Tuesday 29 October 2019

Beta Reader Blues


What kind of criticism do we want?

Or need?

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a copy of a book I’m working on to a friend. She wanted to read it. I was curious about her opinion, which I value, and always have. What I got back wasn’t what I’d expected.



She didn’t like it. Not only didn’t she like it but she seemed, from the tone of the vocabulary in the close to 5 pages of comments she sent, to actively dislike it. Overwritten, confusing, irritating names, unbelievable situations... the list went on. And on. Two weeks later, the comments are still painful. This blog entry is the first thing I’ve written in a fortnight.



I have nothing against positive criticism – by which I mean comments intended to improve. (I was once told that a chapter in another book I’d written was rather dull and added nothing to the story. There was an improvement implicit in the comment. And when I took a second look, I realized the reader was right. I cut the chapter drastically and the book worked much better.)

But this latest critique is so relentlessly critical – my friend is very much of the Speak Her Mind school, to everyone! – that instead of rousing me to a renewed creative outburst, all it engenders is an overwhelming sense of futility. And yet those five pages could turn out to contain the best, most helpful comments of all. It’s just that right now I can’t read them with any sense of objectivity. In fact, ridiculous as it may sound, I can’t read them at all. Just too damn painful.



So I wonder: what kind of criticism do we really want?

Or need?

13 comments:

Selachimorpha said...
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Selachimorpha said...
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Selachimorpha said...
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Odobenus rosmarus said...
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Odobenus rosmarus said...
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Odobenus rosmarus said...
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Penny Dolan said...

The hugest amounts of sympathy, Nick. A critical onslaught like that can silence one's writing voice most painfully.

However, I'm very glad that ABBA needed you to write a post and stirred you get to your keyboard or notebook, if only to record how horrible this kind of experience can be for the writer. Its'a rather sideways advantage of being an ABBA blogger.

My feeling is that, in a case like this, your beta-reader might have been kinder to abstain and return your novel once they'd discovered they were not keen on the genre or style or similar to begin with, rather than send five pages of negative comments.

Possibly a big misunderstanding of the term "criticism"?

Penny Dolan said...

By the way, the six deleted comments were spam. Nick. Nowt else.

Nick Garlick said...

Thank you, Penny. I appreciate the thought. And I think you're right: it probably would have been better for her to give it back and say 'No, this isn't for me.' Not mentioned in the post is that my agent has seen the book twice now, and both times has given me a lot to think about, AND change, without once making me want to stop.

(As to why anybody would go to all the trouble of spamming ABBA 6 times is beyond me. Completely.)

Pippa Goodhart said...

How painful! I think you need to tap into your inner 'I'll bloody well show you!' reflex to people saying your story doesn't work.

Enid Richemont said...

I blog on AuthorsElectric, and recently I had a whole lot of spam stuff, too, which had to be deleted by the Admin. Hope the two events weren't connected? These creatures are a pain in the anus.

Nick Garlick said...

I agree, Pippa. But such negativity eats away at that reflex. It's coming back, though. It is coming back.

Joan Lennon said...

Time's the thing for getting back on your feet. And my thought is, if anything in the 5 pages is important to making the book even better, your agent or another reader will spot it too and tell you about it in a way you can work with. So if you have a cat, and if your cat has a litter tray, print out the five pages and line the tray with them ...