Writers Weigh In: Notes From the Editor(s)

Editing is a process, and an important part of that process is the editor—or editors, as is usually the case. Hopefully, over the course of preparing a piece for publication, others (whose feedback you value) review your work. Sometimes, though, it’s unclear what advice you should take and what you shouldn’t. If you’re workshopping a story with a big group, you’ll probably get more feedback than you know what to do with—and some of it might be contradictory. In this case, it’s always good to know what you want from the advice. What are you looking to improve in your story? Of course, you may not know that, especially if this is your first venture into crafting a story. To help with this, we’ve asked Brink staffers to share the most memorable, helpful, tired, and useful feedback they’ve received over the years—and what to do with it. 

Q: What’s a piece of feedback you have received that has stuck with you over the years? 

Nate, Communications & Marketing Director: Everybody Knows That (EKT). My dear friend Antoine hit me with that feedback years ago in relation to worldbuilding in a science fiction book I was writing. Basically, whenever you’re writing exposition or dialogue, you apply EKT to decide if people living in the world would already know what you’re describing, which means they wouldn’t talk or think about it. For an on-the-nose example, you generally wouldn’t say, “I’m going to brush my teeth with toothpaste and a toothbrush” because the toothpaste and brush are an implied part of living in your world. 

Dominic, Content Creator & Staff Writer: “Not everyone knows what is going on in your head as the writer.” When working on a piece, I can live in the world of it, but it’s my job as the writer to transcribe that experience onto the page to the reader and help them walk around in that world. The experience of looking at another person’s vacation photos isn’t as riveting as hearing an engaging travel anecdote. 

Kaitlin, Internship Supervisor & Senior Editor: To be hyper aware of how frequently we rely on pronouns to reference characters. There’s an obvious time and place for using them as identifiers, but often they function more like filler than anything. It’s something I noticed in everything I read and when I edit my own work. 

Ari, Junior Editor: Unfortunately, the most memorable piece of feedback I’ve ever received was negative. I had a creative writing teacher in college who intensely disliked me and she once told me my work was “over dramatic, over emotional, and overly descriptive.” Which is, frankly, all the things I love best about my writing style, so thankfully this motivated me via spite to lean into these elements even more. 

Maribel, Internship Assistant & Junior Editor: “What does your character want?” Before hearing this for the first time, I never realized while reading that what drives a story forward are the characters’ desires. Without them, you have no conflict, drama, or motivation. I now look for what characters are truly striving for in everything I read, watch, and listen to. The best stories always have multiple layers of this, and clear desires in every scene. 

Q: What’s a piece of feedback you’ve given that you remember well and why did you provide that specific feedback? 

Nate: Don’t assume the reader knows what you know. When we enter that writerly flow state it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the experiences and emotions that we’re tapping into and channeling into our characters and their choices. And because we tend to feel what we’re putting on the page, we sometimes fail to write that feeling in, and that means that readers will miss out on invaluable context. I share this feedback a lot, but probably the first time was after reading a friend’s love story. Love is this universal thing that we all (hopefully) know a bit about, but each love is vastly different, so I recommended that my friend spend time really talking about the love in their story and why it was so special. 

Dominic: “Show, don’t tell.” Dialogue is fun to write, and it fills up the page count quickly to give a sense of accomplishment, but does the reader want to receive all the information that way? Will it immerse them in the story? Think of which is more receptive by the reader: going through the entire process with the characters or overhearing some recap via talking heads. 

Kaitlin: In a more general sense, why is [XYZ] character doing something? I think as writers we’re so aware of all our characters’ motivations that we sometimes forget we need to be more explicit with our readers so they understand as well. And it’s a fine balance between informing your reader vs. info dumping on them, but I often read work and am left wondering why characters do a certain thing or have a particular response to something. 

