Brutally Honest Editing & Feedback

Why Most Feedback Is Useless

Friends and Family

Your friends and family are lying to you. Does any of this sound familiar?

• "It's good. I liked it."
• "That was an interesting plot."
• "Publishers turned down Harry Potter 37 times. They don't know anything. You should self publish."
• "This isn't the type of thing I usually read, but I could definitely see someone liking it."
• "This has a lot of potential."

When you rely on friends and family, the ones who like you don't want to hurt your feelings. The ones who don't like you aren't going to read your writing. Besides, you probably aren't paying your spouse, mom, or friend. Do you think they want to read your stuff, tell you something uncomfortable, and deal with the aftermath for free?

It's way easier to say, "That was nice," and then talk about whatever part they liked. If they hated everything, "Things are really busy right now" and they just don't have the time to give you feedback.

Writing Groups

People in writing groups aren't much better. Who wants to be "the mean one"? Who wants to be accused of "tearing down" your writing or "nitpicking"? It's a whole lot easier to give you a nice, safe critique sandwich with a few gentle suggestions and a lot of praise.

Besides, writing groups are full of people there to have their own writing critiqued. If they're too honest and offend others, those people might not be so nice when critiquing in return. There's an incentive to keep the peace, "look for the positive" and not drop truth bombs, no matter how bad the writing is.

That's why writing group feedback is so often sidetracked with discussions of whether a comma should go here or there, which can't offend anybody.

Professional Editors

Okay, how about hiring a pro? They're honest, right?

Here's the thing: professionals need clients. It's estimated there are 122,100 editors in the United States. It's not like they're a scarce resource, and they're fighting over the same clients. They want you to keep giving them money. Some of them might be great editors and will give you genuinely good advice, but there's always this aspect of needing your money. The professional editing space was extremely competitive even before AI came around.

AI Readers

Well then, why not show your writing to ChatGPT or Claude? They're objective, right?

It's true that AI will give you more detailed and useful feedback than mom or your friend from work. But it's still governed by "safety features" and a general bias toward being nice.

Do you think the people who profit from AI want a news story about how some writer jumped off a bridge after the AI was too harsh critiquing his novel? Or get complaints from parents that the AI crushed their kid's hopes and dreams? Protecting their creators is more important than giving honest feedback. These large language models have a built-in reason to keep you happy and not push too far.

How This Screws You Over and Hurts Your Writing

Writing is a skill, and giving useful feedback and editing advice is another skill. If you're a plumber, you probably wouldn't ask your spouse or your friend to critique your plumbing work. You'd want to find somebody who knows something about plumbing and can give you objective feedback. But with writing, people give their manuscript to whoever will read it, which often puts these readers into an awkward position. They aren't equipped to give useful, articulate feedback and they don't want to offend you.

Beyond this, a lot of writers are delusional. They don't want the truth. They want people to say "Good job!" It's no wonder a lot of readers cannot, or will not, give the type of honest feedback that is needed to assess a manuscript's merit.

If you really do want to improve your writing and get an accurate impression of what people think, this dysfunctional system makes it easy to go in circles. It's easy to waste a lot of time and effort trying to read between the lines of half-honest feedback, from people who aren't equipped to do any better, or from people who are afraid you'll go away as a client if you're offended.

Writers spend hundreds or thousands of hours writing and then are lost at the feedback and editing stage.

Sure, if you put your writing in front of enough people, you'll eventually learn if it resonates with anybody, but that's a very slow process. And it doesn't tell you much about whether the manuscript you have in front of you, right now, is any good.

With me you will get the brutal honesty you need. You'll learn what an objective reader thinks about your writing.

Who Am I to Give Advice?

I've been writing in one form or another for over 20 years. I've had my own work critiqued by friends, family, professionals, writing groups, and AI. On Upwork, a freelancer platform, I edit and give feedback to fiction and nonfiction writers. I know what makes useful feedback vs lame "that was nice, move a comma" feedback.

Besides, I've made plenty of people mad at me over the years by being blunt and honest, so why let that talent go to waste?

With me, what you see is what you get. You don't have to read between the lines and guess what I really think.

How I'm Different

Now you might be saying to yourself, "What makes you so different from all the other paid editors?"

A lot of professional editors are English majors who've never worked a job outside an office. They need your money to afford their morning macchiatos, and if your money goes away, they're in trouble. I once had a job scraping algae in a greenhouse, and another mixing concrete. Yes, I'm getting paid and I want your money, but I don't need it like somebody who has no other way to make money.

Besides, if you don't work with me, someone else will. I'm not trying to base my client list around people I keep happy with generic encouragement.

Honesty Does Not Equal Negativity

There's something I think it's worth being clear about. It's easy to equate honesty with negativity. But it's not about that, nor is honesty about being "balanced". Sometimes things really suck. Other times they are great. Looking for a balance isn't being honest.

No, honesty is really about being objective and fully voicing what I think, bad and good.

If your writing is good, I'll say that and I won't hold back on my praise. I want to like your writing. I'm spending my time reading it, after all. It's just if your writing is bad, I'll say that, too.