The Word Cloud

Howdy all!

Giving feedback is a skill. The better WordClouders are at giving feedback, the more success we'll all enjoy. So here are our tips for giving effective critiques ...

1. Always start with a positive. Doesn't matter how many books you may have had published, receiving feedback is always a bit wince-inducing. So start with something nice, and end that way too if you can.
2. Be honest. Publishing is bedevilled by bland, nice and evasive feedback. That's useless. If you think a certain chapter isn't working, the author needs you to say so.
3. Be respectful. It should always be possible to give negative feedback in a respectful way. Please do as you would be done by. If you do inadvertently cause offence, be quick to say sorry!
4. Respond to the writer's request. If someone is asking you for help with their characterisation, then the more you can say about that the better.
5. Be specific. The more you illustrate your comments with examples drawn from the text, the more useful it'll be. It'll also force you to understand how writing works in a way that will help you in your own work. Honest, guv!
6. Be expert. By giving good feedback to others you are training your own critical faculties, in a way which will really help you analyse and improve your own work. The more you understand about writing technique, the more your skills will improve. Do check out the Writing Technique pages of on the Word Cloud Discussions boards. You can go back to these time and again, and you'll learn more each time.
7. Get personal. If you find you and a group of writers / critiquers are working well together, then form a Group on the Groups tab above. That'll bolster your mutual commitment and chances of success.

Thank you very much indeed for offering feedback. It's a huge service that you do to others ... and we hope that others will do just the same for you.

I would also add that before critiquing it is important for the critic to be honest with themselves. To admit tastes, dispositions, prejudices. If you cant stand the first person present in a narrator, then it will govern enthusiasm. If admitted then the writer can evaluate your criticisms in spite of it. Having joined Authonomy (for the past six months) in the hope of genuine criticism from a sampling of different readers, so as to get a portrait of how a work 'comes across' and whether there are glaring deficiencies that different readers all comment on, instead it has become a competitive schmmoozing mutual ascent to the Editors Desk.

I hope that if work is posted here ( will decide about that later) I might find readers who I can help and who might help in turn to improve what they undersatnd I intended, and not what they imagine I should have intended instead.

I think the important thing is to differentiate between making comments - which as long as they follow Harry's guidelines, everyone's entitled to make - and giving advice about what to do instead, which is a whole different thing, and is where your expertise and/or experience in the genre, or lack of either, come into play

Of course, if you feel that, say, Chapter 4 goes on too long without enough happening, you should say that, even if with the caveat that you like fat action thrillers, and this is a crystalline literary miniature, so your reactions may not be calibrated appropriately. And of course you can suggest that hiding a bomb in the babycarriage might be a good way of getting things moving. But you don't have to come up with suggestions if none occur, and, equally, you mustn't be miffed if the writer doesn't do what you suggest. (You'd be amazed at the way some commenters sulk/rage in those circumstances, and at the way some writers sulk/rage at the suggestion that not every word of their first draft is yet perfect.)

Your chief function as a critiquer is to supply reactions, and what the writer does about them is up to them. In fact, learning to use feedback is an incredibly important part of learning to write. Of course, among writers who have got to know each other and the piece in question, suggestions can develop into a really fruitful dialogue which goes on as the piece develops. But that's a bonus.

Even professionally, I always take notice of what my editors say (my agent is also the most fantastic editor), because if those professional expert readers see a problem, there is a problem, by definition, and I need to do something about it. But how I solve the problem without wrecking the integrity of the book is up to me.

Do we have a thread anywhere, as a pair to this, on how to use feedback effectively. Hmmm.... (On the other hand, I've got a novel to write.)

I'm trying to be constructive with my opinions, but I am still learning myself!!! Even so, if I think something I say may help or inspire someone to carry on, I would only say that if I meant it and I think that is important.

I try to think of reading someone's work as drinking a glass of wine... I don't know anything about wine? All I know is if it tastes nice and I really want another glass, it must mean that I enjoyed it and want more. It doesn't mean anything to me how much it cost, where it came from or who made it, as I know nothing about wine? So all I can comment on is if I liked it, and if I would have more if it was on offer... Even though it isn't commenting on anything 'technical' I hope this helps some writers on the site, even if it's just a tiny bit?