Entry tags:
How to Give Feedback
Since I previously wrote a post about taking criticism, I figured I'd also do one about giving feedback. That means both positive and negative feedback. Though giving criticism is often harder, I believe giving helpful praise also takes skill and thought. I think the advice is helpful for different creative efforts, though writing is the one I'm most familiar with.
1. Do It for Yourself
My first advice, and the one from which all the other advice flows, is to leave feedback for yourself and not the recipient. This may seem counterintuitive, since we usually think of feedback, especially on amateur works, as something the reviewer does for the creator. Creators are grateful to be reviewed, and often feel obligated to reciprocate. I've said myself in the essay about how to take criticism that it's a good idea to be thankful someone took the time to take in and comment on your work, even if the comment is critical. I stand by that statement, with the added dimension that the creator should be especially grateful for critical comments, particularly if they are constructive in the sense that they give pointers for improvement. So why would I advocate that you give feedback selfishly, as it were, for yourself and not for the creator?
This is because, and again this may seem paradoxical, I believe your review will be more helpful for both yourself and the recipient if you give it for your own self-directed, dare I say selfish, reasons. In the realm of artistic feedback, this translates into making the comment a learning experience. If a story works, why does it work? If some things fall flat, why? By thinking through these questions and putting the answers in words, you learn to think clearly and systematically about your craft. I think it's even better if you write it out so you can work out where your thoughts are vague or ill-defined. It's called distributed cognition, where your thoughts become something concrete you can see and work on. Writing reviews other people's works will help you learn, if that is how you wish to learn.
Of course that's not the only benefit you can get out of reviewing people's works. I've made great friends whom I first got to know when I reviewed their stories and they contacted me to express their appreciation. That's a nice side benefit, but it can't be your main purpose because no one owes you a reply for your feedback, never mind their friendship. You can also hope that your review helps the creator learn, but again you can't control how they'll respond to it. It's great if you make friends that way, or if you're able to teach them, and both are pretty likely outcomes. However, you can't expect others to react in certain ways, either by liking you or taking your lessons to heart. Find your own joy and your own purpose in it or don't do it.
Which is to say, of course, that not doing it is a very valid approach. People learn in different ways, and not everyone has the instinct or desire to be a critic. If you have no desire to leave detailed reviews or if you want to leave simple comments of appreciation (squeeviews?), that is absolutely fine. All I am saying is that giving feedback can be a good way to learn, and if you do choose to give feedback it's a better idea to give it for a self-directed reason like learning rather than as a favor.
Also, I think you're actually more likely to get these other benefits, like making friends or helping others, if you're focused on the learning aspect. You're more likely to be authentic, or rather you have to be authentic, if you want to learn by analyzing another person's work. You're also more likely to be courteous (I'll cover that below in 3.) if you're focused on growth rather than on belittling other people, or on trying to win their approval with insincere compliments. These qualities of honesty and courtesy are likely to earn you friends who like you as you are and are drawn to how respectful you are. Your reviews are also more likely to be helpful to the recipient if you wrote them to help yourself--your thoughts will be clearer and your insights deeper, since that was the point of writing your thoughts out in the first place.
So to all the people who were thankful for my reviews over the years: Screw you, I was in it for me the whole time. :P More seriously, it was nice to be thanked but no one owes me anything for the reviews I left, since I already got a lot out of what I did. In addition to the fun I got out of enjoying others' works (almost all of it for free at that!) I also learned by analyzing what worked and what didn't and so furthered my own skill. That, probably, made my feedback more helpful to the recipients, because I was doing my best to clarify my thoughts and make sure everything I said had a concrete basis in fact. More on that below in 2.
The rest of this post will therefore proceed on the assumption that you want the feedback you give to be a learning experience for you. It's really the flip side of the essay on taking criticism, and I really believe that we'll all be happier in what we do if we approach our respective crafts, whatever they are, as opportunities to grow and not exercises in self-validation.
2. Give Reality-Based Reasons for Your Reactions
You grow in your craft by discovering and applying sound principles. If your interest is in educating yourself, you need to think about what works and what doesn't, and just as importantly, why. "This is an awesome story" is a good start. But why? If you think of the reasons why the story worked for you, you can learn more about what makes a story work. So you might add, "When I read it I really felt like I was there in the time and location you described." That's a good comment and no doubt the author will appreciate it. You can go one step further, though, by thinking about what the creator actually did to achieve that effect. For instance: "Your focus on the viewpoint character's sensations, like the feel of the robe against his skin and the smell of the place, and the cultural details that steep through his thoughts and words, like his misunderstandings with the Bear clan, really helped bring the setting to life for me."
