Turn Every Reader's Note Into A Standard

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A little while back, I decided to create a product to help writers get unstuck, no matter where or why their draft got stuck. I called it “The Dead Draft Autopsy.”

This came off the back of working on something specifically for fiction writers before I realized I wanted to help more folks than just fiction writers, and after realizing I’d spent months on something I wasn’t excited to publish. So, I gave myself some ground rules:

I’m not bringing all this up to sell the product, but rather to show how, in the process of making that product, I learned that I had a great case study to show how a writer can apply feedback once it's received, and how to be better about that reception in future rounds of feedback.

I had a total of four beta readers for my product, three of whom were able to get me feedback during the week I had to work on it. While they liked the product overall, they got stuck on a single word I used in the explanation steps of the framework: “facet.”

They thought it was a writing term and felt confused for the rest of the review. I told them, “It’s a branding thing; don’t get hung up on it,” as the word comes from my Five Facets of Writing framework, which the product is based on. I told them that because I was frustrated that they got caught on a single word as their only source of feedback.

Why did I reply that way? My answer came before the feedback’s evidence, so what evidence did I have that justified my response being shaped as it was?

And, more importantly, how do the answers to those questions affect future feedback loops I do for my work?

Today’s letter sits as the final bookend to the letters I’ve done about collecting feedback as a writer:

The sorted notes are where we pick up today, to determine which notes you received are and are not worth acting on. This way, we know what feedback to focus on during the revisions we make to our writing during the Editing facet of writing.

In other words, after this letter, you can move into the editing phase of your writing with confidence about where your readers find your work lacking, and what feedback is worthy of affecting your writing.

I’m not covering revision advice here. We’ll save that for the actual revision processes I use in later letters. For now, let’s work with the data we collected during feedback, and use it to improve future drafts, and ourselves.

The simple answer to the questions I posed earlier is this: my reply to that beta reader came from past standards I set for myself. The use of the word “facet” was necessary because it bridged into later explanations of the product’s frameworks, but my reply should not have been phrased the way it was. It was too dismissive, and didn’t engage with the reader’s concerns.

I’ve found that many writers will commit similar sins during feedback collection, but as someone not above making these mistakes, let me share some examples of what I mean.

In previous letters, I’ve talked about how a teacher I had in high school referred to a competition-placing poem I wrote as “sophomoric.” I didn’t have the chance to follow up with that teacher about what that meant as a function of my writing, or so I thought, and so that was the final verdict rendered to my piece.

That same piece came to a media specialist’s desk at my school, and she explained the specific choices I made with my wording and meter that led to what she described as “a mature summary of the topic beyond your years.” That gave me the foundation to build future pieces off of, since I could refer back to my vocabulary and my pacing from that piece for value thanks to her feedback.

In my freelancing days, the written standard of a client brief was the defined goal, and workflows where something being sent back meant I had missed some part of the brief. This didn’t stop editors from making tweaks, though. I recall one guide I wrote about a ridesharing service where an editor moved the piece on, but said, “Looks good, but I changed some wording because parts went on for too long and it got boring.”

I shrugged and moved on. I had no further work to do, and even though alterations without explanation annoyed me, I was still going to get paid, and chalked it up to a difference in taste.

The thing is, though: I could have gone back and verified that was true, and didn’t. That editor’s feedback handed me a pardon, but not a rule of whatever “too long” was.

These examples are where my response of “it’s just a branding thing” to my beta reader came from. I told them that because there was no set standard for what getting hung up on one word meant, and so my shrug response kicked in. I dismissed the feedback at first, thus acting as my response to “the sting” as I talked about in the previous newsletter.

Thus, I believe that, without standards, the sting or shrug you feel during feedback writes the standard for you, and that gets supplied into future rounds of feedback. The last round of feedback you get, and therefore the sentence you write as a result, is the one that stung the most.

Another beta reader for the product also only had one piece of feedback to give to me. They knew that I had a coaching offer I wanted to link to the product, but the version of the product I gave them didn’t have the closing letter from me yet. So, that reader said, “You should do a coaching CTA.”

Immediately, a thought crossed my mind: “I’m not good at communicating value.” I’ve known for a while that I am a terrible advocate of myself, a habit brought on by many of the misattributions I’ve covered here and in other letters.

But let’s look at what this reader provides and the steps my mind took:

Going back to how I set up getting feedback from this reader, I never set a standard for them when it came to checking for that sort of thing. I already knew I wanted to add the coaching link in my product as part of the scaffolding I’d set up already, but the closing letter draft wasn’t done yet.

And despite knowing all that, I still let a piece of feedback almost become a verdict about my capabilities when the beta reader had no intention of doing that.

So, what was my response to this reader? I told them, “Thanks, that’s a good idea. I have it as part of my plan for what the next draft will look like. Was there anything else that stood out to you?”

In this case, I thankfully caught the emotional first movements my mind wanted to make, set them aside, identified their origins, and realized there was a better response available to me.

I was able to do that because I had already set a standard for myself about where to put the coaching and what it would say; it just wasn’t done yet. The feedback this reader offered confirmed that I needed to do something; I just wasn’t there yet in the process.

But if I hadn’t had that preset standard and just let my emotions handle the note? I would have ended up with a new verdict on my abilities, rather than evidence of a working standard.

Once you get past the emotional sting of receiving feedback, I find that the best way to treat feedback notes you keep is to treat each one as a hypothesis, not a verdict. Doing so means that you can take a piece of feedback and apply it as a test, rather than as a rule that must be followed.

