dealings.

(It wasn’t all ‘negative’ feedback! There was a lot of good stuff too, re world building, dialogue, characterisation etc, but the issues above were the main ones)

I could see that there might be some mileage in upping the stakes for my MC and developing her angst in dealing with the new character. So - very unusually for me while first-drafting - I had a go at rewriting the same scene to knock out some of the cosiness.

Again, there was much positive feedback, but this new version was deemed as still lacking drive and tension and urgency, and it’s still too cosy. One particular piece of feedback was ‘not engaging enough for children’. I’ll be honest - that really stung, but I’ll come to that in a mo.

I can see how making this scene grittier and rougher might work, but I don’t think I can push it as far as the feedbackers were suggesting because ultimately, this is for children. I’m not averse to putting darker moments into my stories for middle grade readers - if you’ve read any of my published novels you’ll know they can definitely take a dark turn at times. The fact that multiple folk mentioned the tension/conflict aspect suggests there is definitely room for improvement on that front, although there were so many suggestions as to how to achieve it! I began to wonder how many of the suggestions were what the feedbackers would like to see happening in the story, because their own writer’s genes had kicked in to suggest how they would have solved the issue? I know I can be guilty myself of reading something and seeing how it could be taken in a totally different direction, so I can imagine that others are the same! But I’ve now got so many possible options suggested, I think that for the moment, I’m going to have to stick the whole ‘grittiness/tension aspect’ into the amend pile for some serious thought and consideration while I tackle the rest of the story, cos I don’t want to overthink this and get bogged down too much in a single scene.

As to not being engaging enough for children…

On that score, I have had to remind myself that what I’ve published previously has not only been read and enjoyed by children, but by adults too. I am confident that by the time I’ve finished and polished this particular WIP, it will be as good as the others. But yeah, that comment cut really deep as it seemed to be rather a sweeping statement to make, based on a single scene of a first draft. Think I’ll have to assign that particular bit of feedback to the Reject pile for now.

The only real conclusion I can draw from the feedback for this scene is that it needs work. I need to rein in my gut reaction (a combination of ‘how have I still got it so wrong?’ and ‘blinkin’ cheek!’), take time to breathe and reflect, while still continuing with this story. It is after all a first, s***ty draft, so it is bound to have problems; none of my novels have ever arrived fully formed on the first pass. As a reader, you cannot properly judge the whole from a single part, especially as in my case, I’ve never been a detail person. I tend to work on the bigger picture first - the shape of the story - and then fine tune things.

Perhaps, in offering small sections of the WIP for feedback before I’ve created the whole, I’m actually not working to my natural strengths? Maybe I need to not be so eager to seek feedback until I have a much better idea of the entire story? That’s something to ponder on…

Last of all, I need to tell that little Doubt Demon who has apparently taken up residence again to “Bog off!”