See also Sarah Cradit's piece, Etiquette of Negative Reviews [via![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chordatesrock]. I was surprised by how neatly my framework here fits into her catogories of "unhelpful," "helpful," and "very helpful" reviews, with unhelpful reviews focusing only on the reaction, helpful reviews giving reasons for the reaction, and very helpful reviews digging down to the specific reality of what's on the page.
Here's a diagram of the process:
The "reaction" is the impression you had of the work or part of it ("awesome!"), the "reason" a principle that led to that reaction (immersive stories are awesome), and the "reality" is the concrete action the creator took, knowingly or not, to cause that reaction through the application of that principle (sensations and cultural details are immersive). Obviously there are multiple reactions, principles, and details involved, with different parts of a work getting different reactions and different details interacting at many levels. A single strand of the process might look something like the diagram, but even with simple works we're talking about a whole tapestry (or at least a handkerchief).
The process of initially taking in a work goes in the opposite order, reality-reason-reaction. The process of review takes it backward in the order of reaction-reason-reality as you dig down from what you feel in order to find the cause of of those feelings. Conceiving of and creating the work can go in both directions; sometimes you come up with the details first and work from there, checking against the reactions those details are likely to cause. Sometimes you're looking for a certain reaction and work down from there for ways to draw that reaction. By first appreciating a work and then reviewing it, you travel both upward and downward on the ladder, much like the creative thought process itself.
Going right down from the atmosphere of your reactions to the firm ground of what the creator actually did is helpful for both you and the creator. "This story is so awesome you're a genius!" is good for stoking the author's ego, but teaches nothing in particular about how to write well except to be a genius. "This story really immersed me because you focused on sensory descriptions and cultural details" teaches both the reviewer and the recipient what specific things to do in order to write well, which include sensory descriptions and cultural details. (Of course those are not the end-all be-all but two elements among many.) Comments that focus on specific actions are far more useful for learning than comments that focus on attributes like alleged genius. See for instance this article on fixed and growth mindsets.
While you can get some of these benefits by thinking about what you liked and didn't like about a work and why, I believe writing these thoughts down has a magic of its own. Writing will force you to check the actual work to back up your statements, and to look for specific grounds of your opinion. This has the effect of discouraging vague, baseless opinions in favor of opinions backed by concrete facts. Your thoughts become clearer to you when you put them in words, since you're forced into definite statements that you can see and edit instead of vague impressions floating around in your head. It's like novelist Flannery O'Connor said: "How can I know what I mean until I see what I say?"
While I gave examples of positive comments above, negative comments follow the same structure. The only difference is you're talking about what didn't work, rather than what did. So, your first reaction to a story might be "This is boring." I really hope you won't say that, though! Again, you can dig down to find out why it was boring, and the reason might be something like "The pace was too slow." Then you can go deeper to the bedrock of what the author did, which might result in a comment like "The paragraphs of static description, while they helped explain the setting, resulted in long stretches where nothing was happening." For critical comments it's helpful add what the author could have done, i.e. constructive criticism, such as "I think the pace could have been a lot quicker if you made the descriptions part of the action." More on that in Section 5.
Diagram for negative comment
Giving concrete reasons for your reactions, in fact, is even more important for critical comments than positive ones. Supporting your criticism with the things the recipient of the comment actually did is much less likely to discourage the recipient than a blunt negative assessment without concrete basis. If he knows what it is he did that didn't work out very well, he knows what to fix or what to watch out for in future works. It can also help you overcome resistance to being negative, since you don't have to leave it off at "This is bad" but rather help the creator improve. Whether he is receptive to your comments or not, remember, you'll still be helping yourself improve.
3. Be Honest About the Good and the Bad
That brings us to the importance of honesty. If your purpose is to learn, giving dishonest feedback useless to you. This is not to say you should never make up nice comments to make someone happy--it might not be the best idea to criticize a six-year-old's drawing for lacking composition skills and a sense of proportion--but in that situation your purpose is not to learn. As I said above, it's perfectly all right to give feedback without the intention to learn or teach. There are also plenty of situations where the creator isn't necessarily looking to improve his skill and just wants to enjoy himself, and that's awesome. The focus of this essay is on learning, so other principles apply when the goal is different.