Ari: It was less one specific piece of feedback and more of a thank you I received from a writer I had been friends with for a long time, explaining how my faith in her abilities and my encouragement helped her to strive towards the type of writer she wanted to be. I always try to balance my constructive criticism with what I love about a piece, and I was over the moon to hear it had genuinely inspired her. 

Maribel: I’m always looking for fantastical or strange elements in perfectly normal stories, so I once told someone that I loved their use of magical realism in a story where it seemed to me that the increasing smell of burnt food was caused by the character’s anger. The author then told me it was because the character had left a pie in the oven, and due to their distraction forgot about it. I was kind of sad and said I liked the magical realism aspect better! 

Q: What’s feedback you’re tired of hearing? 

Nate: “This is great. I really like it.” I love praise, of course. We all do! But positive feedback without any details or deeper digging doesn’t help any writer improve. 

Dominic: “Who is the audience?” The market is changing year by year. For example, the romance genre, which was associated with monthly Harlequin mass markets, now has multiple sub-genres, trade paperbacks, and bookstores which focus mainly on that audience. The horror genre is growing in the comic book industry but when “The Walking Dead” was first pitched, Robert Kirkman said that the zombies were only going to be in the first storyline. 

Katilin: “I don’t like this character, can we make them more likable?” No, the point is for them to be complex and unlikable. 

Ari: There’s been a trend lately to encourage action-oriented plots, quick pacing, and writing shorter. Which isn’t inherently negative, but it is anti-anthem to the type of “over dramatic, over emotional, overly descriptive” prose I prefer to write and read. Sometimes you need to indulge yourself in decadent metaphor and syrup-thick interiority, baby. I think the industry would be very boring if we only prioritized one type of writing. 

Maribel: Any feedback that is critiquing something the story isn’t actively trying to do. For example, critiquing a story for not including magical realism when it never meant to. There’s no point. Also, “Write what you know.” I actually think it can be very good advice, but I hate that it gets so misconstrued and over used. 

Q: What’s feedback everyone probably needs to hear at some point? 

Nate: Don’t try to write like anyone else. In high school and college, I really wanted to emulate the authors that I was reading, especially when it came to postmodernists. The trouble was, as one professor told me bluntly, I was creating out of parody rather than out of my own experience. Trying to be the next Pynchon or DeLillo means connecting with your own present day understanding, rather than doing an impression of an author from a previous generation. 

Dominic: “What is the story? And what is the story about?” These two questions were the best writing advice I ever received from a teacher. One is about the through line that the plot is hung on, and the other is the theme that works as the guardrails for the characters’ actions. Jaws is the story of a shark terrorizing a summer resort community as much as it is the story about duty and Chief Martin Brody’s commitment to protect everyone. The character motivation of what the story is about is shown through the actions of Brody going out to hunt the great white shark even though he is terrified of the ocean. 

Kaitlin: Stop burying the start of your story with lyrical language and conceptual posturing. I’m always more engaged with a story when it jumps straight into the meat. 

Ari: All writing advice is shit unless it works for you. What I mean by this is—any writing advice can be good or bad, depending on your personal process, project, or story. Just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you, and just because something is traditionally classified as a writing “no-no” doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Be true to your needs. 

Maribel: Own your own voice. Even if one or two people don’t like it, someone else will. The greatest storytellers of all time each had a distinct voice that made them memorable and interesting to read. There are so many stories out there—there is certainly a place for yours. 

The Final Step 

Taking your work to the next level, and getting it closer to publication, always requires editing and other sets of eyes. Other people can really help bring your piece to life and help you iron out any odds and ends with it. That said, know what kind of advice you’re looking for—everyone’s going to have their own opinion after all! As long as you consider every piece of feedback you receive and how it may or may not actually fit into your story, you’ll have done good work. 

The Facts of Fiction series is almost at its end—can you believe it? We’ve reached a point in the great journey of storytelling where you are at a natural ending. Take some time to reflect on all you’ve done in the process. What have you learned? What have you written? Where will you go next?