Let’s go back to my beta reader who got stuck on the word “facet” from earlier. Once I realized I had supplied my emotional first response without testing the feedback, I went into the draft I had for The Dead Draft Autopsy and keyword searched “facet” in the draft.

Specifically, I was interested in knowing how many times I used that word before explaining what I meant by “facets of writing.” I found that the word showed up exactly one time before the explanation, which was on the page right before the explanation.

So, to simulate what the change would look like, I changed the word “facet” to “component” and reread the copy I had on that page where they got stuck, and found that the copy read as basically the same thing, but now with no bridge term to connect the two pages.

I went to the beta reader and told them that I would keep “facet” where it was. I also told them the final version of the product would have a bookmark and internal hyperlinks to the facets of writing, and they agreed it would probably work fine for most folks in that form.

If I had seen “facet” show up multiple times without explanation, I would have changed the copy during editing. But the simulation gave me a chance to see the potential benefits of the changes.

So, in this specific case, the decision not to make the change worked out. It doesn’t excuse the initial dismissal I gave the reader, as I had no evidence to come to that conclusion when I did. Only when I tested the change and reported back did I have the correct level of confidence to rationally make the determination.

Much of the frameworks I’ve presented here and in other feedback-focused newsletters come from Seneca’s writings on Stoicism. I wouldn’t describe myself as a Stoic, but I do see the value in many Stoic principles and practices when it comes to getting good feedback as a writer.

I’ve made my point that feedback collection can be an emotionally charged practice, much like other interactions one has during any given day. In Seneca’s On Anger, Book III, the Roman lays out his process for learning from these events. He hides nothing from himself to keep his ego from ruling the moment, lays out new rules for himself to follow, and closes roughly with “see that you don’t do this again; this time I forgive you.”

This process is meant to be a way to better oneself for future encounters, specifically by girding oneself with rules of engagement that are known, or at least better known, via this nightly review. I didn’t know it at the time, but I developed something similar a while ago when I was working on better journaling methods for writers with my 4C’s Journaling System.

One part of that system covers the “Cut” component, where you write about what upset you that day with the understanding that writing it down permits you to move on from it.

Seneca’s nightly review and my journaling process cover what I see as two halves of structure for processing these emotional moments: the rule and the pardon.

The rule is the standard you carry forward after reviewing the emotional moment. It is the guideline you have for future encounters that cause similar emotional stings to arise, allowing you to be better equipped to mitigate those emotional rises by taking control. These rules aren’t meant to stifle or suppress you, but rather to balance out the instinctual with the logical.

The pardon is the acceptance that the faulty verdicts you picked up as a result of those emotional first movements don’t have to follow you forever. You are allowed to falter or fail, so long as the future version of you falters less often. The nightly review isn’t designed to be a mental flogging session. It should be a feedback loop that spins you up and towards greater heights in your craft.

In other words, it is the process by which you make yourself more resilient to future feedback collection. Using something like Seneca’s nightly review or my journaling technique forces you to face the missteps you made each day, giving each night a chance to better empower you for the next day’s work.

In the interest of full clarity, I admit that I write this letter as a creator imperfect in the standards they hold for some parts of my work.

Each one of these newsletters comes with a fear of wondering what others will think of what I have to share, if it will be worthy, and so on. I post anyway because there is no other way to create my body of work without publishing it.

Some of the astute readers will notice that I have social media links to accounts that are still dormant months after their creation, especially short-form video platforms. I’ve recorded and edited videos several times for these platforms, and held them back at each pass, again, out of fear.

In On Providence, Seneca details that hardship is akin to training for our virtues. My fear doesn’t excuse my inaction for what I know I should be doing, but rather is a test each time I tee up content.

I won’t claim any solutions or frameworks here. In time, when I go to cover the publishing side of my facets of writing, I hope I’ll have better data to provide frameworks for you then.

But it wouldn’t be right to claim I have fully integrated these frameworks in all areas for you. At least, not as of the time I write this.

As always, I want to leave you with something workable you can use to ensure you can close out your feedback loop on the right foot. That’s why I have The Rule and Pardon Review for you below:

The Review is broken up into two halves: one half for your work, and the other for you, as the writer. The half for your work covers what you tested from a reader’s feedback to determine the utility of the feedback, while the writer half shows you what to work on for your next round of feedback.

For your work, you’ll record the note you kept from your Note Sorter, a brief overview of what you did to test the feedback’s utility, what the test showed you, and your decision on whether the feedback has permission to change your draft or not.

For you, as a writer, you’ll record what your first movement was, what sentence you supplied to the situation as part of that first movement, what rule you can set to avoid acting on that in the future, and what pardon you give yourself for this instance.

Finally, the line at the bottom asks you to write out what you’ll be measuring yourself against in the next feedback brief you create. This should be an addition to what you’ve constructed and proven to be true thus far, all to improve your resilience and clarity during future feedback-gathering sessions.

Download The Rule and Pardon Review and apply it to feedback you’re either currently getting for a draft, or an old feedback note you have lying around. It should take no more than 15 minutes to do so.

Based on what I’ve seen other writers do during this step of the writing process, I expect that the sentence you’ve been carrying, the one that you write in the “Sentence I Supplied” section, is going to be a reflection of you, not your draft, and that will sting all over again.

The key here is to prevent that sting from informing your future actions. In two different feedback collection instances, I had the chance to wave off a reader’s feedback as a difference in understanding branding and a verdict about my ability to communicate the value of my services. Instead, I worked through the frameworks here and bought myself a way to introduce terms in future sales copy and a rule to better communicate my writing scaffolding to beta readers reviewing incomplete drafts.

I expect similar results to be possible for you, so long as you let yourself work through the full feedback collection process.

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