There's often the temptation to talk only about the good in a work, like how well the artist used colors in the picture, while ignoring or minimizing the bad, such as lack of depth and perspective. I've given into that temptation a couple of times, but ultimately I found that my feedback couldn't be genuine if I censored parts of my reaction. These self-censored reviews ended up being shallow and unhelpful, so I've made it a policy not to shy away from negative comments. Besides, if you're honest about your criticism the recipient will know you're honest about your compliments. Also, flaws in a work are in some ways even more important opportunities for growth than the merits. By glossing over flaws you'll miss the chance to fully understand and learn from another's mistake, and the creator might similarly keep making the same mistakes because no one told her where her craft fell short. For the purpose of genuineness and learning, honesty really is the best policy even if it hurts.
While negativity is the more common pitfall when it comes to being honest, you can also go to the opposite extreme and fail to mention the positive in a work in favor of focusing on the negative. This is the kind of thing my dad and I argued about every once in a while, with me complaining he's too critical and is stingy with compliments and him responding there's no need for him to say anything when I'm doing well because I just need to keep doing the same thing. So maybe I'm biased, but I still believe compliments are as important as criticism. You need to examine and analyze what other creators did right as well as what they did wrong, since their strengths are something you might want to emulate in your own creative efforts. Creators, a notoriously sensitive bunch, also need to know their strengths in order to be encouraged, and to get a full idea of their current skill. So it's a good idea not to ignore the positives, both for yourself and for the recipient of your feedback.
4. Honesty Does Not Equal Being a Dick
(Viaamyraine)
In art as in life, people sometimes confuse honesty with being a jerk. Critiquing someone's work does not give you license to ignore the rules of courtesy. "Your singing sucks and so do you" is not an honest statement about the merits of a work, it's a childish attack that says more about the speaker than the person spoken to.
Besides, a rude statement is actually a form of deception, not honesty. Assuming the reviewer isn't just habitually dickish or just coming across the wrong way, she's probably being rude because she's uncomfortable about something in the work or maybe other stuff in her life. Maybe the flaws in the other person's technique are similar to her own, triggering old insecurities. Or maybe it's just been a really bad day and she needs to vent. These are understandable frustrations that deserve understanding and compassion. If she chooses to attack another person instead of dealing honestly with those frustrations, though, she's effectively avoiding her feelings by attacking another person. That's moral cowardice, not blunt honesty.
Also, remember that your purpose is to learn and grow. Attacking someone to help yourself feel a little better is not going to help you in that goal. Your hangups and insecurities are like blinking warning signs, and by choosing to ignore them you're denying yourself the chance to remove creative roadblocks and maybe even become a better person. Lashing out might also cost you your reputation in the creative community you're a part of, and lose you friends who might otherwise have given you valuable help. The person you most end up hurting by being a dick is you.
5. Say "Do" Instead of "Don't"
A great way to be honest without being rude is to give that ever-desirable constructive criticism. Being constructive means you build something up, not tear it down. In the context of feedback, it means you suggest things to do instead of saying what not to do.
We can play off the Reaction-Reason-Reality diagram to think about this process. First there's some negative reaction you got as a result of something the creator did. Let's say the story feels slow and boring. You want to suggest ways to change this into a positive reaction, such as fast-paced and exciting.
Then you can look for the principles that lead to the result you want. This is most likely the flip side of the reason your original reaction was negative. In this case, maybe the reason the story felt boring was because the pace was too slow and static. In order to change the reaction the pace would have to be quicker.
That alone can be helpful advice, of course, but you can go a step further by offering suggestions on concrete steps to take. That's the "reality" part of the diagram. Again you can reference the action the author took that didn't work so well, which in this case might be something like long blocks of static description. Then you can think of how the author (or you in your own work) might do things differently. Maybe, rather than dump the descriptions into one long passage, the author can split it up and make the pieces of description part of the main action. She could also delete unnecessary descriptions altogether.
Hopefully these changes will lead to a better work than before. Whether the creator implements your suggestion or not, at least you've gotten practice thinking about how to get desired results in your craft.
This process can be a pain. It's easier to point out something that's wrong than to suggest how to make it better. Nevertheless, constructive criticism may be the single most important learning experience in giving feedback. It's precisely because it's so helpful that it's so hard: You are no longer passively taking in the work, and you are going a step beyond analysis. You're offering specific suggestions, which take thought and effort to come up with. Constructive criticism is an active process that lets you flex your creative muscles, and that's supposed to be hard.
