Writing Advice: Accepting Critique

Critique is one of the most important parts of a writing community. It’s how we see our work through others’ eyes, how we know where to target our revision, how we find the flaws that familiarity hides from us. Delivering critique is a skill that you can and should practice, not only because it helps your fellow writers, but also because it helps you look more critically at your own work. But accepting critique is a less-discussed skill. It’s assumed that you’ll just integrate it into your work, that all well-structured critique is equally valuable.

That’s not always the case. Silverfox asks: “how does one incorporate constructive criticism that is more about style than mechanics?”

Quick definition here to start: “constructive criticism” and “well-structured critique” boil down to the same thing. I call it “critique” because that’s more specific to writing, but it means the same thing for my purposes here.*

(*Technically, a critique is a thorough response to a work that can vary in scope and detail, while constructive criticism could be a thorough critique or could be just a comment like, “hey, the correct spelling of chrysanthemum is ‘chrysanthemum.’”)

First off, I hope that everyone knows that the proper response to a critique is: “Thank you so much for taking the time to critique my work,” or some variant thereof. A lot of times you will have a visceral response to even the most polite critique, but remember that the critique is intended to make your work better and that the person spent a lot of time on it. If you find yourself getting bristly, just say, “Thank you, this is awesome,” and move on.

In any case, I find it’s not useful in general to debate the critique. Every critique is a 100% true representation of that person’s feelings about your work. They may not feel the way you wanted a reader to feel, but that’s not their fault (it might not be yours either! sometimes books just hit people a different way). These feelings are useful! They can tell you where you might be able to make some changes to get certain readers closer to the feelings you intended.

As you’re reviewing the (hopefully multiple) critiques you’ve collected on your work, the grammatical and structural ones will be easiest to address. Tense changes, POV changes, continuity mistakes, plot holes, things like that. Then there’ll be craft-level ones like pacing, character motivation, theme, dialogue. These start to shade into the “style” level, but feel less personal. If several of your beta readers don’t believe your character’s motivations, you probably need to address that somehow. If your theme isn’t obvious, you need to make some changes.

Critiques that come down to style decisions are more questions of personal taste. “I wanted to see more description of the clock, it seemed cool,” and “Why are so many of your characters foxes?” are things that come down to your personal preference—your style.

Here’s the thing about style: your style—my style, too—is not fixed. It is constantly changing and growing. Every constructive comment is a chance for you to make a decision about your style. “Do I have more to say about the clock?” is a smaller question than, “Do I want to spend more time describing things in general?” but the one leads to the other. “Do I want to write about other species?” is another question.

Here’s another thing about style: You can adopt a different style as an experiment. Maybe you’re not sure about writing so much description. Write a short story full of a setting that you can picture in detail. See how it feels. Populate it exclusively with non-fox characters. I mean, I won’t read it then (j/k) but lots of people will. And maybe you’ll like it.

So critiques that feel like they are trying to change your style might get your hackles up, but view them as an opportunity. What would my writing be like if I took this advice? Do I like it? You’re allowed to say no, but you’re also allowed to say yes.

Ultimately, the work is yours. You can, if you like, ignore all the critiques (I would not do this, but you technically can). I find it’s best if you view them as opportunities, chances for you to look at your work and think about how it might be different if you changed a bit here or there. Maybe you’ll really like those changes and you’ll remember that going forward, and it’ll become part of your style. Maybe it’ll work in this case, but not always. Maybe it won’t work. The decision is always yours.

But remember that no critique is (no critique should be) ill-intentioned. The critiquer is saying, “I think your work would be better with these changes.” That’s why you thank them for their help, add their advice to the others, and then make the most of the opportunities they have been so generous as to give you.