feedback

5 Ways to Get Early Feedback on Your Book Idea or Manuscript

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This post by Nina Amir originally appeared on The Book Designer on 5/27/15.

Gathering reader feedback on your manuscript before you to print might be the most valuable step you can take toward producing a successful book. You can obtain this information in a variety of ways depending upon how you choose to write your manuscript.

In fact, you can even get early feedback before you write your book. This type of test marketing can save you a lot of time and energy spent producing a manuscript that might never sell.

The goal of getting early reader feedback on your book idea or manuscript is simple: Incorporate the valid suggestions you receive to help you craft the best possible book.

The following five strategies provide you with the means to get beta readers or reviewers for your ideas and your work. Each has a different set of benefits, and each is useful at a different stage. Choose one that suits your style, your point in the book-production process and the work at hand.

 

1. Blog Your Book

The main benefit of blogging a book, purposefully writing your book post by post on your site, comes from the author platform you build by doing so. As you produce the first draft of your book on the Internet, you gain loyal blog readers and subscribers. They are your potential book readers or buyers even though they have already “bought into” reading the first draft of your book—your blogged book.

 

Read the full post on The Book Designer.

 

Cara Lopez Lee’s Thoughtful Rules for Compassionate Critiques

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This post by Cara Lopez Lee originally appeared as a guest post on Rebecca Lacko’s The Written Word site.

I have a small, trusted circle of critique partners. I know I’m lucky, they’re hard to come by. I met two at Writers’ Studio at UCLA, a couple of years ago, and I count them dear friends. Two others, I met when I began volunteering for Field’s End, a non-profit literary event group. In all cases, I found my partners by magic, or universal synchronicity, or dumb luck–I really don’t what alchemy transforms strangers to trusted allies. All I can I say is it is extremely difficult to both find and BE a good critique partner. That’s why I’m sharing ideas from author and HGTV-writer Cara Lopez Lee’s excellent post, Feedback with Compassionate Detachment.

Here are excerpts:

I’ve discovered that providing feedback with the goal of serving both writer and story can be fast and easy, if you know how…

Creative writing is always deeply personal, fiction or non, and I’ve learned that’s why it’s important for feedback to be both compassionate and detached. I’ve since developed a reputation among coaching clients, writing colleagues, and students for giving feedback that encourages and motivates. Here are a few tips that have helped me:

1. Take responsibility for your opinion by emphasizing “I” statements over “you” statements.
This helps writers take feedback as opinion, rather than personal blame or praise, encouraging them to decide whether their writing needs to change or just needs another audience. For example:

  • I’d like to know more about this character’s relationship with his father.
  • I’m confused here. Is it possible to clarify?
  • I find myself wondering how this character felt when she saw the body
    (Note: If you only adopt one technique, let this be it. You will win friends and influence writers! -RL)

 

Read the full post, which includes six additional specific critique tips, on The Written Word.

 

Never Complain, Never Explain—Craft Tuesday at Write on the River

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This post by Bob Mayer originally appeared on his Write on the River site on 5/5/15.

I think Henry Ford uttered the famous line: Never complain, never explain. This applies in the writing world in several ways.

One thing I do when critiquing material is ask a lot of questions. I tell writers, ‘You don’t have to answer those questions to me’ (in fact I would prefer they don’t), but rather they are to get the writers to think. At my Write on the River workshop, it’s an exchange of ideas and a lot of questions; and a lot of contributing to answers from all participating.

Remember, you don’t get any opportunities to explain your book once it’s on the shelf in a store or downloaded. You also don’t get any opportunities to explain your submission when it’s sitting on an agent’s or editor’s desk. So if they don’t “get it” the first time around, they won’t get it. Get it? All your explanations and defenses mean nothing because you not only won’t get the chance to say them, you shouldn’t get the chance to say them.

I’ve gotten long emails back from writers answering my questions or challenging points I made in critiques and my reaction is that such letters are a waste of paper. If I couldn’t figure it out from the material, it needs to be rewritten. This ties in with my theory about the original idea. If you can’t tell me what your story is about in one, maybe two sentences, and I understand it from that, then you are going to have a hell of a hard time selling it. You don’t get to put those emails in the front of your published book. You must incorporate those answers in the novel itself through rewriting.

 

Read the full post on Write on the River.

 

Navigating the Forest of Feedback: 8 Ways to Recognize Helpful Criticism (and How to Ignore the Rest)

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This post by Elizabeth Law originally appeared on her Elizabeth Law Reads site on 3/5/15.

Recently, on a flight home from vacation, I met author Randi Hutter Epstein and we we were talking about her work. She said “After about three days of writing, I don’t know if what I have is good, or crap. I’ll ask anyone their opinion!”

Exactly.

If you’re a writer you need feedback, whether you’re a novice or an author with 30 books under your belt. And there are a lot of people out there who are only too happy to give it to you. But how do you know what comments are useful, anyway? What should you take, and what should you toss? Here are some good things to consider when asking for, or getting, feedback:

#1) What are my manuscript reviewer’s credentials and experience?
Has he published books for the same age category as I’m writing for? Or is she perhaps less far along in the process, but still experienced in reading and listening to manuscripts, and in giving thoughtful feedback? Maybe he is at the same place as I am and we can learn together?

Because you don’t need to hire an experienced editor to get good feedback.  For example, critique groups probably help their members more with their works in progress than any other class, editor or method out there.  But do keep in mind who is telling you things.  If they are fellow writers, do you admire or like their work? Do they share your ability to learn and grow?   Or are they one of those types who seem to have all the answers, until you find out they’ve never actually published anything?

 

Read the full post on Elizabeth Law Reads.

 

How Short Story Writing & Flash Fiction Gets Judged in Competitions

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This post by Zena Shapter originally appeared on her site on 7/24/14.

As some of you may know, I recently judged the Australian Horror Writers’ Association’s short story and flash fiction competition. It involved reading 154 stories and over 385,000 words. At 12pt Times New Roman font, spaced at 1.5 lines, that was 1,066 pages of writing. Whoa!

I’m so glad I read it all though – thank you for sending in your wonderful stories, everyone! It was a fabulous experience. So fabulous, in fact, that I asked my writers’ group – the amazing Northern Beaches Writers’ Group – what insights they might like to have into the judging process, what might be useful to know when writing to win. I’ve answered their questions below. Hopefully you know all this already, but if you don’t then I hope it helps in some small way.

 

What do judges look for in a story?

The most important thing to realise about competitions, and slush piles, and submission calls, is that the reader reading them has a heck of a lot of reading to do. They are also, generally, reading in their spare time. So sometimes I would sit down with my laptop and a glass of wine at home, and have 30 stories to read but only an hour in which to read them.

I never managed it. 10 stories per hour was my maximum. Still, in that hour I wanted to read as much as possible. Some stories made this easy for me – they flowed well, had an interesting character doing something interesting, and showed me the action happening scene-by-scene, so I thanked them for it with my scoring. Other stories made the hour hard work, with their telling and info-dumping and my struggling to understand what was going on, and they were also scored accordingly.

 

Click here to read the full post on Zena Shapter’s site.