The Importance of Honest Feedback

By Judy Penz Sheluk

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Writing is a solitary pursuit, one where we spend countless hours of our lives, often laboring over a single sentence or paragraph for more time than most of us care to admit. So, it’s only natural that we become protective of our words. After all, something that took hours to perfect must be, well, perfect, right?

If only that were so. Unfortunately, as writers, we are simply too close to our work to see the flaws. Oh, we may find the typo on page 75 on reread, the one where we’ve called a car a cat (though even that is iffy), but the overuse of a favorite trope, phrase, or gesture (my characters love to nod). Maybe not so much. And that’s why we need feedback.

Feedback comes in many forms and at various stages of the writing process. The most important thing to remember is that you are looking for an honest and unbiased evaluation of your work. You may not agree with every comment or suggestion, but you should at least consider each one without becoming defensive. Consider it “thick skin” training for the rejections you’re almost certain to face going forward. 

Let’s look at some options:

Writing Critique Groups

While there are no hard and fast rules, these work best if the group is small—three to five people—allowing each member time to read and respond without becoming overwhelmed. It’s essential to establish parameters from the get-go, such as weekly word count limits and the type of feedback expected. 

While critique groups can be invaluable for some writers, they should never be the final step in the review process. As you become immersed in your work for months on end, you lose objectivity. Those intimately familiar with your work will too.

Alpha Readers

Readers who provide detailed and constructive feedback, both positive and tactfully critical, about your book’s premise, plot, characters, and other elements. This is the place to include readers who have knowledge of the technical elements in your manuscript. 

Whether you choose to hire a professional, or ask a trusted friend or relative, they should be aware that they are commenting on an unpolished (first) draft. They should also be avid readers of your book’s genre or sub-genre. Consider this the first test drive of your overall story from a reader’s perspective. 

Beta Readers

Beta readers (or betas) critique finished manuscripts before they are published. It’s advisable to have betas who are familiar with your genre/sub-genre. Betas can be friends, family members, teachers, members of online writing groups, or other writers willing to do a manuscript swap. This will help identify the finer points of your book that may need an adjustment. Ideally, you’ll have no fewer than two and no more than five, allowing for a comparison of opinions without the risk of opinion overload. If one beta reader doesn’t understand why your protagonist hates red, that might be a point worth clarifying. If two or more betas don’t get it, it’s a must-fix. 

While betas are an excellent way to obtain (often free) feedback, they do not replace the role of a professional editor. There is one school of thought that because traditional publishers pay for editing, there is no need for authors to incur this expense if their intention is to traditionally publish. 

Let’s look at that statement. Is it true that traditional publishers hire and pay for editing services? Yes. However, it’s equally true that agents and publishers receive thousands of submissions from aspiring authors every year. While there are no guarantees, a professionally edited manuscript may increase the odds of acceptance. 

Developmental Editing

Also known as substantive or content editing, developmental editing is the first step, focusing on big picture story elements. The developmental editor will also assess and shape draft material to improve flow and organization by revising or reordering content and clarifying plot, arc of action, characters, and/or thematic elements.

Line Editing

Also known as stylistic editing, the line editor focuses on coherence and flow, eliminating jargon, clichés, and euphemisms, while adjusting the length and structure of sentences and paragraphs, and establishing or maintaining the overall mood, style, or voice.

Copyediting

Ideally combined with line editing, the copy editor checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage, and ensures consistency in character names, places, descriptions, and other details. Copy editing also covers fact checking and/or obtaining or listing permissions needed (e.g., use of song lyrics or trademarked products). The copy editor may create or work from a style sheet.

And there you have it, feedback in a nutshell. Now all you need to do is write that book. Hey, if it were easy, everyone would do it.

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About the author: A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of two mystery series: The Glass Dolphin Mysteries and Marketville Mysteries. Her short crime fiction appears in several collections, including the Superior Shores Anthologies, which she also edited.

Judy has also written two how-to guides to publishing. Finding Your Path to Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide was the Winner of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction. The follow-up to that book, Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie, provides an insider’s insight into the world of self-publishing. 

Judy is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair.

Never Make Your Critique Partner Cry!

