Full teacups of ink

There’s the famous Zen koan about the Zen master, his student, and the cup of tea — rather than repeat it, I’ll point you to this retelling of it — I often think about. Particularly during writing workshops. People often come in with their work and they don’t want feedback, they want praise. And they tell you that your criticisms of the work are wrong — who are you going to believe, the writer or your lying eyes?

I’ve seen a couple examples of this recently. In playwriting class we do a cold reading/basic acting out of someone’s script, the writer speaks about what they think of how it turned out, and then the class critiques what they’ve just seen. There’s always one writer — maybe one or two per quarter, thank goodness, not every week — who starts to argue back. And it goes on. And on. Until people (finally) realize it’s a lost cause and stop commenting.

All of the feedback you get might, in fact, be wrong. This can absolutely be the case. But you have to consider it first. Empty your damn teacup and look at the tea. Not the right tea for you? Great: toss it out. But taste it first before you decide. (In fact, I should tell the playwriting teacher we need a new rule: as now, the writer gets to speak first, and then they shut the hell up.)

Now, I have been guilty of the teacup full of hubris myself: I think I know it all, only to discover, Eh, whoops, not so much. In fact, thinking I know it all and finding out I’m dead wrong seem to go hand in hand. So whenever I’m completely certain I’m right and they’re wrong, I take a moment to consider various ways to look at it.

This doesn’t mean I accept any and all criticism as valid. I’m still the one in charge of my writing, and I have to decide if what they’re saying is true or not.

There are several levels of criticism:

1. “You are a bozo and ugly and you write like crap.” This is criticism it is safe to disregard because it’s non-specific as to where the problems in the story lie.

2. “I dunno. I just kinda didn’t like it.” This is tough, because you then have to work with your critic to pick out what they didn’t like. When did they stop? Were they just bored? Was there anything they did like?

3. “I didn’t like your main character. He should be a ninja!” Aha. Here we get to the Problem and the Fix. It is always safe to disregard the Fix. Your critiquer’s Fix may turn out to be exactly what you need, but more likely it’s not. It is a pointer to where a problem in your story might be.

4. “He should be a ninja!” Either your critiquer thinks every story should have a ninja, or they’ve leaped right to the Fix stage, wanting to help get your story into the best shape ever. It’s incredibly tough to hear this and not think, “Yeah, tweedy insurance adjuster…not fun. He should be a ninja.” When what you’ve got to think is, “Okay, there’s a problem with my main character being too boring, too passive, or not wearing enough black.”

   This stage requires you to know your critiquer. Is this how they generally express their feedback? Or are they trying to write your story for you? Also, your main character may be completely fine as is and your critiquer is out to lunch.

5. “I thought the middle section, where they string up the witches and beat them with cream pies, was kind of slow and I lost interest there.” They know where the problem is, but they’re not diagnosing it for you. Excellent. Even better, you know the problem always comes before the point where they lost interest. You can analyze that section and move backward.

I’m sure there are several other types too. (Feel free to post in comments.)

Yes, there can be all kinds of misguided feedback in workshops or writing groups. A certain amount of groupthink does go on and you have to decide, Is this feedback about my play, or do they tell everyone that every play needs a fool character?

So pick your commenters wisely, listen to them, and then consciously decide which parts of the feedback are valuable for you and how.

Otherwise, you’re just wasting all of our time.