Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
Disclaimer: Hey there! It’s safe to assume that links in this article are affiliate links for which I may get paid a commission should you make a purchase (but there is never any extra cost to you!). For example, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. There may be other affiliate links, too, but you can be sure that they are for products I use and love myself! It’s not about the money. It’s about sharing my favorite things!
Criticism, Reviews, and Rejections, Oh My! Tips for Taking Criticism Well as a Writer
While I haven’t had a book published since the early 2000s, once upon a time I was a writer. I wrote many novels in my writing days, submitted them to many agents, and finally signed with an agent and then sold three books to major publishers. I’m just telling you this so you know that I know what I’m talking about when I say that taking criticism is hard.
Reading bad reviews is hard. Getting difficult feedback from an editor is hard (though, hopefully, you have an editor who isn’t quite as brutal as reviewers can be!). Getting critiques from critique partners or groups can be hard. Receiving rejections from agents and publishers is hard.
Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s get to the gist of this article. How to take criticism well, no matter how hard it is.
Reviews
Years ago, sometime after the publication of my first novel by Tor/Forge, someone started running a contest called “The Worst Review Ever.” Since I had recently received the most scathing review I was pretty sure I’d ever read on Amazon about a book, I entered. And I won! $100 in their very first monthly running of the contest. Here is a clip of the review:
“If you hate Western Civilization, Moveable Type and The English language... This book could not be any more predictably and derivatively chick-lit if it was physically passed from Oprah's uterus onto paper made out of Helen Fielding's afterbirth. This book is bad. Like...worse than offensive to the senses. It's a holocaust of prose.”
Ouch. At first, I was horrified! How terrible must my book be if this person wrote such horrible things about it?
And yet, when I really broke it down, here’s what I eventually concluded, which made me feel better enough about it that I could laugh at it and even put it out there for the world to see in the Worst Review Ever Contest:
The author of the review was likely not my target audience. He was male (the book was chick lit, which was hugely popular at the time), so I found it odd that he picked the book up in the first place.
He clearly went way overboard in his criticism, not actually saying anything about the book itself, but making sure his review was cleverly written…budding writer himself, maybe?
I mean, if he read enough of the book to call it a “holocaust of prose,” at least I got a sale out of it!
I was never tempted to respond to this very absurdly written review, but there was still a bit of a sting to it. As well as in other not-so-stellar reviews I got on that book and the others I eventually got published.
But there are a few things I did get out of those reviews:
Sales. Not only sales from those particular reviewers, but from others who likely picked up the book to see what the fuss was about.
A thicker skin. While none of us wants to have to develop a thicker skin while others attempt to beat us down with their harsh words, it’s a great quality to have.
The realization that I don’t even have to read the reviews.
I recently read that 1- and 2-star reviews actually give our books credibility. If every review was “fantastic, 5 stars, amazing,” who would believe that? No book is ever for every reader. I’ve personally hated (or been just meh about) a lot of popular books. Look at any hugely successful book, and you’ll see dozens of bad reviews. But that gives a book credibility and tells the next person trying to decide if they want to purchase the book that all the reviews aren’t from the author’s friends and family, but actual people.
Additionally, bad reviews can actually sell a book! Crappy reviews? Ooh, what’s all the fuss about? Now I have to buy it and check it out for myself!
Or maybe the bad review mentions something specific in it, like an overabundance of hot sex scenes, which aren’t a favorite of the reviewer, who prefers sweet books. So, along comes the reader who loves hot, steamy sex scenes, and they buy the book from that “bad review” alone, because they’ve now been told that it’s probably right up their alley.
Rejections
Rejections are another form of criticism that can be difficult to take. Maybe even more difficult, since each agent or editor rejection can feel like a stab to the heart or a nail in the coffin of your writing career.
Sometimes, this particular form of criticism is helpful, and sometimes it’s not. A “form rejection” (which used to be an often-copied, crooked, typed out “this isn’t for us” message) isn’t helpful at all. But a “good rejection,” one that actually gives some advice or reason for the rejection, can actually serve a purpose.
In my book, Rejection First Aid Kit (still available, but some of the links need to be updated and the Happy Writer community is now defunct), I talk about the different kinds of rejection in more detail, as well as some concrete steps for getting past the pain and back to writing.