By Lois Winston

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We writers are not the best judges of our own work. Neither are most of our family and friends. They’ll either love everything we write because they don’t know any better, or they don’t want to hurt our feelings. Conversely, some will sic the green-eyed monster on us, telling us not to quit our day job. 

That’s why critique groups and/or partners are an invaluable tool in every author’s toolkit. They’re the writer friends we rely on when we’ve developed writer’s block or written ourselves into a corner. They brainstorm with us when the ideas don’t come, and they offer us honest criticism chapter after chapter, helping us hone our work until it’s ready for submission. Then, they either commiserate with us when the rejection letters arrive or whoop it up when we get that offer of representation or a book contract.

And because this is a partnership, we do the same for them.

However, none of us wants to hear that the 400-page baby we birthed through our fingertips onto the printed page is butt ugly. And neither do our critique partners. Just as we hope to find critiquers who will offer us constructive criticism, we also need to be able to give constructive criticism to others in return. The key is always to encourage, never discourage. Luckily, there are ways to do this.

Always remember to point out positives as well as negatives. It’s just as important for a writer to know what she’s doing well and correctly as what she’s doing poorly and incorrectly. As you read a work-in-progress, point out those parts you especially like, but don’t be afraid to point out areas that need work. Most importantly, in both cases, don’t forget to explain why. 

Our critique partners often become good friends, and it’s hard to criticize friends for fear of hurting their feelings. But if we can’t be objective and honest with our critiques, we’re not helping each other. We all need to know where our manuscripts are not working as well as where they are working.

It’s important to find a group or partner who either writes in the same genre or has a good deal of knowledge about each other’s genre. However, interests change. Writers often decide to explore different genres. What happens if Helen Historical is suddenly bitten by the vampire bug? You curl your nose up. You shudder. Vampires give you the creeps. You want to be a good critique partner, but try as you might, you can’t read those chapters with an open mind. If that’s the case, it’s time to step aside—at least until Helen returns to her historicals or you fall in love with bloodsuckers. 

Some writers have a hang-up about red ink. They feel like someone has taken a knife to their manuscript and slashed it to death. Bold type in all caps will make some writers feel as though they’re being yelled at. Be sensitive to how your partners feel about how you deliver comments. Avoid red type and all caps when making notes on digital pages. When working from printed pages, avoid red ink and thick black sharpies. Never write comments in script. Print them. We can all read our own handwriting, but others may struggle to decipher our scrawls.

If you’re one of those writers with a great handle on punctuation or grammar, your partners might ask you to do line edits. Rather than correcting their work, point out problem areas. This way, the writer will learn from the experience and not make the same mistake in future works. 

Keep in mind that just because you would write a scene or a character differently, it doesn’t make the author’s way wrong. If your partner is having problems with a sentence or scene and asks for assistance, offer suggestions, but never rewrite her manuscript in your style.

Often, writers gravitate toward other writers of the same experience level. This usually makes for a group or partnership that can work together more comfortably. If the various members are at different levels in their writing journeys, the more novice writers may begin to depend too much on the more advanced writers, and the more advanced writers may begin to feel that they aren’t getting much out of the group. Since we all progress at a different pace, you may discover over time that you’ve outgrown your present group and need to move on to another.

Manuscripts should be free of typos and spelling errors, but we all occasionally suffer from a short circuit between our brains, fingers, and eyes. No matter how many times we read and reread something, we often miss a “there” for a “their” or a “that” for a “than.” If your partner is getting ready to send her work out to an editor or agent, offer to read through her work with an eye toward the technical, but keep in mind that punctuation and sentence structure is often a matter of style. Point out grammatical errors such as misplaced modifiers and subject-verb disagreements, but keep in mind that characters often dictate grammar. A street urchin in Victorian England won’t speak like the Earl of Sussex.

Pay attention to structure as you read a work-in-progress. Every scene should have a purpose. Make sure the pacing is appropriate for the scene/event taking place. In the middle of a chase scene, the heroine shouldn’t be noticing the intricately detailed pattern of the hero’s tie. 

Sentences should be clear and understandable. Point out if the writer has gone off on a tangent about something superfluous to the scene, such as extraneous background information or too much detail. By the same token, note if the author doesn’t supply enough details and description for the characters and settings to come alive. 

