5 Ways to Get Feedback on Your Writing

You’ve thought about your overall plan, where you want to go as a writer, and what you’d like to accomplish long term. You already know what you’re writing about and probably have a writing routine that works for you. You have identified your writing strengths and areas that need work – whether that be revising or editing skills.

Photo by Ivanneth, "The Writer" (Flickr)

But I have one question for you. 

After you have revised and edited your story so many times you can't really look at it one more time, how do you get critical feedback?  

First, consider what you want feedback on: A chapter or two? An entire rough draft? Are you looking for quick feedback or do you want ongoing relationships with other writers that will help you strengthen your writing? Consider these options:

You could take a creative writing class. This more structured approach with assignments, deadlines, and accountability will still push you to share your writing and polish your critiquing skills. Check out your local community college or community center to find out what’s available.  Online workshops, like those offered by Holly Lisle, are another fine option.  Downside: Cost? Weekly commitment?

If you are just getting started on outlining or drafting and don’t have a finished rough draft, you may be most comfortable joining a small face-to-face writers' group that meets routinely. Such writers’ groups can accommodate a range of skills, genres, and styles. It may take some time to find a good fit with a face-to-face writers’ group, but the rewards are many in being able to talk with other writers about the craft of writing and sharing your work. Downside: The shoe may not fit if other members are defensive or too critical. Don’t stay in a small group that makes you feel uncomfortable or doubt your writing.

If you’re not able to find a small group in your area, why not try an online critique group. I’m most familiar with the critique group called NOVELS_L, a part of The Internet Writers Workshop.  Here, writers need to submit and/or critique two chapters each month, posting their critiques to the entire list of some 85 writers who currently active members of the list. Other IWW groups exist for short fiction, poetry, nonfiction. Downside: The volume of e-mailed submissions and critiques can be intimidating, but you will gain wonderful feedback and learn from writers who care as much as you do about the quality of your writing.

If you are tearing your hair out and just want a workbook approach to critiquing your writing, two of my favorites are Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover, and Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel. Both books provide extensive checklists and worksheets as well as discussing the art of writing and revision by emphasizing positive actions to take. Downside: It may be easier to start than to finish, even when each chapter is helpful.  

A very helpful option once you have that rough draft finished is to find a writer you trust to be a beta reader. Your beta reader will read your entire mss and give you critical feedback at the micro and macro level. Downside: Many writers pay for such critiques. This could be expensive. Some writers worry that their precious mss may be stolen (it does happen). But if you know your beta reader, his or her comments can make all the difference as you polish your rough draft. 

How do you “know” your beta reader or find her? Perhaps through that face-to-face writers’ group, or that creative writing class, or that online writing group you’ve joined.

Photo by Nana B. Agyei, Flickr

One last question: What do you do consistently to improve your writing craft? 

Besides writing!

It's ROW80 Monday . . .Personality, Pinterest and Oh, My!

Missed Weds check-in and Sunday check-in, but the week ahead is looking good. My office only looks like half a bomb hit it. There's no snow on the ground outside. I survived SuperBowl, a 3-hour dental visit, ferrying folks to doctors, lots of late-night babysitting, and the insidious deadlines of volunteer work, with a little quilting thrown in -- for fun.

Three quick tips for writers this morning which come from circling the wagons -- and not writing.

Medieval Mermaids, France 1450-1470 (Hermitage)

• Read other blogs. Create a folder on bookmark menu bar in your browser. Call it whatever you like, maybe READ THESE BLOGS. Then bookmark other writers' blogs, especially those you find inspiring. Today's suggestion comes from a Write it Sideways! interview by Debra Eve with historical-fiction-with-an-edge writer Jeri Westerson. Her well-designed blog alone is worth the trip,  and she writes 10 pages a day!


• Set up a Pinterest folder just for writing ideas. Many writers are visually oriented. Why not take advantage of what appeals to you. Check out my Pinterest on mermaids or on the 19th Century just for fun. Some of these links take me to very unexpected places.


• Be willing to do research whenever a question arises. Follow your intuition. This week, I found a very useful "idea tree" that describes a range of emotions that far surpass my own. I'll use Parrott's  tree to flesh out my characters (see below). How did I get here? By completing just one more exercise in Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook.

ROW80 UPDATE: It's always about the writing, and this week, I've simply not written every day. Hit the wall. So, I worked on Maass' exercise on adding dimensions to characters to realize I don't really understand personality, emotion, character traits, etc.

Thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs may help as well, but I believe that people don't get stuck necessarily at one level before advancing to the next. For example, if I'm concerned about survival, Maslow posits that I can't be worrying about higher level issues (self-fulfillment). But the act of creating something pushes us to self-fulfillment in spite of being stuck elsewhere. Maybe I believe that we need to take risks to create -- nothing is a certainty.

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotion, 1980 (Wikipedia)

I was less sure about personality. After some research to define terms (and possibilities),I found some neat charts along the way. Like many other writers, I'm a visual person.

So this first chart by Robert Plutchik helped me to "see" possibilities. Wikipedia's summary suggested other research, but most helpful was the more linear chart of EMOTIONS BY GROUPS by Parrott.

I can use this to work a character through her/his reactions. If Deidre is afraid of something --  maybe something small like a spider, or something more nebulous, like fear of drowning, would she react with HORROR or ANXIETY?