The sense of responsibility in constructive criticism is stronger the larger the changes you are suggesting and the more power you have. "I would delete this adverb here" is a much easier suggestion to make than "I would change this character's motivation so it's more personal and emotional, maybe to redeem herself for the people she hurt in her past life?" If you're not just another reader but the editor, similarly, you might be anxious about whether you're right--what if the creator takes your advice, and you're wrong?
There's no guarantee you're going to be right, or that others will agree with you (see 6. below). What you can do is base your opinion on tested principles, and put enough thought into it that you can be reasonably sure your advice is sound. If you're in a position of creative control, such as editor or director, it's also important to listen to the creator so communication remains a two-way street. This will also make it more likely that you will come up with sound directions.
If you turn out to be wrong, admit it, accept your share of the responsibility, and analyze what went wrong. (Hey, 3 A's!) There's no need to beat yourself up: You're still learning, no matter how advanced you are in your craft. Who said you're so special that you can't make mistakes? Concrit is hard, both the effort of coming up with good advice and the responsibility of giving it, but it's necessary in order to help both yourself and the creator.
6. Remember You're Communicating Opinions, Not Dictating Facts
As discussed in the essay about taking criticism, all criticism is subjective in the end. Some comments are more helpful and have sounder bases than others, but in the end criticism is expression of opinion and not a recital of facts. In the diagram I've used, the only objective fact is the "Reality" part, meaning what the creator did or did not do in the work. The "Reason" part, or the principles of craft, has some objective basis in the sense of being tested and having been proven to work much of the time, but don't work the same in all cases because different people react differently to the same detail. Because of this the "Reaction" is highly subjective, and often dependent on tastes and experiences.
Your opinion should of course have some basis in factual details, as also discussed in 2. above. This gives your feedback a solid ground to stand on. However, in order to go anywhere interesting you have to take off from objective ground into the ether of subjectivity, with the mooring line of principle to guide you. In the end it's your skills and sensibility, honed through experience with your craft, that will add real value both for you and the recipient of your comments. Don't be afraid to use those qualities.
In addition to being opinion, feedback is also communication. Talk, and prepare to listen. Your goal in all this is to learn, and listening is a crucial tool for learning. Since your critique is not unquestionable fact but subjective opinion, there's room to exchange opinions with the creator and others. This will strengthen your understanding of the principles of your craft and, you guessed it, help you improve in it.
7. Educate Yourself
I keep talking about how you have to base your critique on sound principles. That's hard to do if you don't know what they are, or don't understand how to apply them. Giving feedback on others' works is a good way to practice applying these principles, but that's only part of your education. Read books, talk to people, attend lectures--it's really only limited by the amount of time and effort you choose to spend on your craft. This will make you a more discerning critic and, ultimately, a better creator.
TL; DR: Both you and the recipient of your feedback will gain more if you approach the feedback process as a learning experience for yourself rather than a favor to the creator or an excuse to vent your frustrations. You can do that by backing up your statements with principles of creation and solid facts, being honest, courteous, and open-minded, and by learning more about your craft.
1. Do It for Yourself
My first advice, and the one from which all the other advice flows, is to leave feedback for yourself and not the recipient. This may seem counterintuitive, since we usually think of feedback, especially on amateur works, as something the reviewer does for the creator. Creators are grateful to be reviewed, and often feel obligated to reciprocate. I've said myself in the essay about how to take criticism that it's a good idea to be thankful someone took the time to take in and comment on your work, even if the comment is critical. I stand by that statement, with the added dimension that the creator should be especially grateful for critical comments, particularly if they are constructive in the sense that they give pointers for improvement. So why would I advocate that you give feedback selfishly, as it were, for yourself and not for the creator?
This is because, and again this may seem paradoxical, I believe your review will be more helpful for both yourself and the recipient if you give it for your own self-directed, dare I say selfish, reasons. In the realm of artistic feedback, this translates into making the comment a learning experience. If a story works, why does it work? If some things fall flat, why? By thinking through these questions and putting the answers in words, you learn to think clearly and systematically about your craft. I think it's even better if you write it out so you can work out where your thoughts are vague or ill-defined. It's called distributed cognition, where your thoughts become something concrete you can see and work on. Writing reviews other people's works will help you learn, if that is how you wish to learn.