Highlight non-descript words such as “it” or “thing” or bland words such as “pretty” or “nice.” Suggest substituting more specific or descriptive words. If the author uses clichés, suggest she find another phrase. Clichés bore readers. Also note repetitive word usage and sentence structure. 

Understand basic rules of writing before you offer to critique someone else. For many writers, passive voice is a difficult concept to grasp. Not every sentence using the various forms of the verb “to be” is passive. Passive voice is when the subject is acted upon. Active voice is when the subject is acting. 

Point of view is another difficult concept. Make certain you understand it before you criticize others for misusing it. Check for bouncing points of view within a scene, but keep in mind, point of view can change from scene to scene. However, if you feel like you’re at a ping-pong match, make the author aware of that.

Finally, know your facts before criticizing someone else. If you suspect the writer’s information is inaccurate, ask if she’s done any research on the subject. If she tells you she saw a similar event on a television show or in a movie, suggest she check the library or ask an expert. The media is notorious for taking liberties with facts and events. 

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. A Crafty Collage of Crime, the twelfth book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, won the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy. Her most recent release, Sorry, Knot Sorry, is the thirteenth book in the series. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Getting Started In Indie Pubbing (or Good God, what have I gotten myself into?)

By Steven Womack

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Maybe you’ve written your first novel (or second or tenth, whatever) and you’ve taken three years to query every agent on the planet and haven’t gotten even a nibble.

Or maybe you’ve been in this business a couple of decades and published two dozen novels, all of them with modest midlist advances and now out-of-print and not making you a penny. And you’re getting older, and all those years writing novels were years you weren’t piling money into a 401(k) or a company pension, and now you’re scared as hell you’re going to be eating cat food in your dotage.

Or maybe you’ve had some success, made some pretty good money from time to time, but you feel like you’ve been thoroughly abused and taken advantage of by publishers (don’t laugh; it happens). And you’re tired of arguing with editors and having covers you hate shoved down your throat, not to mention the complete lack of marketing, promotion and support (unless you’re a best-seller, in which case you don’t need it).

 So you listen to a few podcasts and read a few blogs and there all these stories of writers taking control of their careers, writing what they want, with covers they love, and succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. You’ve heard of this guy Mark Dawson, who sells a huge, sprawling extensive bunch of courses under his “Self Publishing Formula” brand. And you’ve heard about that fellow in northern Wisconsin who blogged that he made a hundred grand in three weeks selling his self-pubbed titles on Kindle.

And you hit the “Yeah, I’ll take your cookies” button on a few websites you visited and now your Inbox is flooded with emails every day offering to sell you courses on how to be a successful self-publisher or even offering to do it all for you—for a price.

It’s too much. Overload, fuses blown…

Time to take a deep breath and relax.

Like everything in life that’s overwhelming (and the older you get, the more of life that encompasses), sometimes it works to stop staring slack-jawed at the big picture and just break off a little chunk of it and see if you can handle that.

So if you’re trying to build a career as a writer, what’s the best chunk to start with?

The first step goes without saying: you’ve got to write a good book. I won’t spend much time discussing that, but remember—without a story that works, characters that are compelling, writing that leaves you wanting to turn to the next page even if it’s past your bedtime, everything else in the process is for naught.

So given that you’ve done everything you can to meet that first requirement, what next?

You also have to realized that writing, editing, marketing, book design, cover design—all the components of the process—are completely separate skill sets. Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean you can edit it or design a good cover for it. Indie pubbing your own work means, first of all, making a series of choices as to which skill sets you’re willing to learn and which ones your going to pay someone else to do.

So one consideration becomes: how much money do I have to put into this?

If money’s not an issue (is that even possible???), then you can write your book and pay somebody else to complete the process. There are perfectly legitimate companies out there who will do a good job for you (BookBaby being one of the more prominent), but plenty of others who are just blatant rip-offs. Do your due diligence.

Say, though, you don’t have unlimited resources and your biggest asset is the sweat equity you’re willing to put into this. Each person’s professional and life experience is different. For instance, I spent a decade working in publishing art departments, mainly as a typesetter and running an in-house art department. I’ve either actually typeset or supervised the typesetting of hundreds of books, so I’m pretty comfortable with interior book design and formatting.

