How to Tell the Difference Between Constructive and Destructive Feedback

You wrote a novel! Now what? NaNoWriMo’s “Now What?” Months are here—this January and February, we’ll be helping you guide your novel through the revision and publishing process. Today, author M Todd Gallowglas , describes how to build constructive feedback relationships:

When you tell people you’ve just finished writing a novel, many of them, writers and non-writers alike, are going to be full of well-meaning suggestions and advice. Some of the advice will be good, some of it… not so much. One of the things you’ll hear most often is to have other people read your book and give you feedback. 

Great idea!

Well, it’s a great idea until people start actually giving you feedback on your work. After that, you have to sift through all the stuff that works for you and what doesn’t, what’s going to help your book and what’s going to hurt it. Yes, you read that right, feedback comes in two types: constructive and destructive. Destructive feedback, while often well-intended, can not only hurt your book, but also hurt you as a writer. I have some tricks on how you can tell the difference between constructive and destructive feedback.

The first way to tell what kind of feedback they are going to offer you is by listening to the first things they mention when they talk to you about your book. If someone begins with the stuff they liked, and what really worked about your book, that’s a good indication that they are going to be constructive, because even if they have to give you some bad news, they’re aware enough to know that it’s always easier to take the bad after the good. Someone giving destructive feedback will often launch immediately into their perceived problems with the book. 

From there, the differences continue on the same themes.

Someone offering destructive feedback wants to help you “fix” what they think is “wrong” with your book, while someone giving you constructive feedback will ask what you were trying to do with specific scenes and characters. 

Constructive feedback will compare and contrast your writing’s effectiveness with other scenes in your work, while people who deliver destructive feedback will compare and contrast your book with their favorite books, usually mega-bestsellers or classics.

Now, this constructive/destructive isn’t a yes/no, all-or-nothing game. It’s a spectrum. Your early readers are going to fall somewhere in between the two extremes. When people talk to you about your book, gravitate mostly to those people who deliver feedback that you feel is constructive. 

Your book is going to have problems. All books do. Destructive feedback is going to identify what they feel are the problems and prescribe their “fix”. Constructive feedback will ask you questions about your intentions—for example, “Did you intend to have these two characters start this subplot in this scene that doesn’t seem to go anywhere?”—and will also leave any suggested “fixes” open-ended, asking questions that get you thinking. (In this case, you might either rework the character interaction so as not to begin a false subplot, strengthen the later bits of that subplot so that readers can identify them more, or develop the subplot that you didn’t realize you were starting.)

I’ve collected a small group of a half-dozen people, who beta read for me. Over the last ten years or so, I’ve communicated what works for me, and what kind of feedback is most valuable, and in return, they now give me almost 100% constructive feedback. It’s made all the difference in my writing career. It can make the difference in yours.

M Todd Gallowglas is a professional storyteller (like on a stage with a show in front of real people) and the author of the Tears of Rage, Halloween Jack, and Dead Weight series.

Top photo by Flickr user Rhino Neal.