The Psychology of Critique

Resist the Natural Impulse to Shut Down

Therese Walsh

You’ve spent months, even years, working on your book. You give it to a candid beta reader with all the wide-eyed enthusiasm of a child showing a parent a piece of macaroni art. You hope to receive a treasure trove of golden praise, but what you get—more often than not—is advice that encourages you to try a new tact; to work harder on that character, arc, or another element of the story; to try, try again.

Listen: There’s no shame in wanting the gold. We all desire approval of our work on some level, even if we tell ourselves we know a story isn’t entirely ready. But even when you know you might not get gold, some part of you still hopes for silver or at least bronze. When you’re given no treasure at all, you may think the fault lies with your beta reader. Thus you shortchange yourself out of the real reward: a better story. Or, put another way, what you receive from your beta readers is a map to where the golden treasure may indeed be found.

You want that map, and for more than one reason.

RECOGNIZE THE FAR-REACHING BENEFITS OF CRITIQUE

The first step in readying yourself for criticism is to consider all that it can offer. Yes, criticism can unmask specific weaknesses in your story, but it can also reveal weaknesses in your storytelling toolbox or even an assumption that is working against you—that everyone would unquestionably connect the story dots in just such a way or feel a specific emotion based on a set of given circumstances. What if your story twist isn’t so surprising after all? What if the protagonist you love so much has mannerisms that grate on everyone?

Don’t be ashamed of weak spots in your manuscript. Rather, be glad to have identified them because once you’re able to name them, you can study how to remedy them, improve upon your education with a directed approach, rectify your blind spots, and see the world from a clearer—and often more comprehensive—perspective.

We often don’t think of criticism as a good thing. But it can be the best thing, because it can be the thing that evolves your work and maximizes the progress for an author in progress.

Don’t doubt its potential importance in your evolution. It’s very, very important.

If you remain hungry for others’ honest perspectives of your work, it’ll be easier to hear anything and everything they convey. Do you have to make changes based on those critiques? Of course not. In your search for gold, you’ll unearth a lot of plain old rocks.

But don’t think about filtering and appraisals right away. First, set your mind to receive.

WELCOME DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

I won’t go so far as to say that no one likes to convey bad news; some people love conflict and even thrive on it. But I’d wager that most people are uncomfortable in conflict situations, including discussions about what doesn’t work in someone’s story. All of the same dance moves apply here as they do for other such moments among humans: The person who brings it up may tread carefully at first—providing hints rather than brutal honesty—and may retreat at the first sign of stepping on toes.

You don’t want her to retreat, because all that good stuff she was about to tell you could be lost. That map you crave? Flung out to sea.

Take steps to welcome feedback from the people delivering it:

• Tell them you value their honest opinions and are grateful for their help and time.
• If you hear tentative feedback or sense that a reader is holding back, remind him that lessons learned through critique will not only benefit your work-in-progress but will also help you learn what works and doesn’t work for readers—and how you can improve. You need this knowledge in order to be successful in the marketplace.
• Ask questions to prompt them and define the territory (e.g., “Did anything in the story make you feel impatient, bored, or confused?”), but avoid asking leading questions (e.g., “You found the protagonist’s actions plausible, right?”).

It may be difficult to hide disappointment when you hear feedback you don’t expect. Unfortunately even microexpressions of frustration—with the exchange, the work, or yourself—can shut down a sensitive critiquer. Do your best to keep an encouraging expression and tone in a face-to-face discussion. If you have a hard time with this, ask to receive feedback through e-mail or an online forum, where you can process it before responding.

The constancy of your gratitude and acceptance of others’ perspectives will keep the door between you and your critiquers open, which will naturally advance the conversation. And advancing is what you want, because what a reader says last is often the hardest for her to share—and the most valuable for you to hear.

RESIST THE URGE TO EXPLAIN OR DEFEND

The best way to receive feedback is with wide ears, a supportive nod, and lots of silence. This may seem easy, but often it is not, because you may feel the compulsion—the very human response—to explain yourself: what you meant, where you were going with that point, or what the reader was supposed to think. Again, tread carefully or risk shutting down your reader before he’s said all he wants to share. This isn’t the time to explain or defend but rather to listen deeply. Taking notes while your reader speaks is a great way to keep yourself in the moment. It also prevents you from formulating justifications, deciding on the spot whether you’re going to reject or accept a criticism, or analyzing ways to fix a potential problem. Try to resist these impulses. You’ll analyze later. You’ll fix things later. You can ask follow-up questions later.

And if a story means a lot to you—because it’s personal, or because you’ve been working on it for a decade (or what feels like a decade)—keep those details to yourself or you might get a watered-down version of the truth you seek.

Know that as the amount of perceived work seems to pile up throughout your feedback, you may feel overwhelmed or want to throw your hands up and cry, “I quit!” This, too, is a defense mechanism—a response to a challenge you’re not sure you want to, or even can, face. In these moments, take a deep breath. Don’t judge your ability to scale a mountain before you know that mountain’s size. Resist, too, the urge to shut down before the critique is finished. Remember that map to the gold? You want the whole map, not half of it.

All of the urges described above are personal responses that pull you away from your professional goal: to serve the work. Try to call them out when you feel yourself tuning out, making excuses, or rejecting someone else’s opinion without full consideration for what she’s trying to express. Sometimes the idea that seems most repellant when you first hear it stays with you, later awakening your gut sense, which tells you, That hard concept that requires a lot of back-breaking digging to access? That was true. You need to do the work.

We are human, and our very human way of processing and protecting against criticism, rejection, and resistance can’t be denied—but it can be understood and managed. You are not your work, but you are like it in that you can both change and grow and improve. You can both evolve.