Feedback and Blowback
It is said that most fiction books published and bought these days are largely un-read because self-publishing is now so popular and inexpensive. The quality of new releases is getting better, though, since self-publishers now use editors and marketers that traditional publishers laid off to cut costs.
Some of what I’ve written in books and essays has surely roused a reader’s urge to tell me things. Most of those readers are not like the editors or reviewers that people will pay money to read, so it may be difficult for them to tell authors anything helpful about their work. (Be assured that “I didn’t like it” isn’t helpful. Neither is “It’s too [fill in the blank])” even when it’s true.
What authors need is feedback, but it may come across as blowback. Of course, blowback is fun, which is reason enough to do it, I suppose. But what’s helpful for authors is feedback which goes beyond “I don’t like it” and gets into the why of it: Why don’t we like it? Do we know? Even “It’s too (whatever)” is un-helpful because authors need to know what and where.
For 40 years my day job was to program computers. After retiring, I wrote a program to help novice critics (including myself) improve their critiquing craft by running the following program. It doesn’t require any more expertise than knowing what we like but also knowing how to describe what we don’t like:
- Open <name of the book>.
- Read until you can’t anymore (for a while, at least).
- Note the page and paragraph you stopped reading (e.g., 10.5 is page ten, paragraph 5, and 10.0 is page ten when the top paragraph is not indented).
- Note the reason(s) why you stopped (e.g., sleepy, hungry, angry, bored, confused, etc.)
- Explain any reason if it needs one. (e.g., Don’t know who’s talking. Too much description. Too little description. No romance. Too much romance. Too many big words, etc.)
- If you start reading <name of the book> again, go to step 2.
- Otherwise: List some things you like.
- Send the author your Notes, Explanations, and List.
- Stop.
Rather than write a lot in the book, I make pencil marks in the margin to help me remember the spots I want to comment on: "!" means I like it. "?" means I'm confused. "x" means a bug—i.e., a "PUG" in the lit-biz (a Punctuation, Usage, or Grammar error).
Lewis Jenkins
