There is no single or right way to get feedback. In this chapter I will describe the advantages and disadvantages of various options. At the end I will suggest one process I believe is particularly valuable: getting feedback regularly in a writing support group.
| • | You can get feedback from one person or several. If you really want to know how your words affect readers, you can't trust feedback from just one person, no matter how expert or experienced she is. Besides it is somehow empowering to realize how diverse and even contradictory the reactions are of different readers to your one set of words. It's confusing at first but it releases you from the tyranny of any single reader's or teacher's judgment. It drives home the fact that there's never a single or correct assessment of a piece of writing. When you get conflicting reactions, block your impulse to figure out which reactions are right. Eat like an owl: take in everything and trust your innards to digest what's useful and discard what's not. Try for readers with different tastes and temperaments -- especially if you don't have many readers. But you can get good benefit from just one reader's feedback if you only want criterion-based feedback -- if you only want to find out about your organization or logic or grammar, for example-so long as that reader understands those criteria well. * And if you want help on an early weak draft, you can also make good use of |
____________________ | * | One careful reader can certainly find your mistakes in grammar, usage, and typing -- a kind of criterion-based feedback that you should always get on any important piece of writing headed for an audience. | | | just one reader. You're not so much trying to find out how successful your draft is. You know it's inadequate. What you want is to have an interesting discussion about the topic, get your mind jogged, and end up with new insights. Feedback and discussion from one reader -- perhaps a friend who is happy to read your rough work simply for the pleasure of hearing your thinking -- can go a long way toward turning a shaky first draft into something so solid that others will enjoy reading it for their own benefit, not just as a favor. | | | If you get feedback from several people you can get it from them in a group or by meeting with them singly. Usually you learn more in a group. Readers will notice more by hearing what the others say: "I see you are surprised," a reader say, "by her reaction to that first paragraph, but the same thing happened to me. I hadn't been conscious of it till I heard her tell her response." Or "Her reaction makes me realize I had the opposite feeling when I read that third paragraph." Readers sometimes get into instructive discussions: three people with different perceptions may suddenly put their views together and see something going on in your writing that none of them could have seen alone. But a group is much more trouble. People have to coordinate their schedules. It takes more of everyone's time (though less of yours). And some people hate groups and clam up-whereas they will give you lots of good feedback if you sit down with them oneto-one. And groups sometimes get sidetracked into useless arguments. | | | You can get feedback from the same people all the time or use different people on different occasions. There is a great advantage to staying with the same people because they get so much better at giving feedback. And if you use people who want feedback from you in return, that further improves the quality of what you get: people are more honest and open when they need the same gift back from you. But, of course, sometimes you will need one-timeonly feedback from particular readers with special knowledge or from readers who are especially like the real audience for your piece. | | | Some readers do better if you choose the questions. They prefer, as it were, to be interviewed. Other readers will give you better feedback if you hand them the list so they can choose the ones they find most interesting and applicable. You'll have better luck | | | getting these choosey readers to answer particular questions if you give them free rein for a while. | | | You can given people copies of your writing (or leave one copy where they can read it at leisure), or you can read it to them out loud. When readers have a copy of your words in their hands, they can often give you more detailed and precise feedback. And it saves time if they can read it before you meet -- though they sometimes then don't have it fresh enough in mind when you meet. But in some ways you get more useful feedback when you read your piece out loud. (You must read it twice and leave a minute or two of silence after each reading.) Any passage that is not clear enough to be understood through listening is not really clear enough, even if it can be understood off the page. It is making your reader work harder than she ought to have to work and therefore making her more likely to resist your meaning. And the experience of reading your words out loud to an audience is beneficial in itself. Since both methods of giving your writing to readers have contrasting advantages, I would advise using each of them at one time or another. It would be almost ideal if readers would read your piece and take notes of their reactions a few days before you meet; and then listen to you read your piece out loud when you meet so it will be fresh in their minds and so they can compare their reactions to the two different experiences. | | | If you give readers copies of long pieces instead of reading them out loud, you will save meeting time and readers will probably be able to tell you more reactions. It's hard to listen to and remember something too long. But if that is hard to arrange you can still get very useful feedback if you read out loud just the first few pages of a long piece. If you can get the opening section to work -- the introduction and a substantial section of the main body -- you've gone a long way toward making the whole piece work. | | | You can tell your readers something about your audience, purpose and context before they give you feedback: "This memo is meant to give advice to salespeople who will be trying to sell in a very competitive market to resistant customers. I am their supervisor and that makes them often resent my advice. But I want them not to feel any pressure. I want them just to take whatever they find useful in this memo and feel free to ignore what they don't like." If you have a tricky audience problem like this, or if | | you simply care enormously about the words succeeding with a particular audience (for example, "If this letter doesn't work on, her, I don't think I'll get visiting rights for seeing my children"), it is worth