The biggest takeaways are probably that you can get rejections that have to do with the work and rejections that don’t have to do with the work. Sometimes it’s about the writing itself and sometimes it’s about the person doing the rejecting…and in the case of rejections from publishers, it’s often about the publisher, their sales team, their company goals, etc. In other words, don’t immediately take rejection personally or as a sign that you’re a bad writer.
Analyzing Criticism
Really analyzing any criticism you get can be helpful. There are different types of criticism, similar to the types of rejection. Those that have to do with the person doing the criticizing (which you can’t fix) and those that have to do with the work (which you can fix…but don’t necessarily need to).
Take a look at the sample feedback below and consider which are about the work and which aren’t:
“The hero was too alpha and pushy. I just didn’t like him.”
“The ending was rushed, so I knocked a couple of stars off.”
“I just couldn’t finish this book. It was too boring for me.”
“There were a lot of typos, and I just couldn’t finish the book.”
Of the four “critiques” above, only one of them is about the work, about the book. That’s the one about the typos. When a critique is without emotion and about something that’s fixable, it’s about the work. Typos can be fixed (and should be, says this editor!). It doesn’t say anything about the writing, the story, the characters, etc., so shouldn’t elicit a sense of failure in you, the author. Either fix it (if it’s in your power to do so) or forget it (knowing that there will probably be more of the same complaints in the future).
But what about the other three? Those are all about the story, right? Those are personal, and I should feel horrible about getting feedback like that! I’m a failure and a terrible writer!
Whoa. Just stop right there and let’s take another look.
This feedback about the hero being “too alpha,” indicates that the reader didn’t care for one particular character. Alpha heroes might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But you can bet there are plenty of other romance readers out there who are shouting, “Bring on the alpha hero!!” (Even if those readers haven’t found your book yet.) So, don’t look at criticism like this and immediately think you need to change what you write or think that you did something wrong. Your characters won’t always be what every reader wants, and that’s okay.
The feedback about the “rushed ending” might be true…or it might not. One thing about criticism like this is that you don’t know where the reader was coming from. Did it feel rushed to them because they would have liked to see what happened next in the story? So what do you do? Start by reviewing the book to see if it’s true. Did you rush the ending for some reason? Were you on a deadline? Did you feel like you didn’t quite know what to do, so you just wrote what you could so you could finish? Whatever the case may be, if the rushed ending critique is true, consider how you might do it differently for the next book. Maybe put more focus on the end or get the help of an editor to help you through it. But if the ending isn’t rushed, consider that the person providing the feedback just had different expectations.
“I just couldn’t finish this book. It was too boring for me.” This one actually made me laugh. I got it off of a book on Amazon…by Nora Roberts, often referred to as “The Queen of Romance” by members of the romance writing community. This was one of the 202 one-star reviews on this particular book. Which had nearly 11,000 five-star reviews! And a lot more in between. The moral of this story…not everyone is going to love every book, no matter who wrote it. And you can bet Nora Roberts isn’t perusing Amazon, reading her 1-star reviews and beating herself up for being a terrible writer. She’s too busy writing her next book and cashing her royalty checks!
Do You Even Need to Read Reviews?
Which leads me to the next point about reviews. Maybe don’t read them. If you find that bad reviews or criticism from critique partners puts you in a dark place or prevents you from learning and growing as a writer, skip them.
After my really bad review above (and a few others), I stopped reading them altogether. The chick lit genre took a nosedive shortly after I became published, and I didn’t get the support I needed from my publishers after that, so I eventually stopped writing and focused on editing, which I liked better anyway. When writing this article, I went onto Amazon and looked at some of my reviews from way back then…and there were some doozies I’d never seen before.
But you know what? I was able to look at them now with a more critical eye myself. And some of them were right! My heroine was too whiny sometimes. There wasn’t a lot of substance to the books. But that was the gist of the genre at the time…thus maybe why it didn’t stay popular for terribly long. I came in late to the game, when readers were already starting to look for something different, and that’s okay.
I was able to look at the good reviews and see where my strengths were…good dialogue, humor, fun secondary characters. If (when?) I get back into writing again, I know that I can take these strengths and build on them, without letting the criticisms prevent me from continuing to grow as a writer. And I hope that you can do the same.
Work with me!
Whether preparing to self-publish or to start the submission process, I’m here to help! You can Request a Quote today. If I think we might be a good fit, I’ll provide a 3- to 5-page sample edit of your manuscript to show you what I can do for you!