Would I touch a book cover, though? Not a chance. I wouldn’t know good graphic design if it ran up behind me and bit me on the keister. A good cover designer is worth every penny you pay them, and more.

Editing? In my life, I’ve written literally millions of words. Do I trust myself to edit them? Hell, no. In the last Music City Murders novel I published, my biggest single expense was paying an editor to make sure the manuscript was in the best shape possible. I’m even glad someone’s going to be looking over this column before you see it.

That’s enough for now. I hope this has given you something to think about as you ponder your own indie pubbing journey. Next month, we’ll do a deeper dive into the steps of this process. Stay tuned…

The Writer’s Playbook | A Ripe Kumquat

By Steven Harms

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“Fumble at the thirty-two-yard line! Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a ripe kumquat!”

That line was uttered during a radio broadcast of a Detroit Lions home football game. And I’d bet my life savings that “kumquat” hadn’t been used in an NFL broadcast prior and would never be again. The Lions radio color announcer, Jim Brandstatter, made that rather pointed reference to a Lions defensive player recovering the fumbled ball. The idea of a kumquat on a football field conjures up a comedic image. A fumbled football is sort of one itself: as the ball bounces around, players scramble to get it; sometimes they accidentally kick it or refumble it as they frantically try to hold on. In the context of a fumbled football, using a kumquat simile was perfect.

Why did he say it that way? Well, he and I had a weekly challenge when I was working for the Lions. Each week during the season I would give him a word that he had to weave into the broadcast. I wrote it out on a small piece of paper about an hour before kickoff, entered the broadcast booth, and subtly handed it to him. It was our “thing.” If he was able to insert the “word of the game” into the broadcast each week during the season, I owed him lunch. If he missed one game, he owed me the same. As the weeks wore on, I had to get more creative if I wanted to win, and I thought I had him trapped with “kumquat.” The fumble happened in the fourth quarter, no less, of that game. Jim told me afterward he was on the verge of losing but for that fumble.

The point is, using a kumquat as a descriptive simile worked. In fact, it worked very well. Reimagine the utterance if it was a ripe apple, green bean, onion, or ear of corn. Not quite the same for some reason, is it? Or worse, if he stated “like a ripe egg” or “like a noisy kumquat.”

Bad similes are story killers and can take an author’s credentials down a few notches on the reader’s scale. They undermine a reader’s engagement with the story and implant in them a negative distraction that may carry throughout the rest of the book. 

However, a well-written simile can evoke just the right emotion. As a creative tool, it paints a picture that resonates in readers’ minds—good or bad—but it clicks. Similes can be quite powerful if written well and deployed at the perfect intersectional moment. 

A few rules to follow in writing similes (and there may be others):

KEEP THEM LOGICAL

The simile must be logical in comparison with the moment described, and it must have an immediate connection for the reader. If the reader needs to pause to think through the comparison because it doesn’t compute, don’t use it.

USE THEM SPARINGLY

Overuse of anything is generally not an effective strategy. I’ll relate it back to sports. If a football team always runs to the left on first down, the maneuver becomes boring and predictable and unsuccessful. 

STAY WITHIN COMMON KNOWLEDGE

A simile that uses unique or uncommon elements in the comparison can destroy the moment because the reader can’t grasp what it is you’re trying to say. If Jim Brandstatter had said “Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a timorous mangosteen!” (a real fruit from Southeast Asia), he may have been fired the next morning, or at least ridiculed for a full week.

STAY CLEAR OF SIMILARITY

When you’re deciding on a simile, ensure the two components of your comparison are different enough to drive home the point. As an example, a sentence that reads “She ran up the hill like an athlete in training” doesn’t give the reader much clarity on what that character was doing, since athletes do run up hills as part of their training regimen. There’s not a lot of separation. Conversely, “She ran up the hill like a wounded deer” creates an image of a frantic person, hobbled by fear as she’s trying to get somewhere fast and out of sight.

