: Re: Feedback: What to use and what to ignore? I posted my novel online for critique. And stumbled with the obvious question: when should I consider a feedback and when should I ignore it? This

@Bryan361

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I assume that we are talking about feedback that you are not obligated to follow, or that does not have consequences beyond "will this make the story better". I mean like, you show the story to your lawyer and he says, "If you publish these statements about Mr So-and-so, you could be sued for libel". Or you have a publisher lined up, and the publisher says they require changes before they will accept the manuscript.

That said, you have two conflicting considerations:

One: This is YOUR story, not theirs. You are not in any way obligated to accept someone else's suggestion. If they're at all reasonable, they know that.

Two: You are not the best judge of your own work, in many ways. You know what you INTENDED to say, but others can see what you DID say.

If you're posting on a forum where you're getting feedback from random people, the odds are that some of those people are idiots. If you read some comment or suggestion and it's obviously absurd, you don't need to argue about it or agonize over it. Just ignore it.

But be careful not to fall into the ego trap. Don't take comments as personal attacks and get defensive. If someone points out a real flaw in your story, don't try to justify it. Fix it.

In general, if readers say that some point in your story is unclear, I'd take that very seriously. You may have had a very clear idea in your head what was happening, but it may not be so obvious to a reader. At the simplest level, if someone says, "I don't understand. Is this scene supposed to be happening at Fred's house or are they back at the police station now?", don't argue why it should be obvious that they are at Fred's house. Add a few words to make it clear, like, "While they were at Fred's house, Mary said ..." Of course the issue could be more complicated than that. If readers say it's not clear why the hero did such-and-such, fixing that could take more than one extra sentence.

If readers say that a section is boring or irrelevant, examine why you included it. Is it necessary to advance the story? If it is but it's boring, is there some way you could liven it up? What happens here and why?

Etc.

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