After you finish writing your draft story, you know you need to edit. And while self-editing is a wonderful gift to your manuscript, self-editing also, by nature, is a bit shortsighted: You already know what you know about your story.
When your brain, helpful as it tries to be, fills in those blanks and replaces what is with what could be, uncovering what the reader can’t know is difficult. Thus, having external feedback — from beta readers, a developmental editor, or another trusted book buddy — will help you see your blind spots so you can fill them and meet reader expectations.
But how much feedback is helpful, and when does help become hindrance?
Why you need feedback on your story before publishing
Peer review isn’t reserved for academia.
No matter what kind of story you’ve written — fiction, nonfiction, or memoir — your hard work benefits from a peer-review process to help you uncover whether and how:
- Your story is advancing as expected
- The characters and settings are introduced
- The goal is big enough, the stakes high enough
- The amount of tension there is or could be
- You’ve hit on certain genre conventions
Having an external pair of eyes on your writing will help you see all the problems your future readers will (definitely) identify but that you’re too close to see for yourself, thanks — as always — to that crafty brain of yours.
Ideally, you’ll ask for peer review of your story via manuscript evaluation or beta reading only after self-editing your manuscript as much as you can but before querying and submitting your story for consideration.
Feedback forms: beta reading VS manuscript assessment
Two common ways to get early reader feedback is to request a beta reading or a manuscript assessment from a professional. Beta readers are often avid readers who work across the spectrum of styles and genres, but they are not editors.
Both types of early feedback givers, beta readers and editors, provide written (or sometimes verbal) information you can use to enhance your story in different ways.
A beta reader will provide you with their views of your work based on their experience and the types of books they’ve read. Different beta readers, being different people with differing tastes and backgrounds, will provide different opinions about what works and what doesn’t work in your story.
An editor may provide you with a manuscript assessment that thoroughly reviews your manuscript for what works and what doesn’t, as well as providing suggestions about how to make the not-working bits work. You’ll also receive feedback about style, point of view and perspective voice, character development, plot, settings, and more.
While a manuscript assessment can never replace a formal developmental edit, it will get you closer to a developmental workup than a beta read will. However, both types of feedback are important for gaining insight into your future readers’ experiences.
Incorporating early feedback into your story without losing your mind
Now that we’ve covered why you need feedback and the forms that early feedback may take, it’s time to take those recommended changes to heart and try your best to make your manuscript better, right? Easier said than done, but here are a few methods that work well for the authors with whom I work:
Read it and forget it
You know that old advice to put away your draft manuscript for a month or so before rereading for revisions? Apply that same logic to your manuscript feedback.
When reading someone else’s assessment of how well your story works (or doesn’t), emotions may very well bubble up. After all, you wrote your story for a reason; it’s important; in some cases, your story may feel like an extension of your person. To hear that it’s less than perfect can often translate to you, the writer, being less than perfect. Stings, really.
Gradual acclimation is, then, helpful to remain objective about the feedback and be able to apply it well. So, compile all the feedback reports (or verbal information) you receive from beta readers, editors, and other early readers. Read through it all carefully, and then put away the feedback for a month or so.
Reading feedback and then doing your best to forget it will allow you to take in those recommended changes while retaining your creative freedom (and general sanity). When you feel like you can finally tackle those changes without a panic attack, you’re finally ready to start revisions.
Look for patterns and commonalities
Every reader comes from a different background and has a different set of values and experiences, which means you’re going to get at least slightly different feedback from each reader based on their starting points.
But when you’re looking at multiple feedback reports, each with something different to share, the process of turning that disparate, and sometimes mutually exclusive, feedback into real recommendations can feel overwhelming.
Let me say this first: You don’t need to incorporate every piece of feedback you receive into your revision process. Stated differently, not every piece of feedback you receive will be right for you and your book.
Instead of forcing yourself to handle all the things, look for patterns in your feedback to stave off revision overwhelm. As an example, say you have a side character who is a homicidal maniac. Two readers loved the chaos the static character brings (“Very Pat Bateman!”), but two different readers hated the character: “Not developed enough; there’s no raison d’être — no reason to be, no purpose — for this character!”
Think about the function of your homicidal maniac, what purpose they serve in your story. If that character is supposed to offer a bit of levity but otherwise isn’t supposed to change, maybe they don’t need a raison d’être except “comedic value.”
But if that homicidal maniac is supposed to be the story’s main villain, elevating the character from static to dynamic is important. A good villain requires a raison d’être, requires a well-defined goal and the motivation to achieve it.
Adapt revision feedback in passes
I’ve said before that the craft of fiction lives within the drafts, and if you need some functional help on crafting well-wrought fiction, I’ve suggested three craft reads for revising your story that have worked well for some of the authors I work with.
Revision, change, is hard but necessary, and there are a few practical steps to keep in mind:
- Remember: “Fine” isn’t good enough
- Change is not a one-and-done decision
- Know the revision path before you walk it
- Avoid too many changes at once
- Stay the course
Is it for this reason that I often suggest limited revisions during each rendezvous with your draft manuscript. For a book-sized work, it makes sense to draft in at least five passes. Here’s an example of what that can look like:
- Rudimentary changes:
- Pass 1 – Perspective and characters
- Pass 2 – Plot and settings
- Second-level changes:
- Pass 3 – Cliffhangers, hooks, and pacing
- Pass 4 – Themes and message
- Third-level changes:
- Pass 5 – Cadence and language.
When you do the front-end work of conceptualizing your feedback and distilling it into manageable chunks as you elevate your draft, you’ll make it through revisions without writing yourself ragged.
So, how do you make it through revisions for your story without losing your mind? Let me know in the comments, and share this article with others working through revisions after receiving feedback.
Happy writing!
<3 Fal
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Fallon Clark is a story development coach and editor with more than a decade of experience in communications, project management, writing, and editing. She provides story development and revision services to independent and hybrid publishers and authors spanning genres and styles. And in 2018, she had the joy of seeing Forever My Girl, one of her earliest book projects, on the big screen. Fallon’s writing has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and The MicroZine. Find her online at FallonClarkBooks.Substack.com, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Substack.