I belonged to writing groups for many years when I started writing for real. Luckily, the groups contained a few skilled writers who were sensitive, insightful readers, who also wanted my work to succeed (they also contained folks who occasionally were helpful, and one or two who I learned weren\u2019t useful in the least).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I haven\u2019t been in a group for years. I depend on willing friends who don\u2019t have writing or workshop backgrounds. They want to help, but they might not know where to start or what I need to hear. I can get useful reactions to the story if I suggest these responses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, did the story work for you? I want to know if the reader liked the story. What did you like? This is a broad, global type of question. If the story doesn\u2019t work for the reader for whatever reason, that will give me pause as a writer. It could mean I chose the wrong reader for the piece. I need more feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, did the story provoke anything for you? Did it leave you thoughtful or change your mood? Did you feel moved by it and what did that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third, what did you like most? What caught your eye? Were there specific moments, scenes, lines, and\/or wordings that tickled you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fourth, did you not understand anything or feel confused by it. Where were those specific moments, scenes, lines, and\/or wordings that tripped you up?
Next, did the story drag in places?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Was there any place in the story that felt rushed or you really wanted to know more about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What did you think about the characters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any other thoughts? This might be the place where an analytic reader might say what they thought the story was about, or what they thought they were supposed to get out of it. You never know what might come out of this question, but I listen carefully to those random observations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, and by the way, did you run across obvious typos or miswordings? I don\u2019t expect my first readers to proofread for me, but if they see something, I appreciate hearing about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You might notice that I don\u2019t ask my reader for suggestions on how to improve the story. I don\u2019t know who it was that said, \u201cAnything a reader notices is a flaw probably is right. Anyway, a reader suggests how to change it is probably wrong,\u201d but in general that strikes me as true. A reader might see a problem with a paragraph, and then suggest a way to improve it, but you realize the fault actually was in how the paragraph was set up. You have to rewrite something pages earlier to make the \u201cflawed\u201d section work. Also, I\u2019ve had readers go to town at length about something in a story and then go through gyrations to suggest how to fix it. All I did was delete it. Problem solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point of all this is that a reader who just says, \u201cI thought it was cool. Thanks for sharing,\u201d might be affirming, but they\u2019re not helpful. When I share a draft, I\u2019m hoping for meaningful feedback that will give me an outsider perspective on the story. The longer I can get them to talk about the story, and the more different ways they approach the story, the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s an example. My wife is not a writer, but she\u2019s a reader and she\u2019s been living with a writer for a long time. She read my latest piece and asked a basic question: Why did I have two policemen in the opening scene who I identified as the \u201cman officer\u201d and the \u201cwoman officer.\u201d Later in the scene, I shortened it to \u201cthe man\u201d and \u201cthe woman.\u201d My wife said she stumbled when she read that. Why didn\u2019t they have names?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did the tiniest rewrite of the scene, giving them names, and it was way better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I belonged to writing groups for many years when I started writing for real. Luckily, the groups contained a few skilled writers who were sensitive, insightful readers, who also wanted my work to succeed (they also contained folks who occasionally were helpful, and one or two who I learned weren\u2019t useful in the least). But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,6,71,3],"tags":[21,12,119,9,118,7,10],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-short-stories","category-writers","category-writing","tag-advice","tag-craft","tag-critiquing","tag-short-stories","tag-writers-workshop","tag-writing","tag-writing-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}