Giving Feedback or How to Make People Not Hate You

Giving feedback can feel inherently mean. No matter how gentle or well-meaning you're trying to be, giving someone feedback on their writing is, at its core, about telling someone what's right and (more importantly) what's wrong. It can be very difficult at times to be polite and respectful while still offering that vital advice.

The majority of my experience with giving feedback (outside of tutoring) comes from my creative writing classes. A lot of the things that I learned about giving constructive criticism in these classes can be transferred to any kind of writing. While some of the tips I give here may seem specific to creative writing, you'll find lots of ways to incorporate them into any feedback that you are asked to give.

1. Don't be too polite. We are taught our enire lives to respect the feelings of others, especially when it comes to writing. Writers tend to be viewed as these precious, delicate beings who will be absolutely shattered if someone tells them one of their verbs sounds wonky, but the fact is that writers are (or, at the very least, need to be) made of stronger stuff. When it comes to feedback, you have to be honest. Don't tell someone that something works if it doesn't. The point of getting a critique is to make the piece better. If you're not being honest, you're not being helpful.

2. Don't be rude. This might seem really obvious, but it can be easy to forget, especially after reading that first tip. While it's not helpful to be overly polite, it's equally bad to be overly rude. Every writer has a different level of sensitivity, and that can change from piece to piece, but no one likes to be made fun of. If your critique is 30% feedback and 70% snark, the feedback is going to get lost. Phrasing things respectfully is not only more professional, it also assures that the writer will both understand and lend credence to your ideas.

3. Listen to the writer. We write because we have something to say. When you're critiquing someone's work, it's important to understand what the writer is trying to express. There have been plenty of times when I read through a story, poem, or paper and made notes and comments only to discover that I had taken the entirely wrong message away from the writing. If you get the wrong message, explain why, and talk to the writer about what they can do to make their message clear.

4. Offer suggestions. Another one that seems like a no-brainer, but again, it's easy to forget. When there's something you don't like about a piece, there is always a reason that you don't like it. Telling a writer, "I didn't like that part," or "This part seemed weird," ends up just being confusing instead of helpful. If the writer doesn't know why you don't like it, they can't fix it. So whenever you give someone a critique, explain why you want certain parts changed, and offer a couple ideas on how to change it. Even if the writer doesn't take one of those specific ideas, they usually help them come up with other fixes of their own.

5. Let the writer write. Not everyone is going to take all of your suggestions. Some people might not take any of them. That's okay. Even though it's frustrating when someone doesn't listen to you, 99% of the time, the writer isn't doing it to offend you. It doesn't mean that they think you're stupid, or a bad writer, or even a bad workshopper. It just means that they felt that your suggestions didn't fit their piece. Maybe they didn't line up with the writer's intended message. Maybe they didn't fit the writer's style or process. That's fine. At the end of the day, it's not your piece. It's not your name that will be on it, and it won't be your grade that's affected. The piece belongs to the writer, so you have to let them do what they're going to do.

Fanfiction. It's Serious Business.

No, but seriously, it kind of is. Because of that, I hope you forgive me the sheer scroll-iness of this post; I've got a lot of ground to cover

Fanfiction (or fan fiction; you can write it either way) is any original writing based on an existing work, such as a television show, a movie, or a book. Usually, fanfiction involves characters and places from this work, but it can also just take place in the same world. How closely related it is to the original is up to the author.

This probably sounds like copyright infringment, and to a point, it is. With rare exceptions, fanfiction can't be published for financial gain, and there is even a (very small) group of authors who ask fans to not publicly share fanfiction online, even if it's for free.

As disappointing as that might seem, the point of fanfiction really has nothing to do with money. The primary reason to write fanfiction is to more fully enjoy and connect with the original. Side benefits include connecting with other fans, indulging in some wish fulfillment, and even improving your writing. To anyone who has read the notoriously catastrophic/beautifully troll-tastic fanfic "My Immortal," that probably seems like a lie, but I swear to you, fanfiction has a lot to offer.

So, what do I mean by "wish fulfillment?" Fanfiction just takes a story and retells it, right? Not so, friends. Not so. There are two major camps of fanfiction: there's "canon," which applies to stories that that use only information given in the original, and then there's "fanon," which can twist or even completely change ideas from the original work. Example: a canon Harry Potter fanfic could include Ron and Hermione spending time with their kids at Christmas, while a fanon Harry Potter fanfic could be about Neville and Hermione's wedding.

