How do I gently tell someone their writing is bad (as in, needs significant work)?
How do I gently tell someone their writing is bad (as in, needs significant work)?
A really good friend showed me a personal essay and asked for my honest opinion. She was looking to enter a contest, so I wanted to give her some good feedback to make her writing stand out.
But as it turned out, this was her final draft, and she was really just looking for affirmation that she's a good writer.
The essay needed a lot of work. But when I gave my friend a list of the things that needed to be fixed, she got so upset that she deleted the draft and didn't enter the contest at all. Now I feel terrible.
What should I have done differently? How do you gently break the news to someone that theor writing needs a lot of work?
I do think I was too harsh. But I also didn't want her to enter the contest without having a stellar piece.
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Some people have not learned how to accept criticism, constructive or otherwise, and that is a skill just as important as the writing itself. I was guilty of this for years as was my wife who is a visual artist. Once you regularly have your work scrutinized and you learn how to filter criticism and use it to improve your work, it becomes one of if not the most-important part of the creative process.
Best advice I can give for handling this particular situation is to encourage the person to keep writing and to start asking for critique earlier in the process, to be vocal about if they feel the criticism is unfair, and to try as hard as possible to suspend the feeling that "critique = they think I'm a bad writer." Ensure them that anything you suggest is given with the purest intent, not meant to hurt the author but to improve the piece.
We are emotional beings and we put a lot of heart and soul into what we make and it's understandable that our gut reaction to even constructive criticism is wounded pride. It never goes away completely, but if you want to be successful, you need to get comfortable with hearing objective opinions about your work.
I've always been very critical with both myself and others. I, personally, don't like it when people give me all positive feedback and no negative because I don't get any valuable ideas about how to improve.
To me, launching into a laundry list of negatives feels natural. But I'm starting to wonder whether most people might not feel the same. I'll have to try to be more sensitive in the future.