explaining the situation at least to some of your readers. They may have some good insights about how your particular audience would react and what that audience needs: insights they would miss if they just reacted as themselves. But if it's really important that your words work with a particular audience, it's worth struggling to find readers like your real audience. Find salespeople or women in a divorce proceeding like yours. Ask favors. But on the other hand, when readers are busy telling you how they think other readers will react, they often miss some of their own reactions. Or they don't tell you some of their own reactions because they have a stereotyped vision of your audience: "Oh well, salesmen don't think about anything except making a sale," or "Women in the middle of divorce proceedings can't listen to reason." It's crucial to get at least some feedback that is not affected by knowledge of your audience and purpose. I always learn most from people's own reactions. I'm always saying, "Please don't spend so much time talking about how you think they would react, tell me more about how you actually did react." You can get the best of both worlds if you keep quiet at first, but then, after getting one round of unchanneled feedback, explain your particular audience situation. | |
| It's hard not to apologize as you give a piece of writing to your readers: "This is only a second draft and still pretty rough. I was up late last night trying to finish it. I know it's kind of incoherent. I still have lots of revising to do." Sometimes it does no harm and permits readers to be gracious and say things like, "I'm sure it's only because you haven't finished it yet, but I found that opening paragraph very confusing." But sometimes an apology makes readers wonder if you are afraid to hear criticism and afraid to say so. This makes them feel hesitant and uncertain and, as a result, they pussyfoot around. You never learn some of their most interesting reactions. It's usually better to keep your mouth shut and see what they say or else make an unambiguous request for no negative feedback. | | How much negative feedback can you productively use? If too much of it will stop you from working on a piece or slow you down in your writing, you have to be brave enough-and smart enough -- to admit it. Until you are secure in your writing -- until, that is, you know you can produce lots of writing whenever you need it and that some of it will be good or can be made goodstick with plain sharing and noncritical feedback. For readers will occasionally hate your piece. Don't ask for full feedback until you are able to use negative reactions to see new useful things about your writing -- instead of just feeling put down, graded, or judged. Wait till you can say, I certainly must have gotten something powerful into my words," when readers are angry at what you wrote. Wait till you can refrain from saying, "I answered your objection right there on page three," and instead just nod your head and think to yourself, "Oh, I see. That's helpful. You've shown me that what I say on page three doesn't seem to be working -- for you anyway. I wonder if I need to do something about that." Wait till you don't feel you have to please readers, just use them. The goal is to hear what your readers tell you and not defend against it, and you can't do that if they have too much power over you. Even after you are used to getting full feedback, you sometimes need to say, for particular pieces of writing, "I'm not ready for criticism on this piece. Tell me what works, what you like, and what you think I'm saying and that's all." I've finally learned to do this. Readers can give you the kind of feedback you need if you make your request clear and insist on it. Occasionally you need to interrupt them if they forget. And it's perfectly feasible to have a group where some people only share, others call for only noncritical feedback, and others want "the works." And people can change their request from week to week. | Do you care more about immediately revising this particular piece of writing or more about learning in a long-term way about the reactions of readers to the way you write? When your goal is immediate revising, you will probably be interested in the direct suggestions for fixing your draft that arise from criterion-based feedback. You can frankly pick your readers' minds for advice and for their thinking on the topic. You can even let yourself interrupt them when they trigger a good insight: "Wait a minute! I just realized what I really meant to say. . . ." If it's an early rough draft, you may be more interested in discussing the topic and your general approach than in getting much feedback on your actual writing. You may permit yourself to argue with readers about the |
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topic as a way of bringing out new ideas and getting closer to the truth (as long as arguing doesn't make them unwilling to share their ideas and reactions). But don't neglect reader-based feedback. And make sure you spend plenty of time with your mouth shut. Often you write the best revisions only after you finally discover what it feels like inside your reader's skin: suddenly you are struck with a much better approach to your topic and a more effective voice -- just by listening to someone utterly misunderstand what you were saying. But perhaps you don't care so much about revising this piece of writing (though you may in fact revise it). What you care about most is developing a better feel for the interaction between your words and the consciousness of readers -- a better feel for different fish on your line. When you want feedback for the long haul, you need to get it regularly and to emphasize reader-based feedback. And to listen. For long-haul learning it pays to get feedback not only on middle and late drafts, but also sometimes on unrevised writing or even freewriting. You will feel naked and vulnerable because such writing has glaring weaknesses you could easily correct. But such feedback will tell you important things about your habitual tones of voice and spontaneous habits of language and thought. Such feedback can lead to deeper and more pervasive improvement in your writing than any other kind. When you get feedback on unrevised writing, you should ask your readers to tell you about the tones of voice, habits of mind, and ways of relating to readers that they hear in your wordsrather than emphasizing whether the words are successful. It is a more personal kind of feedback. In a sense you are inviting them to read your diary. It is crucial that both you and they understand it is fine -- beneficial, in fact -- for your most unacceptable voices and habits of mind to show. Don't let