A personal example: I just burned through all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Aside from the soul-crushing sadness of finishing the series, it also gave me a new favorite fictional couple: Willow and Xander. Though the two of them finally had a very brief fling, they never ended up together, which always disappointed me. Right now, I'm working on fanfics that have the two of them together so I can enjoy the stories it would create while still being able to enjoy the show for what it is. It gives me a release valve for that disappointment; instead of having my enjoyment of the show diminished because I didn't get to see the relationship I wanted, I can basically have my cake (the show) and eat it too (the fanfic).

"Very nice - albeit slightly pathetic - example, Allison," you say. "But how could it help improve my writing?"

Whether you realize it or not, when you're writing fanfiction, you're thinking very carefully about details, consistency, and voice. Really good fanfics, for the most part, are the ones that are true to the heart and soul of the original, regardless of whether or not other changes have been made. I'll go back to my Buffy example. Willow and Xander are both characters with very clearly defined personalities and distinct ways of speaking. If you really pay attention, most major characters do. That means that, to write them well, I have to make them act like themselves. I have to think very carefully about what they would really say or do in different situations. Imagine what it would be like if they broke character in the show. It would be really awkward and distracting, right? It's the same in fanfiction.

Unless you're doing an extreme deviation from the original (like something set in an alternate universe), you also have to pay attention to detail. Back to Buffy: let's say I'm writing a story that takes place during season 3. This means it will probably take place in Sunnydale, CA, so I have to think about setting. They're probably not going to be getting out of school for a snow day there. I also need to think about what kinds of things they're going to be doing. Most likely, they'll be hanging out at their homes, their school, and the local club (The Bronze), and they'll probably be spending time with Buffy, Giles, Cordelia, and Oz, unless I choose to deliberately eliminate those characters. I'll probably at least need to make nods to different villains (vampire or otherwise) and I may choose to talk about details from past episodes, like character nicknames or experiences they had together. This might require research; if I can't remember how Willow could tell between the two different Xanders in a later episode, I will have to look it up. (Answer: he did the Snoopy dance from The Charlie Brown Christmas Special.)

This is all stuff that you can apply to a lot of different types of writing, even things like essays. Learning to write in a way that mimics the voices of certain characters will help you work on academic voice in papers by thinking about how professionals and academics speak versus how students talk to their friends. Learning how to pay attention to details and do research to remember them will help you put a lot of detail and thought into your analyses and arguments. And, of course, doing any types of writing will strengthen grammar, spelling, and other writing skills.

OVERALL: Fanfiction is a really fun, really interesting form of writing that can offer unique help and practice in some really crucial writing skills. If you want to share your work online, Fanfiction.Net is one of the best and easiest places to do so. I hope fanfiction will help you find inspiration and writing passion the same way it has helped millions of others over the years.

Introductions: Allison Sterken

My name is Allison Sterken, and I love to write.

You probably expected that.

I've been writing, in some form, for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is stapling together a bunch of drawings to make a picture book. I've always had a real passion for stories, and I've always wanted to be one of the people inventing and sharing them. That's what I do as a creative writing major.

On the other hand, I've always had a passion for books. All books fascinate me, from the font they're written in to the paper they're printed on. The sight, smell, and feel of books has always been so significant to me. That's where the professional and technical writing major comes in.

Because of this, I have a pretty broad spectrum of things I enjoy writing, from essays to short stories to news articles. I love anything to do with books, design, or fiction. I'm actually really stoked to be able to do a blog where I can talk about my favorite kinds of writing, as writing about writing basically just doubles up on my favorite thing.

I've always been a pretty big geek, and that's a big part of my writing life. Even when I feel like I'm stuck and can't find any inspiration in my life, I can turn to comic books or television shows instead. One of my goals for my blog posts is to show people that writing can be fun, valuable, and important, even when you can't think of something off the top of your head. I hope I can show people how to take the things they love and use them to make writing more enjoyable and interesting for themselves.

Another thing I hope to help readers with here is presentation. A lot of people - sometimes even people who have been writing for a long time - forget that how a piece of writing looks can be almost as important as the writing itself, depending on the situation. Though it may not seem like it at first, I can guarantee that things like font choice and spacing can help improve the quality of a lot of documents. And hey, you might even find out how fun it can be to play with margin settings and font size (although I know I'm probably in the minority on that front).

Even though I am excited and willing to help students with any kind of writing they bring to me, my heart belongs to literature and the writing profession. If you have a creative work, a technical document, or a literary analysis, I am more than happy to take a look.