What we ask for when we ask for feedback
Tell me this is amazing and brilliant and you love it
I’ve mentioned a few times in these emails that you’re welcome to send me short pieces of writing in response, and that I’ll be happy to send some feedback, and I can’t help noticing that so far the number of people who’ve taken me up on this offer has been: zero.
And I realise that although I know what I mean by ‘feedback’, maybe for other people the word means something… different? So, this week, here are some of the things I discuss with students before we even think about looking at each other’s work.
A few things that feedback is not, according to me:
Feedback is not giving a piece of work a score (or, hello problematic institutional context, a ‘grade’). Feedback is not telling someone that their work is ‘good’ or ‘not good’ or ‘great’ or ‘promising’ or ‘ luminous’ or any other superlative that could be placed on a numerical scale. Obviously, when we share a new piece of work with someone we mainly want them to tell us that it’s brilliant and they have no notes. But if we explicitly remove this possibility from the process - if we insist from the outset that no-one is going to say whether a piece of work is ‘good’ or ‘not good’ - then we create the space for other and more valuable things to be said, and to be heard.
Feedback is not editing a piece of work, or telling the writer what they should have done differently. That’s a different process altogether, and it usually comes later. For now, we’re trying to help the writer see their own work more clearly, and to ask useful questions about it. Making specific edits will cloud the writer’s ability to answer those questions.
Feedback is not an opportunity for you to rewrite the work, or to remodel it in the image of something you would rather have read. Feedback is also not an opportunity for you to demonstrate how good you are at writing, or how much experience you have, or in any way to squash or discourage or inhibit what the writer might be trying to do. Feedback is, mainly, about finding out what the writer is trying to do.
What feedback is, according to the people* who have taught me well:
Feedback is a description of your reading experience.
Honestly, that’s it. You take a piece of text that you’ve never read before, and you describe your experience of reading it. You describe this experience in detail, and you describe your understanding of the text along with your uncertainties and confusions and questions. And you do this always with the sense that you want the writer to come back to the text and be prompted to do their own work on it.
You’ll know, from writing new work yourself, that by the time you think you might be ready to show it to anyone you have already read it approximately ten hundred million times. The boundary between what exists in your head and what exists on the page is extremely fuzzy. Your understanding of what it might be like to read this text for the first time is vanishingly small, and yet you want this text to do its job for someone doing just that: reading it for the first time.
So: a detailed description of the first-time reader’s reading experience can be a tremendous gift. The writer might be able to see, in the gaps between their intentions and this description, where they need to make adjustments, or cut, or clarify, or expand, or start again from a completely different angle. The writer might also be able to see, in an unexpected response, some emerging theme or flavour in their work which they hadn’t quite realised was there at all.
Specifically, here’s how I like to approach the reading-for-feedback process:
From the first line, I’m observing my own responses, and making note of them. For example, I might read the first sentence and note: “okay, this feels like an alien invasion story, and I suspect that Simone is going to be our protagonist?” But a paragraph later, I might then note: “oh, wait, it wasn’t a spacecraft at all. And where did Simone go?” I’m mapping out the progress of my understanding, which the writer can then calibrate against their own intention. (Did they want to trick me into thinking the flashing lights in the first sentence were from a spacecraft? Or are they baffled that I would think such a thing? It doesn’t matter; what matters is how my experience relates to their intention, and what they then do with the information.)
I’m noting my understanding of the narrative, but also of character, setting, voice, timeframe, etc. Often I’ll do this by simply describing those elements back to the writer, including my own speculations (because as readers we are always speculating, always filling in the gaps, and in fact this co-creation forms a big part of the pleasure of reading.) For example: “Simone seems like a youngish woman here, I think? You don’t say but her voice makes me think she’s early 20s? I can’t picture her, but she seems kind of nerdy, maybe?” The age and appearance of this character might not be important to the writer, in which case they’ll brush over this observation; but if it’s key to the story that in fact Simone is 12 years old and still at school, they will understand that they need to adjust their introduction of the character accordingly.
Some of these observations might relate to very basic issues around readability, but even then I’ll keep them within the frame of describing my reading experience. So, for example, if a writer has punctuated their dialogue inconsistently, to the point where it’s not clear who’s speaking, I’ll simply note my own understanding: “Is Simone saying this, or the helicopter pilot?” I won’t get into punctuation, or what I think are the correct techniques for rendering dialogue; I’m a reader here, not a teacher, or an editor.
