Get the Most out of Manuscript Feedback
by Paul Lewis

Your manuscript is done, or so you hope. You know enough not to send it to a publisher or producer without anyone checking your work. There could be all kinds of embarrassing typos in the manuscript, not to mention major holes in the story. After having spent so much time with the manuscript, it’s like a familiar friend: you just can’t see the faults. You need feedback. Here are some tips on getting the most out of your feedback:

1. Try to get a variety of different readers. It helps to be able to compare different opinions. One reader might have a problem with one part of the story that another does not. If that’s the case, it might just be a matter of individual preference. But if everyone’s telling you they have a problem with the same thing, you better take a look at it.

2. Try to find at least one reader who doesn’t mind giving you harsh criticism. Friends may be tempted to say nice things about your story, just because they want to remain your friends. Let them know that this doesn’t do you any favors.

3. Listen to the harsh criticism. You don’t have to accept every fault a reader might have with your story, but do your best not to debate it. If you fight your reader tooth and nail over every point, very quickly he’ll get the message, “Just tell him it's great,” and then you have lost any further feedback of any value. First and foremost, try to listen without saying anything. If necessary, ask questions if you need to clarify. Then if you still need to clarify the feedback, explain your storytelling decisions to the reader, but try not to justify. If you’re right, you know it, and the story will remain as you wrote it. If you’re wrong, you need to listen to the correction. And if you don’t know, figure it out later, on your own. Your reader might not enjoy being dragged through your writing process.

4. Try to avoid having the same reader give you feedback twice. A first-time reader will not be familiar with your story, so he’ll be more able to tell you what’s not clear, what’s out of place, or what caught him off guard. If he reads the next draft, now he knows what to expect—or he thinks he does. He might unconsciously skim over areas that you’ve changed, thinking that it’s all the same as before, or be misled by his expectations of how the story used to read. He might also become hyper-critical, because on a second reading, no matter how good the story is, the repetition will cause boredom. And if the story seems boring, then this will lead him to think of new and “more interesting” ways the story can be told. If you have no choice, and have to seek the same reader twice, make sure to leave enough time between readings so he can somewhat forget his first reading and approach it fresh.

5. It’s best to get your feedback, one reader at a time. For instance, you have four readers: In the first scenario, they all read your story at the same time, and they each find things that need to be changed. They might even recommend some of the same changes. So you change your story. Now what? Your changes might create new holes in the story, or your sentence and paragraph changes might cause new readability problems. Now you need to find another reader who can give you fresh feedback.

In the second scenario, you get feedback from reader one first. Maybe she mentions a confusing spot in chapter 12 and in chapter 14. You decide it would be good to change chapter 14, but not chapter 12. Then you go to reader two. He finds a hole in the change you made in chapter 14, and is also confused by chapter 12. You begin to think maybe chapter 12 needs work too, so you patch the hole in chapter 14 and make changes to chapter 12. Now you go to reader three. She loves how things are going in both of those chapters, so it looks like those changes are working out, but she suggests a possibly better ending. You decide to rewrite the ending and see if it works. Reader four may tell you it does or it doesn’t. In this way, you’ve gotten a lot more mileage out of your feedback than having them all four read the same draft at once. The drawback to this is that it takes more time, but otherwise, you may be throwing away good feedback. If you can’t do this because your feedback comes from a writers group, don’t sweat it. Feedback is feedback. Take it where you can. Just try to reserve someone else later who can give you fresh feedback after you’ve made your changes.

6. Avoid readers who are back-seat drivers. A reader should take your story for what it is and not try to make it into the kind of story he wants it to be. If you find your reader making all kinds of suggestions for how you could completely remake your story, next time you might not want him reading your manuscript, or at the least, you know to take his feedback with a grain of salt.

7. Try to get readers who see the forest and readers who see the trees. Some readers will see the overall forest of your story and give you great feedback on your characters and story structure, but they’re no good when it comes to sentence structure or catching typos. Some readers will mark every single typo, but not have much to say about the content of the story other than “It was okay.” You need both. While it’s best to get a reader who can do both, some are better at one than at the other. If you find someone is better at checking technical details, it’s best for him to be one of the last to read it, after all the major rewriting has been done. And those who are better at the overall story flow should be first to read it so you can make those major overhauls first, and then polish and fine tune later.