Giving and Getting Feedback on Substack

Ways to engage more deeply with the writing you love

Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay

On July 24,

Kris Mole

put this note at the bottom of his latest story on his Substack,

FDD (Fiction Deficit Disorder)

:

 (Please, if at any point you notice a flaw in the story, let me know.)

Wow, I thought, what a simple and direct way to ask for feedback! I knew my own novel chapters, published biweekly on my ‘Stack,

Out Over My Skis

, were riddled with flaws, flaws I couldn’t yet see … but I didn’t know how to get people to help me see them. Kris made it simple: he just asked. And I replied. Feedback loop created.

Something similar happened with

Brian Reindel

at about the same time. I made an observation about one of his stories on

Future Thief

, and he in turn asked a probing question about character development in one of my stories. I helped him; he helped me. And thus began a great reader/writer relationship.

Soon after that,

Mark R DeLong

(author of

Technocomplex

) sent me an email with a couple links that were really useful (in fact, one of his shares unlocked how I’d deepen a character and end my story).

I needn’t tell the Fictionistas group that Substack is a friendly, supportive place to share fiction, but I wonder how many of us are taking advantage of this community to both give and receive substantive feedback on our writing? 

My experiences got me thinking about how we writers can get better at both parts of this feedback equation. I’ll share some of the assumptions and principles that guide my own feedback practice, and I’m hoping it will spark a good conversation about how we ask for and receive feedback from this wonderful Substack community. 

Giving Feedback: The Reader’s Perspective

I’ve found that I learn as much from the feedback I give as I do from the feedback I get. When I pay close attention to someone else’s writing, it just feels like I’m building up my writing muscles. Here are some of the principles that guide the ways I give feedback.

Assess whether feedback is welcome.

You may assume that the mere act of publishing on Substack is a request for feedback (it is for me!), but I don’t think this is true. For some writers, publishing is an agonizing (if needed) act of revelation and the thought of getting criticism is mortifying. (Listen to The Active Voice podcast episode with Samantha Irby to hear her take on this one. Well, and because it’s awesome.)

I believe most writers communicate their intent about this, explicitly or implicitly. You can often gauge their attitude from their writing, but I often send a direct email that simply asks whether they’d be open to feedback (I call this the “backchannel,” and it’s where a lot of feedback happens.) Some rough-and-tumble writers like

Amran Gowani

savor direct input; others appear to shrink from it. I’ll just say that I never post critical feedback directly in comments unless I have established a high-trust relationship with the author. (And I’d suggest you disregard this suggestion for this article, since I’d love readers to see the full spectrum of comments. Fire away!)

Give the feedback you want to get.

In other words, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A few examples:

• Share what you like about what they’ve done well

• Ask questions

• Disclose where you do not understand

• Be specific and detailed 

There’s a world of good writing about this topic.

Charles Schifano

wrote about it while I was writing this piece, and

George Saunders

is building his whole

Story Club with George Saunders

around the subject. Please add your gems and other links in the comments!

Offer observations, not judgments.

Your job as a commenter is not to judge the writer’s intention or to label something “good” or “bad”. It is to observe how you felt and thought and reacted when you read their writing—how you experienced the writing. Own your feelings and observations, and don’t assume you know the writer’s intent. This kind of feedback lets the writer know whether what they intended to convey was what the reader actually received.  

Don’t tell the writer what to do; tell them what you see (and don’t see).

As a reader, you are in a unique position when you make comments: you have a view of the writing that the author simply cannot possess. The author has already thought a lot about the writing, and they’ve likely considered and discarded multiple options along the way to what you see on the page. But you are seeing it fresh, whole, complete, and you can offer the writer your perspective on their work. Your feelings are valid (even if they are not necessarily something that the writer can use.) So report what you see and what you don’t see. The writer gets to decide what to do with it. 

Give feedback to the right people.

You don’t owe everyone you read a comment. It’s perfectly okay to just ❤️ something if you like it, or not comment at all (hell, it’s okay to unsubscribe). But there will be writers who strike a note with you, who seem to be describing the world as you see it or want to see it, who may be writing in a style that intrigues you, and I’d argue they’re the ones you should interact with … because both of you will benefit. If someone whose writing resonates with you gets THIS close to really nailing something, but just misses, your observations about why could be really helpful. 

Be kind.

When all is said and done, writers … oh hell, people … are vulnerable: they have bared their soul, or some part of it, for you the reader to judge. So have empathy. Try to put yourself in their shoes, to imagine the problem they were trying to solve by writing their piece this way. No one knows it more than us writers: writing is hard. So above all else, when giving comments and in life in general, be kind. 

Getting Feedback: The Writer’s Perspective

Getting feedback isn’t always easy, but it’s (almost) always helpful. To prepare myself for feedback, I like to remind myself:

I want to improve. 

The wonderful and daunting truth about writing, of all sorts, is that one can always ... ALWAYS ... improve. I remind myself that no matter how hard I worked on something, it can always be better. 

I want to connect.

I’ve heard people say, “I only write for myself, I don’t care what others think.” I don’t believe it. Most of us freely acknowledge that writing is a means of connecting with the world and the other people in it. I don’t want to connect with everyone, but I do want to reach people who appreciate my voice, share some of my ways of looking at the world, or have similar experiences (this is just a start!).

I only improve with feedback.

The only way I can improve my writing is by understanding where it falls short—where it fails to delight or persuade or anger or move. It’s true that I can build that understanding through careful revision, or with a good editor, and I do both. But I learn so much from listening to anyone who reads my work and cares to reply.

Feedback tells me where I have hit the target and where I’ve missed. It reveals what is clear and what is cloudy. Sure, some feedback is better than others, and some can be dismissed, but the more feedback I get, the better I understand my efforts to communicate. 

I need to invite feedback.

I believe we need to explicitly let our readers know if we are open to feedback. Not just by dropping a Comment button in the middle of the story or encouraging likes, but by consciously stating that we are open to learning and that we want to hear if our writing isn’t hitting the mark. That’s what Kris Mole did and it worked. 

I get to decide what to do with feedback.

You’ll notice I’ve said nothing about what I do with feedback! That’s because it’s up to me, the writer, to decide. If I get good feedback, I use it. I’d be a fool not to. But if the feedback doesn’t work for me, if it distracts from my intention or undermines my vision, I discard it. There’s only one name on the masthead or on the book cover, and that’s mine.

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I offer these ideas with great humility, and am eager to hear about the experiences and ideas of this wonderful community of readers and writers. You know what to do!

(Special thanks to my fellow writers who commented on a draft of this piece: Brian Reindel, Amran Gowani, Mark DeLong, and Kris Mole. Their Substacks are linked in the text of the article.)

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Tom Pendergast

is a former cybersecurity executive who escaped the bullshit machine and now spends his time writing, editing, and goofing around. Visit him at his Substack

Out Over My Skis

.