Of course that's not the only benefit you can get out of reviewing people's works. I've made great friends whom I first got to know when I reviewed their stories and they contacted me to express their appreciation. That's a nice side benefit, but it can't be your main purpose because no one owes you a reply for your feedback, never mind their friendship. You can also hope that your review helps the creator learn, but again you can't control how they'll respond to it. It's great if you make friends that way, or if you're able to teach them, and both are pretty likely outcomes. However, you can't expect others to react in certain ways, either by liking you or taking your lessons to heart. Find your own joy and your own purpose in it or don't do it.
Which is to say, of course, that not doing it is a very valid approach. People learn in different ways, and not everyone has the instinct or desire to be a critic. If you have no desire to leave detailed reviews or if you want to leave simple comments of appreciation (squeeviews?), that is absolutely fine. All I am saying is that giving feedback can be a good way to learn, and if you do choose to give feedback it's a better idea to give it for a self-directed reason like learning rather than as a favor.
Also, I think you're actually more likely to get these other benefits, like making friends or helping others, if you're focused on the learning aspect. You're more likely to be authentic, or rather you have to be authentic, if you want to learn by analyzing another person's work. You're also more likely to be courteous (I'll cover that below in 3.) if you're focused on growth rather than on belittling other people, or on trying to win their approval with insincere compliments. These qualities of honesty and courtesy are likely to earn you friends who like you as you are and are drawn to how respectful you are. Your reviews are also more likely to be helpful to the recipient if you wrote them to help yourself--your thoughts will be clearer and your insights deeper, since that was the point of writing your thoughts out in the first place.
So to all the people who were thankful for my reviews over the years: Screw you, I was in it for me the whole time. :P More seriously, it was nice to be thanked but no one owes me anything for the reviews I left, since I already got a lot out of what I did. In addition to the fun I got out of enjoying others' works (almost all of it for free at that!) I also learned by analyzing what worked and what didn't and so furthered my own skill. That, probably, made my feedback more helpful to the recipients, because I was doing my best to clarify my thoughts and make sure everything I said had a concrete basis in fact. More on that below in 2.
The rest of this post will therefore proceed on the assumption that you want the feedback you give to be a learning experience for you. It's really the flip side of the essay on taking criticism, and I really believe that we'll all be happier in what we do if we approach our respective crafts, whatever they are, as opportunities to grow and not exercises in self-validation.
2. Give Reality-Based Reasons for Your Reactions
You grow in your craft by discovering and applying sound principles. If your interest is in educating yourself, you need to think about what works and what doesn't, and just as importantly, why. "This is an awesome story" is a good start. But why? If you think of the reasons why the story worked for you, you can learn more about what makes a story work. So you might add, "When I read it I really felt like I was there in the time and location you described." That's a good comment and no doubt the author will appreciate it. You can go one step further, though, by thinking about what the creator actually did to achieve that effect. For instance: "Your focus on the viewpoint character's sensations, like the feel of the robe against his skin and the smell of the place, and the cultural details that steep through his thoughts and words, like his misunderstandings with the Bear clan, really helped bring the setting to life for me."
See also Sarah Cradit's piece, Etiquette of Negative Reviews [via
chordatesrock]. I was surprised by how neatly my framework here fits into her catogories of "unhelpful," "helpful," and "very helpful" reviews, with unhelpful reviews focusing only on the reaction, helpful reviews giving reasons for the reaction, and very helpful reviews digging down to the specific reality of what's on the page.Here's a diagram of the process:
The "reaction" is the impression you had of the work or part of it ("awesome!"), the "reason" a principle that led to that reaction (immersive stories are awesome), and the "reality" is the concrete action the creator took, knowingly or not, to cause that reaction through the application of that principle (sensations and cultural details are immersive). Obviously there are multiple reactions, principles, and details involved, with different parts of a work getting different reactions and different details interacting at many levels. A single strand of the process might look something like the diagram, but even with simple works we're talking about a whole tapestry (or at least a handkerchief).
The process of initially taking in a work goes in the opposite order, reality-reason-reaction. The process of review takes it backward in the order of reaction-reason-reality as you dig down from what you feel in order to find the cause of of those feelings. Conceiving of and creating the work can go in both directions; sometimes you come up with the details first and work from there, checking against the reactions those details are likely to cause. Sometimes you're looking for a certain reaction and work down from there for ways to draw that reaction. By first appreciating a work and then reviewing it, you travel both upward and downward on the ladder, much like the creative thought process itself.