them make you feel bad when they hear an ugly snarl or hopeless whine in your words, for example, or some habitual verbal fidget. Only by getting better acquainted with such voices or habits of mind, inhabiting them and perhaps even experimentally exaggerating them, will you gradually learn to get control over them so they don't seep into all your writing in subtle forms. | | How much arguing do you want vs. plain listening? The believing game or the doubting game? (See the appendix essay on these two processes in Writing Without Teachers.) I tend to favor the believing game. It's not that readers should try to believe or like the writing. But everyone should try to see the writing through the eyes of whoever is giving feedback at that moment. When it's your turn to give feedback you tell how you saw the words, but while another reader is reacting you never say "Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense because. . . ." By trying to see things through the other readers' eyes you deepen your own reading skills and you help produce an atmosphere of safety and trust that permits others to see and speak better. But the believing game is not easy. It takes discipline. Some people have a hard time putting their full effort into trying to see through someone else's eyes. Sometimes the energy goes out of a discussion. People are merely putting on their Sunday manners and refraining from argument -- not really entering into other people's perceptions. (There is a different kind of energy that occurs when people manage to play the believing game -- quieter but no less intense.) And when it's your turn to get feedback on your writing, you need disciplined self-control. Readers will sometimes trick you into talking and not listening by asking you what you really meant here or how you came up with your approach | | purposes. In my new novel, the same sort of thing began to happen; Buck Ravel fairly pouted all the time I was striving to have him be fairly responsible and selfaware. For six weeks I brought in parts of the book to read, and I kept getting the group more and more pissed off and upset -- particularly two gutsy women. They were tired of him, couldn't he buck up, what a baby he was, and who could be attracted to such a pathetic figure? Each week I got more and more depressed over the direction of the book, and I saw that I was going to lose six months of hard work on this book if I didn't handle where Buck was. "What I did was to sit down and bat out a fast 3,500 words in which I MADE BUCK DO ALL THE THINGS I'D BEEN KEEPING HIM FROM DOING. If I'd been trying to keep him from being a baby, now I made him be a baby. If I'd been trying to keep him from whining, now he whined about everything. And if he was a pathetic figure, I made him more pathetic, till he was nothing but pathetic. "That broke a dam in the book. Much of what I wrote I found a use for in the book, but much more importantly, I took responsibility for what was oozing out of Buck's skin. Instead of dodging it, I owned it, I made it mine. By HAVING it happen instead of pushing it away, I got in control of it." Thus Donald Porter to me in a letter about his experiences using a feedback group for his writing. He runs workshops for writers: The Writing Workshop, in connection with the Hunter College Center for Lifelong Learning in New York City. | | there. You have to turn their questions around into feedback: "What was happening inside you that led you to ask that question?" Readers will also goad you into arguing by misunderstanding what you made perfectly clear or criticizing your best passages. You can answer their questions and refute their calumnies after you finish really seeing it their way. Needless to say, the doubting game can be equally powerful if everyone is up for it. Wrestling can lead to the truth. You can have instructive arguments about the merits of two different ways of organizing some piece of writing or between competing explanations for why most readers ignored the same passage in a piece of writing. But doubting or believing, it's never useful to let an argument drift into a question of whether a reader was right to have the response she had. If readers get the sense that they may be criticized or ridiculed for having peculiar reactions, they will begin to censor and you will no longer get trustworthy feedback. I am leery even of pressing people too hard to explain their reactions for fear they will only give reactions they can justify. When you ask a reader to explain her reaction it almost always seems as though you are saying, "Prove that it's not wrong or crazy." If you just ask her to tell more about her reaction, it feels more like "Help me see the words through your eyes." Value peculiar reactions. They will teach you the most. The best feedback groups I have seen have been characterized by a combination of great frankness and great trust. Whether or not you are paying back readers with feedback on their writing, pay them back in other ways. Give them credit. Tell them how helpful they were, and when it fits the kind of writing you are doing, tell in footnotes or introductions that you are indebted to ------ or that your final version owes much to the helpful feedback of ------. Make sure you give them a manuscript that is neat and easy to read-even if you are asking a good friend for feedback on a very early draft where you haven't even figured out your main idea. It's all right in such a draft to be fumbling for what you want to say as long as your reader can follow you perfectly as you fumble. On the early draft you can help readers immensely by including passages where you talk straight, as though talking directly to them, clarifying your struggle: "What I'm trying to get at in this section is the | idea that . . ." or "I'm confused at this point because I argued one way in the first few pages, but here all my evidence is pointing in the opposite direction." (Besides, it helps to get in the habit of writing out these baffled musings as part of your draft -- instead of stopping your pencil when they hit you and just thinking them. Writing them out often starts to untangle your confusion.) You repay readers best by showing them that you actually use them. That doesn't mean always trying to follow their advice (even if they happen to agree with each other, which is rare). It's not their advice which is most valuable, but their perceptions and reactions. You can show them that you not only listen, but actually understand what they are saying. Practice believing it all, even when it's contradictory. Let them see you being shaken loose from your belief in something false or from your preference for a piece of your own weak writing. |
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