By Ian Smith

One of the great features of being a contributor to the ERWA
is the “storytime” mailing list, where we can post pieces of our work
for constructive feedback. Of course, reading this can sometimes be
disheartening, but I strongly believe that knowing what readers make of your
work is a key step to becoming a better writer. Once I started offering
feedback, I found it helped my own writing, particularly if I could mentally
“step back” and be fairly objective about my work.

I’m sure every writer feels insecure and hopes for
“wow, this is great”. Realistically, the best we’ll ever get is a
variation on “this is good, hope I can help you make it even better”.

So, if you want to give a writer some feedback, how can you
be helpful?

The first thing is to remember that the writer doesn’t have to
agree with you. It is their work, after all!

The simplest form of feedback is to tell them what you
thought or how you felt about the story as a whole. You don’t have to write a
lot. Simply knowing that it engaged and entertained a reader can make a big
difference to the writer’s confidence, especially if they’re having a rough
patch and doubting themselves. If you really liked something, maybe the
characters, dialogue or “action” scenes, say so. 

And why not make it your feedback? All you have to do is use “I” rather
than a generic “you” or “the reader”.

If you want to give more detailed feedback, this is typically
in the form of “nits” and “crits”.

Nits are details like punctuation, grammar, spelling,
misplaced name tags, confused descriptions of action and so on. These are
things an editor would look out for in a submitted manuscript. Remember that UK
and US English have differences in spelling, vocabulary and usage.

Ideally “crit” means a constructive critique, not
criticism in the everyday sense – someone put time and effort into writing that
piece and will feel anxious about how it’s received. Critiques may be fairly
general comments about how you found the style, plot, use of dialogue, or the
way characters are described, or they can be more in-depth, such as suggestions
on how to rephrase sections.

Reviews posted on book purchasing sites are what published
writers want. Positive reviews encourage potential purchasers to buy. Amazon’s
system means a book is more likely to be suggested to customers once a certain
number of reviews have been posted. Fake reviews can be purchased, but
thankfully Amazon is taking steps to minimise this. I’ve seen claims that
Amazon makes apparently arbitrary judgements about the reliability of some
reviews, especially where they consider the author and reviewer to be
“friends”.

Any Amazon customer can post a review, and if they got the
book from Amazon, they’re shown as a “verified purchaser”. Their
system doesn’t always share comments between the UK and US sites, so I have
accounts with both and post the same review on each. If I bought the book from
the UK site, I say so in the US review. If I was offered a free copy, I only
accept it on the basis that I’ll post my honest opinion, and I say so in the
review.

I’m not a fan of structured reviews which summarise the
story, as these can unwittingly include “spoilers”. I try to say, in
general terms, what I enjoyed about a book and acknowledge anything I didn’t,
basically what I’d say to a friend who asked me about the book. If I read a
story to the end, I must have enjoyed it, so there are always things I can
write about.

Now and again, we’ll all come across a book we really don’t like,
either because it’s not our sort of story or because we didn’t like the way it
was written. Do you post a bad (honest) review, or just not bother? I’ll leave
that to you.