Going right down from the atmosphere of your reactions to the firm ground of what the creator actually did is helpful for both you and the creator. "This story is so awesome you're a genius!" is good for stoking the author's ego, but teaches nothing in particular about how to write well except to be a genius. "This story really immersed me because you focused on sensory descriptions and cultural details" teaches both the reviewer and the recipient what specific things to do in order to write well, which include sensory descriptions and cultural details. (Of course those are not the end-all be-all but two elements among many.) Comments that focus on specific actions are far more useful for learning than comments that focus on attributes like alleged genius. See for instance this article on fixed and growth mindsets.
While you can get some of these benefits by thinking about what you liked and didn't like about a work and why, I believe writing these thoughts down has a magic of its own. Writing will force you to check the actual work to back up your statements, and to look for specific grounds of your opinion. This has the effect of discouraging vague, baseless opinions in favor of opinions backed by concrete facts. Your thoughts become clearer to you when you put them in words, since you're forced into definite statements that you can see and edit instead of vague impressions floating around in your head. It's like novelist Flannery O'Connor said: "How can I know what I mean until I see what I say?"
While I gave examples of positive comments above, negative comments follow the same structure. The only difference is you're talking about what didn't work, rather than what did. So, your first reaction to a story might be "This is boring." I really hope you won't say that, though! Again, you can dig down to find out why it was boring, and the reason might be something like "The pace was too slow." Then you can go deeper to the bedrock of what the author did, which might result in a comment like "The paragraphs of static description, while they helped explain the setting, resulted in long stretches where nothing was happening." For critical comments it's helpful add what the author could have done, i.e. constructive criticism, such as "I think the pace could have been a lot quicker if you made the descriptions part of the action." More on that in Section 5.
Diagram for negative comment
Giving concrete reasons for your reactions, in fact, is even more important for critical comments than positive ones. Supporting your criticism with the things the recipient of the comment actually did is much less likely to discourage the recipient than a blunt negative assessment without concrete basis. If he knows what it is he did that didn't work out very well, he knows what to fix or what to watch out for in future works. It can also help you overcome resistance to being negative, since you don't have to leave it off at "This is bad" but rather help the creator improve. Whether he is receptive to your comments or not, remember, you'll still be helping yourself improve.
3. Be Honest About the Good and the Bad
That brings us to the importance of honesty. If your purpose is to learn, giving dishonest feedback useless to you. This is not to say you should never make up nice comments to make someone happy--it might not be the best idea to criticize a six-year-old's drawing for lacking composition skills and a sense of proportion--but in that situation your purpose is not to learn. As I said above, it's perfectly all right to give feedback without the intention to learn or teach. There are also plenty of situations where the creator isn't necessarily looking to improve his skill and just wants to enjoy himself, and that's awesome. The focus of this essay is on learning, so other principles apply when the goal is different.
There's often the temptation to talk only about the good in a work, like how well the artist used colors in the picture, while ignoring or minimizing the bad, such as lack of depth and perspective. I've given into that temptation a couple of times, but ultimately I found that my feedback couldn't be genuine if I censored parts of my reaction. These self-censored reviews ended up being shallow and unhelpful, so I've made it a policy not to shy away from negative comments. Besides, if you're honest about your criticism the recipient will know you're honest about your compliments. Also, flaws in a work are in some ways even more important opportunities for growth than the merits. By glossing over flaws you'll miss the chance to fully understand and learn from another's mistake, and the creator might similarly keep making the same mistakes because no one told her where her craft fell short. For the purpose of genuineness and learning, honesty really is the best policy even if it hurts.
While negativity is the more common pitfall when it comes to being honest, you can also go to the opposite extreme and fail to mention the positive in a work in favor of focusing on the negative. This is the kind of thing my dad and I argued about every once in a while, with me complaining he's too critical and is stingy with compliments and him responding there's no need for him to say anything when I'm doing well because I just need to keep doing the same thing. So maybe I'm biased, but I still believe compliments are as important as criticism. You need to examine and analyze what other creators did right as well as what they did wrong, since their strengths are something you might want to emulate in your own creative efforts. Creators, a notoriously sensitive bunch, also need to know their strengths in order to be encouraged, and to get a full idea of their current skill. So it's a good idea not to ignore the positives, both for yourself and for the recipient of your feedback.
