How to Give Feedback

As an adjunct professor and consultant, as well as a writer with two writing degrees and a multitude of writing groups over the years, I spend, conservatively, 15 hours a week giving feedback. I’ve written in the past about how to receive feedback more effectively (to become a better writer and to not alienate the nice people willing to read your in-progress work), and I realized there is also a need for support in the other direction.

Because if you can’t give feedback constructively, your writing community is unlikely to offer it back in return. So below are 5 things you need to remember before offering an opinion on someone else’s work.

Ask yourself: what are they writing?

I would say the number one reason why feedback is rejected is because it’s not in line with the reality of the peice. This can manifest in a few ways, like a romance author getting feedback that it’s weird how often the characters have internal monologues referencing how attractive they find the other person, or a horror screenwriter who gets notes about how in order to appeal to all ages, maybe they should dial back the blood and gore.

I’ve also seen this be problematic even more broadly, and it usually comes from this: the person giving feedback is attempting to shape the in-progress work to what they would write/would prefer to read, rather than helping it become the piece it intends to be. Occasionally the best thing to do is walk away with regrets- “I don’t think I’m the right audience for this piece, so my feedback would likely not be relevant.”

However, I think that feedback from sources less intimately familiar with the genre or format of the peice can be enlightening (to a degree), so it’s worth taking the time, before you start making comments in their document, to really ask yourself the question: what is this? What does it want to be? And how can my feedback help it be a better version of what it already is?

Start with the positives

Never start a feedback message, verbal session, or email with critique. It sets the wrong tone and immediately puts the other person on the defensive!

If you can find nothing nice to say, nothing the writer has succeeded in, then perhaps in the future you shouldn’t continue your feedback relationship with this person. However, you still aren’t released from this requirement. Don’t lie to them, but if you must, dig deep- is the premise strong? Do you like the character, or see potential in one? Is the setting interesting? There must have been a reason (outside of if you’re in school and forced to interact with this person) you decided to swap critiques.

In my foolish youth, I used to hate this advice. “If I don’t remark on it, I must have liked it or found nothing wrong with it! Everyone’s so sensitive!” Thankfully I’ve distanced myself from my libertarian upbringing, and also, realized I was a hypocrite. We share work to get better at our craft, absolutely, but it would be a lie to say we share it only for that reason. We’re also looking for validation that we’re on the right track, and even a single encouraging comment before a brutal critique session can be the inspiration we need to keep at it, to keep growing and improving.

And again, it’s not just a kindness to start with compliments. It also makes the other person more receptive to notes. Would you trust notes from someone who finds nothing redeemable, apparently, about the work? Probably not. For the same reason I don’t trust notes on horror movies from my grandma who hates horror movies, I don’t trust notes from people who can’t find even one nice thing to say.

Be specific and actionable

“This is bad/not working” is not a real note. How can you make your feedback ACTIONABLE? What are you actually encouraging the writer to DO with your note? Change a word? Rethink a character motivation? Add a scene? Remove one?

Dig deeper when you’re explaining yourself- WHY is something not working for you? The fact that it’s not working is useful, but until you give them context for why not, you’re asking them to build IKEA furniture in the dark. They now know their first attempt was wrong, and they have all the pieces to get the fifteen differently shaped screws into the correct places, but wouldn’t this all be easier if you brought them a flashlight?

Only offer suggestions when asked

It’s often more constructive to let the person receiving feedback come up with their own solutions to a creative note, because at the end of the day, it’s their piece. Not yours. Similarly to why I always emphasize to new directors not to give line readings to their actors, when you make an unsolicited pitch, you’re diluting the creative process. Someone interpreting someone else’s detailed instructions will always be less inspired (and likely less integrated with the rest of the piece or performance) than someone taking a note and finding a way to interpret it in the way that makes sense in context of what they were already trying to do.

Of course, sometimes people want a suggestion. Sometimes they’re stuck, or they’re simply struggling to find the screw (to continue our metaphor from the last section) with just a flashlight to guide them. I still maintain you shouldn’t have a singular “this is the right idea” pitch when you’re not a co-writer and are just meant to be a sounding board, so in that case, have two or three pitches. Give them some options, to show them they aren’t stuck and to ensure that there’s still a level of agency in their creative decision-making.

Even better, even when solicited, play the favorite game of every teacher that every student hates (but secretly benefits from): refuse, and ask them questions. Go back a scene or two, interrogating the writer on what the engines of those earlier, working segments, were doing. Look at what comes next, and ask about the different ways and reasons to connect the disparate segments.

You have to let them find their own answers, even if you need to add a few new flashlights to the search (IKEA metaphor again, keep up!). Because ultimately, the only person who’s capable of turning on the overhead lights is the writer themselves. As soon as you’re the one flipping that switch, it’s not their GRÖNKULLA anymore, it’s yours.

Your taste is not infallible

It’s easy to get caught up offering feedback to someone else to make their work more your taste/vision. Even when you’re collaborators, you aren’t going to get your way 100% of the time, and that doesn’t make the other people wrong. It makes them different!

Giving notes is vulnerable, and I don’t want to invalidate that. It’s less vulnerable than receiving them, obviously, but offering encouragement and advice on someone’s work is still a creative exercise. So just remember that this process isn’t personal, and at the end of the day, the work you’re thinking deeply about isn’t yours. You might disagree with how someone implements your feedback (or refuses to), but it’s not your work, and it’s important you remember that before you dig in.

Writers need to be way less defensive about getting feedback, but editors and readers have some deep breathing exercises to do as well. I’ve seen feedback-givers foaming at the mouth, doggedly harassing a writer with the same note over and over in successive sessions after revisions have been made because the writer decided to reject it.

It’s one thing if the fundamental issue hasn’t been fixed, at which point you should probably revise the way you’re giving the note, but your particular note is not special or sacred, and this is not your piece of writing. [Olaf voice] Let it go.

Bri Castellini is an independent filmmaker, an aspiring romance author, and, regrettably, a podcaster, with a BA in Creative Writing and an MFA in Writing and Producing for Television. She’s known for the 2017 short film Ace and Anxious (writer/director, 160k+ views on YouTube) and for her podcasts Burn, Noticed and Breaking Out of Breaking In, covering the USA television show Burn Notice and practical filmmaking advice, respectively. She can lick her elbow (not clickbait). Full work history and ways to hire her as a consultant can be found on her website BriCastellini.com