Feedback is a necessary step in ensuring your work is as strong as possible so that your story can reach as much of your audience as possible. Feedback can also be confusing, frustrating, derailing, and hurt both the uniqueness of your project and your confidence as a writer. So how do we get good feedback that helps our project instead of hurts it? When you are strategic about when in the process you seek out feedback and how you structure the kind of feedback you need, you can keep control of your project while still getting helpful guidance and support. Watch the video below or scroll down for the blog.
Before we get into today’s post, we wanted to ask—do you have a plan for actually finishing your memoir? If not, we know you aren’t making the progress you hoped for. That’s why we developed The Memoir Method Checklist. This free guide (and video training!) will take you through every single step you need from idea to published marketable book. Grab it now at https://pageandpodium.com/checklist
Do you really need feedback right now?
Often, when we feel like we need feedback the most is when we have the most doubts. Is this working at all? Am I even good enough at this word after word thing to do this project? If you have this feeling, the first decision you need to make is whether you need feedback or if you need validation to keep going.
There’s nothing wrong with needing a little validation from time to time. Writing is lonely work, and we all need emotional support to see it through. But, if you are in need of validation and instead seek out feedback, you might not be able to guide the feedback to your needs or truly hear it and make decisions about how to implement it. Getting feedback can confuse you about what you want to say, especially if you’re not yet clear in your key message. Feedback can’t help you deliver a message unless you know it clearly yourself. If you’re in this foggy stage, instead of getting feedback and showing your work—talk about your project with someone who is generally supportive of you, a friend or family member or member of a writing community. They may not be able to tell you how to “fix” it, but the questions they ask and how you practice describing what your book is about can help clarify those high-level concerns and motivate you to keep going.
Depending on the stage of your project, you may either need high-level feedback or detailed feedback. High-level feedback doesn’t mean “better quality” feedback, but rather feedback that focuses on the big picture and not the surface level prose. This is often harder feedback to both receive and get because it can feel a bit more nebulous and harder to nail down, especially when you lots of written prose, but only a loose handle on what you’re trying to say. This is why we recommend always getting feedback on your outline early in the process.
Getting feedback on your outline
Writers sometimes have a natural resistance to outlines. I absolutely get it. The book feels huge in your head and your heart, so trying to “boil it down” into key points feels like doing it’s a disservice. But trust us, it’s not. One key element that readers need to see in reading a book is that it has a cohesive point that it builds to and delivers. If a reader senses that the author doesn’t have a clear point to make, most will set it aside—no matter how lovely the prose itself is.
Having a clear outline that declares your core topic and key message and breaks down what material will appear in each chapter is not a simple task, but it is enormously helpful. Even better is taking the time to make that outline readable to another person, because that challenge forces you to really be clear for yourself and a potential reader. When you get feedback on your outline, you may be surprised to find that most of what you get is questions. Sometimes you’ll know the question will be answered in the chapter when you expand it out—that means you’re engaging the reader’s curiosity! Other questions may be points of confusion or contradiction, and these questions are best handled at the outline stage, so you avoid hitting walls during the drafting process.
Determine what kind of feedback you need
In part two of our revision series, we reviewed several types of drafts you may have in your work in progress. You may be past the initial outlining stage, and even may have hundreds of pages of writing done. Establishing what kind of draft your work resembles most so far will help determine what kind of feedback you need to move forward. If you have tons of writing but it’s not quite working yet, you probably have a chaos house or a painted sandcastle. If you have a lot of writing, but there feels like there are holes that need filling, then you have lopsided house or a skeletal frame. If you have a messy house—a house that’s livable but not quite company ready—then it might be time to move into detailed level feedback.
Guide your reader to avoid reactionary feedback
When you hand a friend or even a professional a bunch of pages and ask them to read it and give feedback, you are likely not providing enough context for them to give you feedback that’s useful. That reader will likely instead simply provide feedback based on anything—and everything—that they notice as they read. Your work may come back to you dripping in red pen, which is not only demoralizing, but also not the best use of time. Most readers who are not in the industry or writers themselves have never read drafts while they are still in development, so all they have to compare your work with is polished, published work. Even if your friend is “excellent at English” or a retired English teacher, they will likely just give reactionary feedback along the way, not considering what your own goals for the project are. Who cares if that sentence needs a comma when it needs is to better fit the desired emotional resonance of a scene?
Instead, consider where you need the most help and ask specific questions along with the handing over the pages. Be sure to ask them if they can summarize for you what they are interpreting as the key take aways from the book or from the chapter. This is a key indicator of whether your high-level goals for the project are being met, or if you still need some big picture work on developing a clear and cohesive structure.
Feedback can become an infinite loop
An essential mistake in trying to get feedback is continuing in round after round in hopes of making it perfect. Readers will always find something, and after a while you’re not actually making it better, but just trying to please everyone. Putting a clear cap on your feedback ahead of time will help you avoid this infinite feedback loop.
PS. Searching the internet for writing, publishing, and book marketing advice can be exhausting to say the least! If you’re ready for hands on, one-on-one support for your memoir, check out The Memoir Method. We’d love to welcome you into this nine-month group program specially designed for women writing their first memoirs. And don’t forget, if you’d like to chat with Amanda about the program (or any other services we offer), you can book a free consult any time!
