Welcome to another edition of Fiction Notes. You can find previous essays here—topics range from idea generation to the importance of talent, to outlining a novel. If you like what you read, please hit reply or shoot me an email. And if you haven’t, please sign up!
Happy Friday!
Since last week I wrote about How To Write More, this week I thought I'd discuss what to do with all that extra writing once you have it. Specifically, I'm going to be covering the topic of asking for, receiving, and using feedback. Today's post might be shorter than usual, but don't worry—a large word-count isn't necessarily a good thing (a lesson I'm still struggling to learn).
The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up. — Chuck Palahniuk
Asking For Feedback
There is asking for feedback, and then there is asking for feedback. The first usually sounds something like: "Hey! I wrote a thing! Would you mind giving me your thoughts?" That isn't very helpful. What do you even mean by "some thoughts." Asking for and receiving feedback is an art on its own. You need to be specific enough with your request so you give the reader/editor/friend some direction, all the while leaving enough room for them to feel comfortable giving you their true thoughts. Because that is what you want: to have someone shine a light on the writing you no longer see clearly.
Whenever I ask for feedback on a piece, first—I tell the person exactly what it is they'll be reading. I. e. A novel excerpt that I've just begun working on; a final draft of an academic essay, a third draft of a screenplay. After that, I ask them to answer three questions as they read and make their notes:
What did you love? What they love, I keep.
What did you hate? What they hate, I put a pin on.
What did you find boring? What they found boring—this I usually cut.
Good writing is all about strong emotions. Both hate and love can be positives. What you do not want is something that is boring. Boring writing equals dead writing. And, usually, there is no point trying to resuscitate something that is already dead, is there?
Either way, asking for good feedback is just step one. Step two would be applying said feedback to your writing. But there is an in-between step...
Take A Breath
In a podcast interview with Tim Ferriss, Brian Koppelman (co-creator of Billions), described this in-between step thusly:
When I get feedback sometimes, my initial reaction … might be rage, might be sadness, might be self-pity, might be wanting to beat myself up. And I’m not exaggerating. I might have 12 really bad hours where I go through a range of purely emotional responses where what I want to say to the person giving me the feedback is: “Go fuck yourself.”
When I was younger, I did say “Go fuck yourself.” .... What I now know, because I’ve trained myself to notice it through meditation and journaling, is “Okay, this is you shaking off the bad reaction to the feedback.”
So listen to Mr Koppelman. Next time you get feedback—take a breath. Let it sit. Let those twelve hours of miserable self-hatred and sadness pass. Once you've done that, we can move onto applying the feedback to your writing.
Using Feedback Well
Most advice here is context-dependent. And since I do not know your specific circumstances, I thought I'd give you two main pieces of advice I've found particularly helpful. The first comes from Neil Gaiman, who said (in his MasterClass, I believe):
When someone tells you something is wrong, they are almost always right. When someone tells you how to fix it, they're almost always wrong.
The second piece of advice comes from novelist Stephen O'Connor, with whom I attended a workshop my last year of college. His method was simple. Whenever our pieces were up for discussion during the workshop, and after we got notes back from all the other attendees, and had to take them home and use them to produce a better draft of whatever we wrote, he told us:
Read all the notes several times. Pay careful attention to each. Think about them. Make your own notes in the margins, if need be, answering each thought with your own. Then, throw them all out and resist the urge to take them out of the trash and look at them as you go about your edits.
Oh, and there's one last thing.
When The Tables Turn
If you have writer-friends—Actually, let's assume you do, because if you don't and you're reading this, you can definitely count me as one. So, since you have writer-friends, and assuming you ask them for feedback regularly, there is going to come a time when the tables turn and they ask you for feedback. And when that happens, please be nice and give it to them. Make the time. Be a good person. Make all of us writers proud.
When (not if) that happens, keep in mind the first piece of advice I mentioned above. It works just as well for giving feedback as it does for receiving it. But, before you sit down to read your friend’s piece, before you even get a hold of the writing, there is one thing you should do. That is: ask one simple question. Ask: “Is this finished?”
I stole this from Penn Jillette, who told this to Brian Koppelman once, and Brian mentioned it in the conversation he had with Tim Ferriss and it has stuck with me ever since.
If someone tells you the writing is finished, what they are really asking for is a pat on the back. They’re asking for your support. They want you to tell them: “Wow, this is awesome. Congratulations. I know how hard it is to write something, and I could not be prouder of you.”
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That's it for today! Have a great weekend!