I’ve hit a point in my writing that I didn’t expect to encounter. Not because it’s a bad thing, or because it’s such a good thing I never dared hope, but because it’s something I thought I’d already run into, dealt with, and moved past.

Ever hear the advice that, when considering feedback or critique, you ultimately need to do what’s best for your story to make it yours? That you can’t please all readers, and that you can’t implement every suggestion?

Until a week ago, I thought I knew what that meant. It seems simple enough. If someone says “I think you should use ‘that’ here” and you don’t want to because it ruins your voice, then you don’t use ‘that’ (like literally the word ‘that’ not a generic reference to a piece of feedback).

Also, this speaks to the wisdom of having more than one person read your work before revising. But that’s a different post.

So, what it really means, as I discovered, is people can read your book and have entirely different visions of what you meant.

Weird, right? Who knew?

I mean, besides everyone.

Or to be more specific. I got notes back from two different readers. Both of them said “This ending doesn’t work. At all. Why does it exist?” So that tells me, as much as I like my ending, it might be a problem.

But, only one of them said (paraphrasing here, but she’ll know not by much if she reads this post today 😉 ‘I hate this character and I want them to die.’

To be fair, the other also saw flaws in said character, but felt like they were fixable.

And it’s possible I rigged the votes a little bit, by saying something like “you’d never hate anyone I wrote, right?” And don’t misunderstand, I absolutely loved this feedback. Normally that kind of news would make me fly off the handle and freak out and curl up in the corner and whimper. I don’t know if it was in the delivery, or because I’ve matured as a writer – hopefully a little of both – but this didn’t hit me that way.

But suddenly I knew the true meaning of ‘you have to do what’s best for your story.’ And it had very little to do with the word ‘that’.

I had to break it down. Why was this character unlikable? Was it fixable? Was she critical to the story? Would correcting some of her less desirable traits destroy her role in the story? Did I want to keep her? Did I want to relegate her to the background? Did I want to leave her to die in Gehenna?

I know what I need to do now, btw. I haven’t figured out the details, but having to look at the story from different (not conflicting, just different) perspectives has shown me that. I just have to take the time to do it.

Have you ever received conflicting advice about changes your story needs? Like broad, sweeping, impact the entire plot changes? How did you decide what to do?