When Not To Take Feedback

A cute photo I took!

Happy July! The best month ever! Grateful 🙏🏼 General updates:

• I’ll be going on submissions with A Desert of Bleeding Sand hopefully soon!
• I’ve started reading again. I read 2 books in June, and have 2 I’m ‘nursing’. (Like characters nurse their drinks in books). Reading without the feeling that I’m racing to hit a goal is really cool. I can read 5 pages in a day, and that’ll be chill.

To the post!

---

I’ve talked about the importance of taking feedback as a writer hoping to be published. So it feels fitting that I should also address when NOT to take feedback, so I don’t give the impression that feedback should always be gobbled down.

In my previous mentions on taking feedback, I try to emphasize that yes, we writers should be 100% open to critiques because we don’t know everything. But we should only take what resonates with us.

Now, this can be a tricky line. How can we tell between ‘It doesn’t resonate with me’ vs ‘I don’t want to change a word in my book because my book is perfect as it is’. Personally, I think you should ask yourself: will this modification make my book better in the direction I plan to go?

While there are out-rightly poor critiques, many suggestions you receive from experienced readers will make your story better. But not necessarily in line with your vision. E.g. my former agent insisted I tweaked my book into the enemy-to-lovers trope. It probably worked, but it wasn’t the story I wanted to tell. This is when it doesn’t resonate.

On the flip side, I’ve gotten feedback telling me to cut entire scenes or paragraphs because they slow the pacing. These didn’t change my book’s direction, but they tightened the plot hence made the story better. Therefore, they are the right and objective feedback to take.

That said, I want to go a bit more into an instance where you shouldn’t take feedback.

Their Idea, Not Yours

Sometimes, fellow writers or maybe editors will read your story and find its bursting with potential. That is, there are so many different ways that particular story can go and still work well. In this scenario, it’s super easy for their minds to fly far and wide, reveling in all the possibilities! They love your direction, but they also itch to play around with the numerous possibilities.

In this case, they may unconsciously see themselves as the driver behind this vehicle (the story) and want to drive it in those different directions via the feedback they give you. Now, where their eyes roam, you need to be the focused one and steer the vehicle to that point that YOU intend to take it.

Let me use this example. A while ago, I decided to add a dragon to my story for {reasons}. So this CP absolutely adores dragons but the dragon was only planted in book 1. The later books is when it really comes into play. This (awesome) CP who was very on my neck about tight pacing, suddenly wanted an extension in every scene the dragon was mentioned. To the point that even at the ending scenes, where the events needed to be snappy, she suggested the most rambling subplot for the dragon I’d ever heard. 😂

While I highly value her feedback and use most of them, I knew at that point that it was her trying to tell the dragon’s story for me because of how much she loves the creatures. It was feedback I chose to ignore while I steered the story in the planned direction.

I saw this mentioned on another blog post too. The author said she didn’t ask for critiques on her first book because she’s wary of writers who give feedback based on the story they want to tell with your characters. And not objective criticism. I don’t 100% agree with this mindset as not everyone does this or does it consciously. And, once more, writers can’t know everything and need feedback.

But unlike when I first read and dismissed the mindset, I see now that to a degree it can happen. And that’s a good instance of when to ignore a critique.