Whenever similes are deployed, read them to yourself to see if they’re effective. As an example, one of my characters in The Counsel of the Cunning voices his feeling that what he and his assistant detective are experiencing during their hunt for a missing person isn’t adding up. He amplifies this and says, “it’s like a duck in robin’s nest.” The point being that while a duck and a robin are both birds, their distinctions are profound, and a duck would never, nor could ever, be in a robin’s nest. He instinctively knows something is “just off,” and he uses this simile to make the point. He’s saying a bird in a nest is right, but the type of bird is wrong, or the nest should be in the water and not in a tree. In other words, their hunt is going in a direction that gives him pause, that makes him think something’s amiss, but he can’t quite put a finger on it.

Similes are a great tool to propel a story or a moment or a character description. But they are a unique tool and need to be done with precision if used. Don’t shy away from using them as writers, but be tactical in placing them and intuitive in writing them.

Punctuation is Power - Part 5: Are you in business or in hobby?

By Angela K Durden

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Across the board in creative endeavors something interesting is happening. Folks are getting to be about 55 or so, thinking of or are retiring, and getting back into the thing they loved before the kids came along and the bills piled up and their time was not their own in that thing we call Life. 

Whether it is music, writing, sculpture, painting, pottery, dance, and more, you will find many “of an age” mingling with young folks just getting into that creative endeavor. For some, writing a book or two is just a hobby. They don’t really intend to make it a business. Thinking about the bygone golden years of publishing when authors became stars. They dream of their book being:

• rep’d by an agent, 

• sold to one of the Big 4, 

• making the best seller lists, 

• selling like crazy domestically, 

• translated into multiple languages and selling internationally to wild acclaim, 

• made into a movie or two or three. 

Bring on the mailbox money! From your mouth to God’s ears, right?

Well, firstly, the business was never exactly like that. As we learned from the recent Hemingway documentary, his lavish lifestyle was mostly due to having a series of rich wives. Secondly, the old saying “make hay while the sun is shining” applies in this business. Much marketing of personalities went into the making of the myths. Hemingway used his marketing myth to get money for product endorsements. Nothing much has changed there.  

Still, much hard work by many people went into the writing, editing, printing, marketing, distribution, tracking of inventory, and sales of most books. Starting in the late 1980s, though, the book business began to change. Tired of being shut out and stolen from, the age of the Indie Author and Indie Publisher began and has not abated. Technology has made the publishing of a work easy; distribution via print-on-demand methods has made it within the affordable reach of millions. (Marketing of a book is a whole other subject. It is a bugaboo, a thorn in our paws, a never-ending challenge.)

Unfortunately, too many authors, having written a work, tire out and don’t do the necessary boring work of thorough and multiple edits and rewrites. Not only that, they are also unwilling to pay for it, too. Many will not take any advice when it comes to punctuation, sentence structure, flow of the material, etcetera. They see any question as an assault on their baby. 

I want to scream when I hear “Well, I [or my spouse, significant other, best friend, or sibling] have a degree in English and have already edited the book.” Or “My wife edited my book. She has a degree in English. She’ll get her feelings hurt if I let anybody else edit it.” 

Then these authors are not in business. They are in hobby. True, there are some creative outputs that are simply for making the creator happy. Enjoy the process! It is wonderful to have a hobby one enjoys. 

The business of book publishing, though, requires another mindset. Sorry to say, but one may still not see a profit from all that hard work. All business endeavors are a crapshoot. 

I have always had an allegiance to words in whatever form they take. I hate advertising language that reeks of the weasel. Since it has always been a moving target, I detest rigid rules of punctuation for rules’ sake. [See Part 1 of this series]. 

As a writer in many categories (business, children, non-fiction, memoir, humor, and fiction), my goal is to teach and/or entertain but always challenge the reader and tell it well.

As an editor my goal is to make a book the best it can be. One that, when a grandchild finds it on a shelf and reads Grandma’s or Grandpa’s book they will be proud of how good it is, not embarrassed about it. 

As a small publisher it is to bring to life high-quality books the Big 4 will not touch. Blue Room Books has published history, music business memoir, fiction, and more, some not easily categorized. We may or may not make a profit on these, but damn it all, when they go into the world they will be equal to or better than offerings from the big houses. 

So, as asked in Part 4, I ask again: 

Why do you write? 

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Author, editor, publisher, and more: learn about Angela K. Durden here and here and here.