The Writer's Right

After a weekend of critiquing fellow writers' novels at the Dunford weekend, I'm thinking about the nature of giving good feedback today.

It's a good idea to try and start off feedback by finding something good to say about the work first, then move on to what doesn't work so well, and then finish off with something else positive.  It's a counsel of perfection I've singularly failed to follow this weekend, due mainly to tiredness and not being able to think straight.

In the big group session I've noticed that some of the feedback tries to tell the writer what type of story to write, and that brings me to the topic of what is appropriate feedback.  A critique can legitimately deal with issues of structure, pace, clarity, and whether the characters are engaging the reader.  These are universals that should be there in every story.  But sometimes the feedback strays beyond these common issues to questioning the genre of the story or the world it is set in.

To me, this kind of feedback is not acceptable.  It's the writer's right to tell the story in the way he or she wants, and to choose the way they wish to tell the tale.  My job in critiquing that work is to examine whether the story works within the parameters of the writer's chosen genre.  I don't read romances or family sagas, but if a writer chooses to work in those forms I have to respect that decision and my job becomes deciding whether the choices the writer has made work.

When we're critiquing other people's work we have to detach from what we like to write and enter those other story worlds and be willing to be absorbed by them.  We have to always remember that it's the writer's right to choose their story.