4. Honesty Does Not Equal Being a Dick
(Via
amyraine)In art as in life, people sometimes confuse honesty with being a jerk. Critiquing someone's work does not give you license to ignore the rules of courtesy. "Your singing sucks and so do you" is not an honest statement about the merits of a work, it's a childish attack that says more about the speaker than the person spoken to.
Besides, a rude statement is actually a form of deception, not honesty. Assuming the reviewer isn't just habitually dickish or just coming across the wrong way, she's probably being rude because she's uncomfortable about something in the work or maybe other stuff in her life. Maybe the flaws in the other person's technique are similar to her own, triggering old insecurities. Or maybe it's just been a really bad day and she needs to vent. These are understandable frustrations that deserve understanding and compassion. If she chooses to attack another person instead of dealing honestly with those frustrations, though, she's effectively avoiding her feelings by attacking another person. That's moral cowardice, not blunt honesty.
Also, remember that your purpose is to learn and grow. Attacking someone to help yourself feel a little better is not going to help you in that goal. Your hangups and insecurities are like blinking warning signs, and by choosing to ignore them you're denying yourself the chance to remove creative roadblocks and maybe even become a better person. Lashing out might also cost you your reputation in the creative community you're a part of, and lose you friends who might otherwise have given you valuable help. The person you most end up hurting by being a dick is you.
5. Say "Do" Instead of "Don't"
A great way to be honest without being rude is to give that ever-desirable constructive criticism. Being constructive means you build something up, not tear it down. In the context of feedback, it means you suggest things to do instead of saying what not to do.
We can play off the Reaction-Reason-Reality diagram to think about this process. First there's some negative reaction you got as a result of something the creator did. Let's say the story feels slow and boring. You want to suggest ways to change this into a positive reaction, such as fast-paced and exciting.
Then you can look for the principles that lead to the result you want. This is most likely the flip side of the reason your original reaction was negative. In this case, maybe the reason the story felt boring was because the pace was too slow and static. In order to change the reaction the pace would have to be quicker.
That alone can be helpful advice, of course, but you can go a step further by offering suggestions on concrete steps to take. That's the "reality" part of the diagram. Again you can reference the action the author took that didn't work so well, which in this case might be something like long blocks of static description. Then you can think of how the author (or you in your own work) might do things differently. Maybe, rather than dump the descriptions into one long passage, the author can split it up and make the pieces of description part of the main action. She could also delete unnecessary descriptions altogether.
Hopefully these changes will lead to a better work than before. Whether the creator implements your suggestion or not, at least you've gotten practice thinking about how to get desired results in your craft.
This process can be a pain. It's easier to point out something that's wrong than to suggest how to make it better. Nevertheless, constructive criticism may be the single most important learning experience in giving feedback. It's precisely because it's so helpful that it's so hard: You are no longer passively taking in the work, and you are going a step beyond analysis. You're offering specific suggestions, which take thought and effort to come up with. Constructive criticism is an active process that lets you flex your creative muscles, and that's supposed to be hard.
The sense of responsibility in constructive criticism is stronger the larger the changes you are suggesting and the more power you have. "I would delete this adverb here" is a much easier suggestion to make than "I would change this character's motivation so it's more personal and emotional, maybe to redeem herself for the people she hurt in her past life?" If you're not just another reader but the editor, similarly, you might be anxious about whether you're right--what if the creator takes your advice, and you're wrong?
There's no guarantee you're going to be right, or that others will agree with you (see 6. below). What you can do is base your opinion on tested principles, and put enough thought into it that you can be reasonably sure your advice is sound. If you're in a position of creative control, such as editor or director, it's also important to listen to the creator so communication remains a two-way street. This will also make it more likely that you will come up with sound directions.
If you turn out to be wrong, admit it, accept your share of the responsibility, and analyze what went wrong. (Hey, 3 A's!) There's no need to beat yourself up: You're still learning, no matter how advanced you are in your craft. Who said you're so special that you can't make mistakes? Concrit is hard, both the effort of coming up with good advice and the responsibility of giving it, but it's necessary in order to help both yourself and the creator.
