When I first started searching serious feedback for my writing, I thought it was awesome. Because the first handful of people who read it gave me some fantastic input. And by fantastic, I mean they told me I ruled and so did my stories.
Not super helpful, but amazing for the newbie writer’s ego. And then someone didn’t like it. Not only that, but they didn’t get it. You’ve seen the feedback before. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.”
And I sputtered, and I gasped, and I said “but how could you not get it?”
Over time, I learned there’s a line to be walked. If no one gets it, something probably needs to be clarified. If everyone except one person gets it, there may not be anything you can do.
The trick is, figuring out the difference between the two. It’s been a difficult thing for me, but I’m actually learning the lessons from my blog posts, instead of from my writing.
If a bunch of you respond, and your responses have nothing to do with what I was thinking when I wrote the post, I realize I’ve missed something. That’s when it’s a good chance to go back and see what I said that could be interpreted differently, and learn from that. On the other hand, when everyone who responds understands my point, except for maybe one person, I have to step back and ask myself if I miscommunicated, or if we’re just speaking a different dialect from each other.
I guess this is kind of a muddled thought. One of those that I’ll look back on and wonder why I thought it was supposed to convey my meaning. But I think my overall point is, you can’t make sense to all the people all the time.
So if you’ve tried and tried and tried to make yourself clear, and almost everyone gets it, but there’s just one person who doesn’t see eye-to-eye with you, maybe it’s not your fault. It’s not theirs either. No one is to blame. The two of you just communicate differently/have different views/different experiences about the topic at hand.
Don’t beat yourself up over it, and don’t blame them. Walk away, agree to disagree (even if it’s just a silent concession in your head), and move on.
Any suggestions on how to approach misunderstandings from a new perspective to help straighten them out?
When I figure out the secret to solving all misunderstandings, I will let you know. You might be waiting an long time, though.
Hmmm… your post has me thinking. I wonder if I need more CPs/betas to help me see where the problems are occurring. In my communicating or in in just not seeing eye-to-eye. Sometimes I find myself wanting to change whatever a person comments on to their suggestions, but then I do wonder if they just don’t get it.
When everything’s so clear in my head, it’s hard to judge which one it is. Now I’m going to be thinking about this all day.
I get this all the time at work. Sometimes it helps to repeat their question to make sure YOU’RE understanding what they’re not clear on, but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes you’ve just gotta shrug and walk away.
I totally get this post and it’s so true! I have noticed comments in my own blog posts that make me think I completely missed the boat. I don’t think you can ever satisfy everyone but possibly MOST everyone
Sifting through writing feedback can be tricky — I hear ya. I’ve had a number of people critique my opening pages over the past six months. Some were from an in-person group, some we traded pages over email, and others were basically anonymous posters on a web forum. That last group is the tricky one because you don’t know anything about their background, their own writing styles etc. My in person group I have read and reviewed their work. The two published authors provide wonderful feedback. Some of the others have great comments but they vary based on personal tastes. One writer doesn’t write in our genre, so that’s tough. It really depends who this feedback comes from, and like you said, if everyone is saying “this is unclear” then you know you need to rework.
A lot of critique is subjective (aside from grammar). I’m finding the online forum critiques are great for pitches and queries, but first pages can be harsh since most often they don’t include enough wordcount to really get a good idea of the story.
I agree with Amanda, who notes that sometimes you’ve gotta ask questions to make sure you’re on the same page as your reader…then, if you’re not, ask more until you can figure out what page your reader’s on! 🙂
Some Dark Romantic
It’s my thing, as you know, that writing should be clear–that its first job is to transmit what is in my brain to what is in your brain. If it fails at that, then even if it’s beautiful it’s not doing its job.
However. Some people have remarkably thick skulls. All I can do is make sure that the sentence (and paragraph, and chapter, and novel) is as clear as I can make it–the words are used to mean what the dictionary says they mean, the sentences follow (most of) the rules of grammar, and so on.
If I’ve done that and I still have one person whining that they don’t know what “supercilious” means, I’m tempted to tell them to go look it up.
I think your method of determining where the line is works very well–one person not getting it is par for the course. Nine people not getting it probably means I have a problem.