Time for Feedback? How to Get the Most Out of It

Please welcome our newest contributor, Virginia Pye, to Writer Unboxed!

Virginia is the author of four books of fiction, essays, and short stories. Her latest historical novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, was published in October 2023. Her collection, Shelf Life of Happiness won the 2019 Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Short Fiction and one of its stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, River of Dust was an Indie Next Pick and a 2013 Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix was named a Best Book of 2015 by the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Virginia has taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania and, most recently, at Grub Street Writing Center’s Muse and Marketplace Conference in Boston.

You can connect with her here, on her website, or at the social media sites links listed below.

Welcome Virginia!

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A question faced by all writers, no matter their level of experience, is how and when to solicit critical feedback. How can you know when your work-in-progress is ready to be seen and who should you trust to respond both honestly and constructively?

The decision is different for short stories. A critic reads them in full and can respond to a writer’s overall intentions. With a longer work, when a reader may respond to only part of the whole, comments can feel less useful. Novel workshops are often structured to offer feedback one chapter at a time. It works for some writers, but in my experience, piecemeal criticism, especially of an early draft, can miss the mark or even lead the writer astray.

The most useful feedback, in my view, responds to the manuscript as a whole. This requires greater commitment from a friend or colleague, of course. And from the novelist, it requires more patience with the process. We can’t rush to finish if we’re waiting to hear back from a reader who’s evaluating the book from beginning to end.

This slowing down can often work in the writer’s favor, a “forced” breather from a manuscript can create much needed distance, even before hearing any comments. More than once, a break from a novel-in-progress has helped me prepare for a critique that’s coming my way.

But when should we ask for this gift of time and insight from our first readers? It’s time to seek out first readers when you’ve done enough self-editing to not feel embarrassed by our effort, and yet still know the manuscript needs plenty of work. A first reader needs to see the big picture, assessing the novel in its entirety and not focusing on the sentence level.

The writer should guide their reader with basic questions, such as what works in my manuscript and what feels weak? What did you want more of? What did you find extraneous? An early reader should be someone whose literary tastes you trust. Not everyone is skilled at giving literary feedback, so you’ll want to avoid anyone who’s too prescriptive or insistent, as their opinions may undermine your confidence or constrain your imagination.

Even with the value and necessity of a first reader, I try not to share a manuscript until I’ve completed a full draft. For me, that really means two drafts. In a first draft, I stake out the storyline and my characters start to come into focus. But it isn’t until I complete a second draft that I know my characters well and the novel’s themes become clear to me. While writing a second draft, the novel can also surprise me with its own logic, which is one of the greatest joys in writing. It’s crucial that I allow for those moments of inspiration before anyone else weighs in.

In my most recent novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, the love story of the first draft is not the one that readers enjoy in the published book. It wasn’t until well into a second draft that the true love story emerged. I couldn’t yet tell how my story needed to unfold in the first draft. Critical feedback at this phase might have thrown me off course and derailed the discovery that became the crux of my story. I needed time and space to find it for myself before hearing what others thought.

Even so, once comments come back on a full manuscript, how exactly do you process them and extract the most useful and relevant points? For me, the best approach is to sit with them, let the criticism settle on the manuscript, and wait a while—meaning days or weeks. If a comment keeps popping up in my mind as I walk the dog or do the dishes, or, most especially, if I wake in the night turning it over in my mind, then I know there’s something to it. This can happen with the most considered suggestion offered by a reader, or from a comment tossed off by a friend.

Recently, over dinner at a friend’s house, I described my next novel, one I hope to send out soon on submission. It’s more-or-less finished—at least I thought so before our conversation. After hearing my description, my friend’s husband got excited. He liked the drama, the action, which reminded him of other memorable novels he’s read. As he spoke, I began to feel the novel he had in mind was more engaging than the novel I’d drafted. A disturbing, familiar sensation began to take over: doubt.

We all feel it. Every time we share our work-in-progress, we make ourselves vulnerable and the potential for doubt increases. We’re no longer the sole authority as others start to weigh in. By asking what readers think, we’re saying we need help. Whatever confidence we might have can become muddled as voices from the outside infiltrate our process.

Given an invitation to read a draft, a reader logically assumes it’s open to change. They may be eager to show their literary acumen, or maybe they’ve offered to read out of generosity, intending to show their care for the writer and the work. Sometimes though, they come at it from an unexpected angle, offering insights based on information or experience the writer has no way of knowing in advance. In other words, when a writer shares a work-in-progress, there’s no telling what they’ll receive.

For this reason, it’s important to be as discerning as possible when choosing who to trust with a work-in-progress. Who do we know well enough to ask for this labor of love—and to read a full-length draft is just that. Writers with established critique groups have a ready-made arrangement and it can be especially valuable to share with someone who’s already familiar with our work. But if a reader knows your writing too well and has made peace with your quirks, you might not be getting the objective feedback your book deserves.

I suggest choosing a reader with an affinity for your genre or style of writing. Fellow writers make the best readers because we share a critical vocabulary. But it can also be useful to share with someone who simply loves reading and has the capacity to discern and articulate their response. That person can let you know if your draft reads well, and which sections caused them to grow impatient or bored.

At later stages in the writing process, it’s also sometimes crucial to bring in another reader or two whose background or expertise informs their reading. These sensitivity or authenticity readers can help confirm or correct an author whose characters are unlike themselves in terms of race, ethnicity, class, regional background, or other differences.

I have found it helpful to ask more than one reader to critique the same draft. If several readers agree that something isn’t working, that’s a strong indication it’s something I need to address. But what to do if the readers differ in their responses? This has happened to me any number of times, especially when hearing back from literary agents, who often seem to focus on different aspects of a submission. When feedback isn’t unified or doesn’t point the writer in a clear direction, it’s time to take a breather and mull things over.

Over dessert, my new friend and her husband playfully tossed around title suggestions for the novel they thought I’d written. Their suggestions weren’t right, but I woke this morning wondering about my current title. No doubt I’ll ponder it again before bed tonight. The idea is worth pursuing because it’s insistent. It sticks in my craw and can’t be ignored. That’s a sure sign there’s something there.

It takes practice gained over years of sharing manuscripts to know when to let a comment sink in and when to dismiss it. There’s no real way to teach that. But listening to your own voice and returning to the vision you have for the novel is the best guide. Does the suggestion truly fit the book you’re writing? Is it organic, even though suggested by someone else? Does it add depth or clarity to the characters and story? This type of scrutiny can take an idea out of the realm of any defensiveness and into more neutral and useful territory.

The goal is to be as critical of the feedback as the feedback is of your novel. To be discerning about the voices you invite into your project. And to never forget that it is, first and foremost, your project. When you hear a chorus of insights, listen to those that work in harmony with your own voice, for that’s the one that matters most.