6. Remember You're Communicating Opinions, Not Dictating Facts
As discussed in the essay about taking criticism, all criticism is subjective in the end. Some comments are more helpful and have sounder bases than others, but in the end criticism is expression of opinion and not a recital of facts. In the diagram I've used, the only objective fact is the "Reality" part, meaning what the creator did or did not do in the work. The "Reason" part, or the principles of craft, has some objective basis in the sense of being tested and having been proven to work much of the time, but don't work the same in all cases because different people react differently to the same detail. Because of this the "Reaction" is highly subjective, and often dependent on tastes and experiences.
Your opinion should of course have some basis in factual details, as also discussed in 2. above. This gives your feedback a solid ground to stand on. However, in order to go anywhere interesting you have to take off from objective ground into the ether of subjectivity, with the mooring line of principle to guide you. In the end it's your skills and sensibility, honed through experience with your craft, that will add real value both for you and the recipient of your comments. Don't be afraid to use those qualities.
In addition to being opinion, feedback is also communication. Talk, and prepare to listen. Your goal in all this is to learn, and listening is a crucial tool for learning. Since your critique is not unquestionable fact but subjective opinion, there's room to exchange opinions with the creator and others. This will strengthen your understanding of the principles of your craft and, you guessed it, help you improve in it.
7. Educate Yourself
I keep talking about how you have to base your critique on sound principles. That's hard to do if you don't know what they are, or don't understand how to apply them. Giving feedback on others' works is a good way to practice applying these principles, but that's only part of your education. Read books, talk to people, attend lectures--it's really only limited by the amount of time and effort you choose to spend on your craft. This will make you a more discerning critic and, ultimately, a better creator.
TL; DR: Both you and the recipient of your feedback will gain more if you approach the feedback process as a learning experience for yourself rather than a favor to the creator or an excuse to vent your frustrations. You can do that by backing up your statements with principles of creation and solid facts, being honest, courteous, and open-minded, and by learning more about your craft.
no subject
I came at it from the viewpoint of someone who likes to beta read. Doing beta lies somewhere between just leaving a review on a story and the job of an editor, I think. I'm happy with that level of responsibility. As you said, constructive feedback can be powerful if it ends up changing the work.
I was nodding mentally all the way through your post. Especially about making feedback personal. If I ever find I've left feedback that speaks in wildly broad terms, I know I've been dishonest without meaning to be, usually in an attempt to browbeat the writer or make myself feel superior. I go back and change the sentences to start with 'I'. It invariably results in something more real and useful.
That reaction->reason->reality process took me a while to understand. I've been treating reason and reality as the same step. I'll try separating them when I give my next beta and see if that helps. I still don't entirely understand reality. Ho, that was an unintended metaphor and a half. But I suppose reality means concrete examples?
Your link to your taking criticism post doesn't work, unfortunately.
no subject
I beta-read a lot, too, and it can be nerve-racking. Line-level edits are angst-free for the most part, but I think long and hard when I suggest plot and character-level stuff. But it's also where I create the most value, and also where I learn the most. The considerations in this essay are always on my mind when I make those kinds of comments.
That's a very good tip about changing sentences to start with "I." I find myself getting personal sometimes, too, and starting with "I" is a good way to remind myself that this is my opinion and reaction.
Yup, by reality I meant concrete examples, such as a line of dialogue. By reasons I meant principles that apply across situations, e.g. minimize dialogue tags to let the dialogue flow with its own rhythm. In fact I probably should have said "principles," I was getting too alliteration-happy in there.
Livejournal was acting up for a while. The link works now. Thank you again for commenting!
no subject
say "yes" first to the critiques and "no" only later, after much thought... This is to overcome the natural resistance to change.
I like your reasoning. This is still one I'm working on, though I'm better than I used to be.
These days, I start each of my own betas with a disclaimer that the writer is free to disagree with my beta, that in fact they'll probably learn most by seeing exactly where, how much and why . That's what I find from getting them myself, anyway. When I feel strongly about something and want to fight for it, it's a sign.
I do find I generalise a lot when I'm giving beta unless I watch myself and remember that these are only my personal reactions, and change sentences back to start with 'I'. It's a bit like being anon on the internet. It's easier to be rude and thoughtless if I let myself be fooled into thinking my opinions are actually the universal truth and I'm some sort of godlike floating cloud.
I kind of want to send links to both these articles to everyone I ever do beta/receive beta from, ever again. I worry that might be rude. I might do it anyway. I've seen a lot of well-meaning but just plain terrible posts about how to beta, unfortunately.