How Not to Respond to a Review - or a workshop critique!

Check it out! Now, when someone workshops or critiques your work, think back to how uncomfortable you felt reading the author's repeated defenses of her own work! A much more professional approach is to make note firstly of the good things that have been said about your work. And I do mean make a note! It's very easy to hear what people thought could be improved and much harder to remember the elements they enjoyed or thought worked. So, make a note in your writer's journal 'X said my characters were well developed. Y liked my writing style. Z felt my descriptions were vivid.'

Then, calmly and professionally make a note of the areas that need improvement - and notes to yourself on how this might be accomplished. This should help put you in the mindset of revising, rather than defending your work.

1. Opening para needs work - can I introduce the character straight away involved in some action which will show the reader who they are rather than tell them?

2. Mrs. B is too cliched - maybe I should model her more on Aunty May - give her A.M's mangy German Shepherd rather than the spinster cats? She could walk past the local school muttering to it. Kids think it's called Adolf? When really it's Alf?

3. Middle section needs more action - think about it, but there are possibilities to use the best friend situation more. (Or the breakdown in the marriage?)

4. Ending too weak. I'll think about that. Is it too throw-away? But what I emphatically don't want is a too-neat, every tied-off ending. It might be weakened by other problems - partic. the middle section. Leave this revision to last.

Part of being a professional writer is being able to distance yourself from criticism and the editing process - it's not personal. Any critiqueing, whether it's from an editor, a workshop group, a writing tutor or a friend-reader should be about making the work itself stronger. It's one of the hardest lessons to learn, but if you can learn it in your apprenticeship, it will save you from appearing unprofessional. The golden rule in publishing is, of course, never reply to a review unless they actually have a fact wrong - and even then, think a long time before you send the email! Too often you'll simply look whingey at best, unhinged at worst.

Workshopping tips

I wrote these for Writing for Children, Picture Books last year and have rediscovered them after some prompting from my Gippstafe colleagues.

Different people have different approaches to workshops and are capable or want to give different levels of feedback. The biggest rule is really to respect the material the writer presents. It's not up to the workshop to do a massive structural edit, rewrite the story or, indeed, to do a close line-edit. Participants in the workshop make suggestions - always acknowledging the story as presented. These suggestions should have the common aim of wanting the material to live up to its best possible potential.

So, for example, comments on grammar could be just 'check your grammar, there are some wonky bits' as opposed to anyone going through and doing a line-edit on the story. Structural comments could include, 'it seemed to me that the resolution was a little too open-ended' or 'the characters seemed a little flat and could have been better developed'. Those general comments should be backed up by more detailed explanations: 'I think it would be wise to have the resolution stem from the actions of your protagonist, rather than by chance' and 'Perhaps some more details about how your character identifies with their family would help us understand her more.' It's always a good idea to go from the general to the specific as people tend to comprehend that more readily.