: Re: Is it okay to have my family edit my book? Okay, I don't really have any friends who write. (or in general) And I wanted to know if it was too biased for my family to edit my writing.

@Turnbaugh521

Vote Up Vote Down

It depends whether you mean line edit (like grammar) or larger structural and character development type criticism.

Although in either case I would probably say no.

Firstly, you could get your mum (I'm British) to fix your grammar, and that's not really a problem, but it is indicative of a larger problem - which is that if you want to be a writer, you need to get to the point where your grammar is pretty flawless yourself. Yes, you will have people proofread your work to find the odd grammar or spelling glitch, but this should not be a major job.

Onto the more important things, which is the larger constructive criticism of your story itself.

Unless you mum or dad or whoever is a writer themselves, then it's very unlikely they will be in a position to give a useful critique. They might give you feedback that is not very helpful, or worse - actively harmful.

Also, even if they give you the best feedback in the world, writing is so subjective, at the early stages of your novel you really need to be getting a range of opinions from people, so you can get a better of what is just someone's taste and what really is a problem with your book.

In my experience when you get feedback from ten writers, sometimes they will be split 50/50 and sometimes they will 90% agree that there's an issue. What would happen if it was the 50/50 and you only got feedback from one person? You might end up changing something that loads of other people would have loved.

What you should do:

You would be much better off finding a group of writers - either that meet in person or online (scribolphile is a good online one), post your writing there and get feedback from them.

(0)

Login to post a comment!