As I work through these observations, I’ll also be keeping track of my own movement through the story. This is especially relevant where there are movements in time, or location. “I think this is a flashback, but I’m not quite sure how far back in time we’ve gone?” “Wait, is it the morning now?” “I didn’t notice when we moved from the house to the school, I don’t think?”
I’ll also be mapping my own attention. “It’s not a spaceship? So now I really want to know what it was - you’ve got my attention here.” “I don’t quite understand how this scene relates to the story, so my attention is drifting here.” “Oh! The helicopter pilot seems reluctant to leave the kitchen; I’m really interested to know why?” (My first editor noted, on the pages of my precious manuscript, “I fell asleep here …. [line drawn down several pages]… and woke up here.” I’m careful about who I use that phrasing with, but it’s an admirably clear observation. The first job of the story, as George Saunders says, is to get your reader to the end.)
And towards the later stages of the story, I’ll begin to introduce suggestions about my overall response to the story: what I’m starting to feel the key themes and ideas might be, what I do and don’t understand, where my curiosity now lies. And, crucially, how those things have changed over the course of the story. “I thought this was going to be a spooky alien abduction story, but now I wonder if it’s mainly about the helicopter pilot’s unrequited love for the gruff uncle in the kitchen?” Consider, in this example, how the writer might respond if they had never intended an unrequited-gruff-uncle storyline: they could tweak things so as to remove that suggestion, or they could be inspired to revisit the story in a whole new light, or they could gladly just let that suggestion hang in the background. Or they could think, “huh, that’s odd, none of the other people who’ve read this have thought that. Does Jon have a thing about gruff uncles?”
One more thing that feedback is not:
Feedback is never definitive, or final, or correct, as suggested by that last note. In fact the absolute golden scenario is to simultaneously gather this feedback from a range of readers, by which process you’ll find that one reader’s subtle is another’s reader’s obvious; one reader’s funny is another reader’s cringe; one reader’s implicit unrequited love story is another reader’s etc and so on. Admittedly, it’s hard enough finding one person to read a new draft, let alone a whole group. But when you read feedback written in this spirit, keep in mind that you’re only reading one response among a potential many. This is not definitive. But it can definitely be useful.
And now what?
So someone has spent the time reading your new draft. They’ve given you a detailed description of their reading experience, as suggested above. They’ve been careful to avoid comments in an editorial or scoring mode, and to phrase most of what they’re saying as questions, and in general to give you things to think about and problems to solve. (They’ve also, I hope, found lines and moments about which they can wholeheartedly say, “I loved this!” Because amongst everything else, this is what we need, don’t we? If we’re going to carry on and do more work?)
You’ve got all this. What do you do next? That, dear readers and writers and students and friends, is for next week.
* The people who have taught me well:
Most of what I’ve discussed in this week’s email was taught to me, through example and in conversation, by Éireann Lorsung, who teaches creative writing at University College Dublin and (as I’ve mentioned before) publishes this very fine substack.
I’ve also drawn on the various writings of George Saunders, particularly in his substack, as well as this Guardian article and his book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.
I’m also just starting to draw on Janelle Adsit’s book, Towards an Inclusive Creative Writing, which I’ve also mentioned before and which is pushing me to think more clearly about how I work with students and especially how I avoid wanting them to write the work I want them to write.
Homework:
A reminder that although these Class Notes have their origins in the teaching I do at the University of Nottingham, the lecture room is enormous and there’s plenty of room for you all.
So: no specific exercise this week, but if you send me a very short story (let’s say 500 words max) I’ll show you* what this idea of feedback looks like.
And/or if you have any questions you’d like me to address in future Class Notes, send those along as well.
Class dismissed.
(*Caveat: if a lot of people take up this offer, I won’t reply to everyone. But I do promise that if I have to choose I’ll choose at random; so if you don’t get feedback there is no implied judgment on your work. I promise.)
Every writer should read this. Exchanging feedback with other writers is such an important but often misunderstood process. It’s an act of generosity, gifting the writer an active, supportive reader response.
Hi Alice - I've been a very quiet Substacker lately but planning to get started again in the new year... So thanks for your note, and yes, the offer is still on the table :)