THE ROLE OF CRITICISM

Everyone says my work is great, do I still need to bother rewriting? In a word.... Yes!

Anyone who's getting nothing but positive criticism after a first draft is soliciting feedback from the wrong sources. Think about WHO you're getting criticism from and what gives them the right to criticise you. Feedback is important and it's nice to be praised but essentially what you need from those looking at your early efforts is what you've not done well and how to improve it. If people like it, great, but it's secondary to what you really need at that stage. Your Grandma is going to think that everything you do is better than In Search of Lost Time, whether or not she can even understand it. This is no good to anyone.

It's ok to take negative criticism personally if that's what's going to drive you on to make the work better. There's no right way to react to feedback other than ensuring it makes you go back and fix the issues, no matter how big they may be. An agent recently told me that my style was great and the tone I set in my novel was awesome, but thereafter the plot moved too slowly and I had to basically rewrite my entire first five chapters. This prompted me to completely change the starting events and that was tough as I thought what I had was well written. When I looked back however I decided that he was right. It became very obvious to me what the issues were and after that I could plan how to effectively alleviate them in my next draft. Essentially YOU have to understand enough about what you want to say and then make decisions on who to trust to tell you whether or not you've succeeded. When you don't, it's back to the drawing board.

Finally, don't get feedback after every chapter. This is tough for some people. Everyone wants to be told they're doing great. It's tough to write for weeks or months before giving someone a completed peice of work but essentially (unless you're Charles Dickens releasing a novel one chapter at a time in the Evening Standard) your manuscript needs to work best as a whole. Some people like to give a first chapter to people for feedback to get feedback on things like tone and style, this is probably not a terrible idea.

Always keep in mind though that feedback is merely someone elses opinion. If someone gave me the Hunger Games I'd say it was terribly written and a rip-off of the Running Man and Battle Royale. Be true to yourself and accept criticism but, essentially, the final edit is still firmly yours.

If you can't find decent people to give you feedback then look online. There's plenty of people willing to critique your work. Oftentimes they'll do this in return for you looking at their work so be prepared to do unto others. As an aside, this is also a good way to meet other writers who can help you later in your career.