Under HORROR, for example, Parrott lists Alarm - Shock - Fear - Fright - Horror - Terror - Panic - Hysteria - Mortification.  Any of these choices would help me develop a scene differently. And, under ANXIETY, Parrott lists Anxiety - Suspense - Uneasiness - Apprehension - Worry - Distress - Dread. And, I can ask, does this person tend  tend to respond positively or negatively, for each of these affects the character's thoughts and actions. Now, finally, I'm ready to write!

All of these 'categories' take me in far different directions, helping me to understand new depths in my character AND twist the plot.

ROW80 MARKETING UPDATE. Continuing to map out what's needed. Big achievement this week in keeping with that good advice that says to tackle the most intimidating task on your to-do-list, I subbed Years of Stone to the historical fiction category for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association 2013 literary contest. It's not too late. The contest closes February 22.

May your writing go well this week! Writers, write!

ROW80 Check-in and shades of gray . . .

It's not always easy getting reader feed-back. We know that. Today's 'bon mot' came clear from the east coast with a suggestion I should read that 50 Shades of Gray book (classified as erotic porn) to add 'more emotion' to my characters.

Haven't read it. Don't intend to. Not my storyline. The person had read an old version of a story I'm working on. Intellectually, I know not every reader will like my stuff and that my story's a good one.  Best seller? Most likely not. But I was all excited to report in today for ROW80. Now, less so. I'm feeling gray.

In half an hour, we'll walk over to the wetlands near our house (where I caught this picture of a crane last spring), and life will be good.

Meanwhile, here's my ROW80 update.

WRITING: Just finished another round of editing on Section 2, Years of Stone. I'm excited because not only is the sequence tighter but so is the tension. I laughed and cried while rereading Section 2. I'm also excited because Donald Maass' acclaimed Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook just arrived, and those exercises look pretty good. The strategy behind his book is to take a 'nearly finished' book and put it through just one more round of thinking and editing. The first exercise is to analyze your personal hero (someone who influenced you) and identify those attributes that make that person heroic. First two people who came to mind were Frida Kahlo and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, both formidable women who created art/writing in spite of serious obstacles.

My other writing goal -- to begin researching Rivers of Stone sometime in 2013 -- is heating up. Looks like we'll be driving across Canada this summer to follow the trail of the Hudson's Bay Company's fur brigade, culminating at the York Factory in Manitoba (think polar bears). Notes, camera, action!

MARKETING: Even if I was not able to complete daily blogging for the Ultimate Blog Challenge, I learned so much about marketing from participating. My current favorite blogger to read is Rachel Abbott's down-to-earth description about what self-publishing strategies she, at first, bumbled into -- and then improved. And I found her via the Ultimate Blog Challenge AND Twitter.

One example: After reading Abbott, I doublechecked the categories listed for The Mermaid Quilt to find that the paperback version only listed Books > Literature & Fiction while the Kindle edition had four subsets of categories. After searching fruitlessly to find out how to change the categories for the paperback, I wrote to the HELP folks at Amazon's AuthorCentral. They quickly replied. My paperback version is now quite properly listed under Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy and I can add another category through them.

The point that Rachel Abbott makes is if your book is listed under categories that are far too general, people simply won't be able to find your book. Lesson learned with more to come. Because of Rachel's clear discussion of the importance of a marketing plan, my "morass" of information is better organized and far more specific with pre- and post-launch action steps.  Click on the link to read just one of Rachel's blog posts about the marketing plan.

So that's my ROW80 update. I'm already feeling less gray, and it's time for that walk. May your day (with SuperBowl?) and your writing go well! And if you feel so inclined, what marketing tips would you share?

Update: ROW80 Blogs I visited Sunday February 3:
Shan Jeniah writes this week about Truststorms
Annie Gray, A Force of Love
Tia Bach at Depression Cookies
Prudence MacLeod at Valkyrie Rising
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell, writer of historical fiction
R. Scott Steele, A writer in progress

And in case you are interested in joining the April A-Z Blogging Challenge, go here to sign up!

ROW80 Sunday Check-in

This month's Writer's Digest has an interesting article by Donald Maass, "Failure to Launch" (Feb 2013). He's telling writers that great fiction will sell, and he itemizes what specifically we should check to ensure we are writing enthralling fiction.

What drew me into the article, though, was my personal history with Agent Maass. Back in the day when I subbed my first novel, Mothers Don't Die, he sent me a short but personal note. He said very directly that he didn't see how my book would appeal to readers because of a pretty unsavory character (one of the good guys) who appeared in Chapter 1. The most on-target advice I've ever gotten. I smacked my head and put the draft in a drawer, ready to move on.

This month, I'm deep in revision of my second historical novel set in mid-19th Century, messing around with the motivation of a particular character (Deidre) who faints as easily as a misplaced semicolon.

Did Maass have some advice for me? He identifies three pitfalls in this article:  (1) Timid voices, (2) Untested characters, and (3) Overly interior or exterior stories. He then provides some practical exercises for each problem area, and one exercise fits exactly where I am.

He asks writers to consider the essential story problem from the point of view of the protagonist (my fainting female). Think about, he suggests, the protagonist's understanding of the beginning, middle, and end of the story. How is her understanding different by the end?

Writing out this exercise transformed the structure of Deidre's motivation and her self-awareness of the obstacles she faces in my story. Deidre's not fainting any more. So this experience ties in neatly with today's ROW80 check-in, for I'm making steady progress in revision, in reading about the craft of writing.

Writers: How's your week going? Any novel revising strategies to share? When all else fails, perhaps we just need to switch gears and do something entirely different, like take advice from Donald Maass. Did you know that lions sometimes sleep in trees?

Sleeping lion, Serengheti, Tanzania (November 2012)