These book posts are coming out in no real order. Sorry about that.
Today: having someone check your work and feedback
Summary:
*You want feedback at the draft stage
*You need a specific type only: personal response
*You need to find someone to do this
Part of the attraction of DIY book writing is that you can have complete control of your content. Various forms of checking and feedback are very useful and necessary but there is a definite culture of abuse in big publishing and pro journalism that we can happily avoid. I will write a separate post on that then come back and link it.
But but but. Especially for long form writing, you do want feedback. In our world though, you can choose to ignore it.
I use Shanghai based writer and musician Tom Mangione.
I try to do it once a week - especially since I'm trying to hit good quotas
Now, I have just realized that my next point about different types of feedback is making a huge assumption. I am assuming that you are beyond the need for any kind of "creative writing 101" advice. You know what you like and don't like in books. You know what styles you think are interesting and what you want to try. For example, I can't stand books where the voice of the author is continuously there, explaining away and filling all the action with their wit and wisdom and wordplay. I like books with stripped down language and images where the main characters are passive, allowing you the reader to experience the journey as we mainly 'see' the action and places and 'hear' the conversations, without someone explaining away the meaning to you.
With that in mind.
I have tried to form writers groups or find people to check my work several times before. They usually fall down because people sign up and don't actually have any finished books or chapters to share, they still have only ideas.
There are three kinds of checks/feedback that you'll encounter:
1) Creative writing 101
2) spell checking and error checking
3) personal response
We don't need number one, we know what we want to write. But some writers just feel compelled to teach you writing. Number two is proof reading - that's a completely different and much later stage. The last one, in fact. If you ask someone to read an early draft and give feedback, then they tell you about basic character work or your spelling errors - you must find someone else.
We want number three. You know what your story is about, through personal response you can see if it is being communicated or not.
In Love in the Time of Black Magic there is a character called Alejandro Higuain Crowley. He spends most of his time dabbling in the occult and so has the nickname Aleister after the famous occultist Aleister Crowley. Tom read and liked a chapter in which Aleister interacts with his peers at an occult circle. He said:
Aleister/Alejandro is very aware of his nickname and its relation to Aleister Crowley. Do we think he would play up this self-awareness even more? I like how it's a badge of honor for him.A good discussion then ensued in which many ideas were brainstormed. Compare a comment like this to
when setting the scene be sure to remember the five senses, sight, sound, smell, touch and taste
or
you've misspelled awarenes in the second paragraph and I think the third sentence seems too long
Both of which I've actually had. Unsurprisingly, the first one was made on a piece that took specific care to include all those senses. In the rush to teach the piece hadn't even been read.
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